Talk about drowning in a sea of troubles. Over the past month, the Government has been buffeted by the ongoing furore about the effectiveness of the criminal justice system and turmoil at the Home Office.
In his new job as home secretary, said Bill Jacobs in The Scotsman, John Reid has come to resemble a “headless chicken”. His attacks on judges and half-baked proposals to publish paedophiles’ whereabouts smack of desperate publicity-seeking. Unfortunately, there is scant evidence of “logical political thought” to back it up.
Voters seem to have reached the same conclusion, with this week’s crop of opinion polls bringing more bad news for the Government. Not since 1987 has Labour’s share of the vote (32%, five points behind the Tories) been so low for three successive months. Meanwhile, an Observer poll gave Conservative leader David Cameron a big lead over both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as a politician who’s in touch with ordinary people.
Yet another poll found two-thirds of Labour members want Blair to resign by the autumn of next year. And compounding the impression of a government in crisis, Brown aide Michael Wills chipped in with the sobering assessment that Labour faces 15 years in opposition if it fails to regain public trust – badly damaged by Blair’s presidential style and the Iraq fiasco. In short, said The Guardian, Blair has become an electoral liability whose “continuation at the top of his party increasingly appears like an act of vanity”.
Blair might be on the way out, but Blairism is not, said Peter Riddell in The Times. There will be strong pressure on Gordon Brown from the Labour left to ditch the emphasis on public sector reform, and the anti-Blairite group Compass has already called for a job-destroying £7-an-hour minimum wage and a restoration of trade union legal immunities. But it is pressure Brown will resist. He knows Labour cannot win from the left, so if Labour is to have a chance of a record fourth victory, “the tone and the style will change, but not the substance”.
At present, the would-be PM seems more concerned with another issue that could well overshadow his tenure in No. 10 – his Scottishness. Last week Brown announced a new coin commemorating the Act of Union of 1707 and made a very public show of supporting England in the World Cup.
You can see why he’s cosying up to the Auld Enemy. There is a mounting English backlash against the current constitutional oddity whereby Scots MPs at Westminster – including the new home secretary and much of the cabinet – continue to vote on laws for England and Wales on matters where power, in Scotland, has been devolved to the Edinburgh parliament.
Throw in the anglophobic “chippiness” that has survived devolution and the subsidies extorted from English taxpayers, said Michael Portillo in The Sunday Times, and it becomes clear why 52% of UK voters say they oppose the idea of a Scots MP becoming UK prime minister.
The issue has become “a good stick” for the Tories to beat the government with, said Portillo. After all, their prospects of long-term power in England would be better if the two countries separated.
Independence could give Scotland a much-needed shot in the arm too. Its sclerotic socialist economy would have to be reformed in order to attract foreign investment, and leadership would shift from the ruling trade unionists and ex-public sector workers to the private sector. In short, a “Tory Scotland would be on the cards again”.