Re: John Reid strikes again...

Gaz wrote:
Stephen Glynn wrote:
Just spotted this in Ranting Guttersnipe's blog:

'From Today’s Daily Mail (http://tinyurl.com/pq52k )

'"It began as a routine photo opportunity, the stock-in-trade of Labour
spin doctors.
The idea was to show the embattled Home Secretary getting to grips with
the foreign prisoner deportation fiasco. Stung by criticism of his
decision to take a holiday while his department is in crisis, John Reid
arranged to be photographed attending a series of dawn raids yesterday
as police and immigration officers searched for released foreign
criminals. "


I kind of felt sorry for Reid today, seeing the negative press he has been getting on this piece of public relations.

You can imagine them, sitting round a table, trying to work out how to gain the initiative, get the popular press back on side, and look tough.
"hey John, why dont you join a team on a dawn raid arresting some illegal overstayers"

Sounds like a good idea, makes John look like a man of action, getting on top of the problem etc, and this kind of thing has worked in the past, remember Maggie in the tank etc.

Oh dear, little did they know, I have rarely seen such a bashing of a politician with their publicity stunt backfiring, since the infamous John Selwyn Gummer feeding a mad cow burger to his children.

The general discontent with the Government, i'd suggest has been running for a few years, but the alternative (or memories of the alternative) has been to awful for many to contemplate, but it seems like something has changed in the last six months.

The Government is out of control, how long can they sustain such bad press coverage? Something has to give. You would expect a new home secretary to be given some breathing space, but he is getting hammered as if he has been in the job for a couple of years.

Six months ago, the perpetual Labour Government, in power for the next ten years seemed not so much likely, as inevitable, but now, you have to wonder if they can leap on through to the next election.

The longer it goes on, the longer it looks like Gordon Brown is not the man to take over, I find it hard to visualise a real change from Brown, with certainly frostier relations with the media, and the frightening away of middleclass tory voters.

Its not looking good for Labour in Government, where is there John Major figure, a huge break from the past that can renew?

Gaz



Reid, I think, is toast. Part of the reason this stunt backfired so badly is that it's symptomatic of exactly the sort of thing that got the Home Office into such a mess in the first place -- ministers (and sometimes the Prime Minister) going in for headline-grabbing stunts and initiatives without bothering to think out the details and then blaming the Civil Service and the courts when it all goes horribly wrong.

As I've mentioned before, I've frequently been told by people at the INS that one of the main reasons they're in such chaos there -- and they are, with files going missing and people changing jobs every five minutes -- is that no sooner have they managed to get the latest initiative or crack-down or whatever to work than the Home Secretary of the day is off at another tangent about something that's upset the editors of the red-tops.

What the Home Office really needs is a period of consolidation to try to get its act in order rather than constantly be going off like a badly-made firework producing yet another crack-down on something or other along with yet another set of Criminal Justice and anti-terrorism bills, which won't work properly because they're too big, complex and ill-thought out, and will only make unnecessary work for everyone trying to figure out what Parliament might have meant when they passed them, since they appear to conflict with other bits of legislation.

For this sort of thing you need the cooperation of your senior civil servants, and Reid has certainly not won himself many friends in his department by his attack on them within days of taking office. Back on May 24, it will be remembered, he announced he was going to fix the system in 100 days. This, AIUI, takes us up to Friday, September 1 -- a date that will most certainly be in the diaries of the Opposition, the press and the senior people at the Home Office, since any ***-ups that come to light after that will presumably be down to the good doctor.

And somehow I don't see his senior staff at the Home Office making particularly strenuous efforts to warn him about some unfortunate implications to his initiatives that may only become apparent just after September 1, just as they seem to have neglected to warn him about the consequences of this stunt.

As to who should take over from St Tone, I dunno. I think they shouldn't be looking for a John Major figure; rather, they need a Douglas Hurd figure who can lead them to a respectable defeat followed by a period in opposition while they try to work out where to go next.

Steve
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