Dark days... and we can’t even vote Ukip
THE CHEERS had scarcely diminished before the backlash to the Metropolitan Police “tactical contact” policy of tipping criminals from their mopeds or motorbikes began.
Cheered on by Diane Abbott, who would be home secretary under a Labour government and is to policing what Noel Edmonds is to jungle survival, the cops found themselves under attack for trying to get tough with blatant law-breakers.
Now one officer who performed the tactic in Erith, Kent, is under investigation and could lose his career and face criminal charges.
Candidly, why would any sane copper risk his career and pension if there’s no support from the police hierarchy?
OFSTED chief inspector Amanda Spielman was right last week when she said nurseries that ban climbing frames and monkey bars and have outlawed cooking in the supposed name of health and safety are “stifling” children’s physical development and dexterity.
It has to be said that this signals a momentous volte face in the way public bodies respond to such issues.
There’s no shortage of local authorities and other groups that go out of their way to deny children any chance to play and flood any public space or park playground with hi-vis vested officials to close the place down if there’s as much as a chip of paint off a swing.
However, the educationalists and others can say as much as they like, it is the lawyers who make all the running here.
In these ludicrously litigious times, would you run a nursery where you allowed children to get the bumps and scrapes that were once rightly part of just growing up?
THE WORD shambles doesn’t even get close. At the time of writing – who knows what might happen at the moment! – we have a Prime Minister whose authority has been shredded and who suffered humiliation on a historic scale last week. Never mind being unable to control the House of Commons, Theresa May is struggling to maintain any sort of meaningful grip on the Conservative Party that she is meant to lead.
To lose one key vote is seismic enough, to lose three in less than an hour was nothing short of calamitous, as well as being potentially politically fatal.
It’s worth noting Mrs May has now lost a total of 16 votes and to put that into context, that’s as many as her three predecessors, David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, lost between them.
She has been embarrassingly forced to publish the full legal advice provided by the Attorney General concerning the Withdrawal Agreement and it’s fair to say it calls into question some of her assurances about the intricate details of the deal, particularly with reference to the accursed “backstop” arrangement for Northern Ireland.
Tottering from the defeats as if she’d had a few rounds against Tyson Fury, the full scale of an amendment championed by former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve began to resonate. In the event of losing this Tuesday’s vote (which even a three year old with a broken abacus would conclude is the highly likely outcome) it seems all control about the UK exiting with this infamous “no deal” would pass to parliament, and leave the Prime Minister stranded and politically impotent.
So who can hold to account this bunch of feuding, back-stabbing, self-serving, implausibly self-obsessed public servants? Certainly not the main party leaders who are wholly focused on protecting their own perilous positions or shoring up cracks and division.
Never has there been a more important time for a party such as Ukip to step up and try to hold all parties to account. Yet never has Ukip been further from power due to its current leader deciding its future lies down a far-right path.
There’s more than a sporting chance that many of you reading this have at some time voted Ukip and some of you possibly have joined the party or canvassed for them. Ask yourself this: can you support a political party led by a man who has described Islam as a “death cult” and that earlier this year aired the idea of Muslim-only jails, additional screening of Muslims from certain countries and the abolition of the category of “hate crime”. Leader Gerard Batten said the shift was designed to make Ukip “a populist party in the real meaning of the word” and he backed up his words by hiring activist and former leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson as a special adviser on rape gangs and prison reform.
All this was too much for Nigel Farage, who was a founding member of the party and dominated it for more than 20 years, leading it three times and presiding over its most successful period.
It was at the 2014 European elections that it became the first party in more than a century, other than the Conservatives or Labour, to win the most votes in a nationwide poll with 27.5 per cent. It had become a real force and it’s highly likely Britain would never have had its THE £14billion London Crossrail project has missed its deadline and needs a £500million cash injection. The ill-starred £58billion HS2 high-speed rail link is said to also be struggling, losing support from senior Cabinet ministers and is despised across much of North London and some of the Home Counties.
Meanwhile, from next month passengers across the entire country will have to pay a lot more to travel on trains that are often cancelled or late, and that in peak times rarely provide a seat for many.
This is no way to run a railway. referendum if Ukip had not been on the scene. In truth, the referendum result will serve to be the party’s high water mark and also the start of its swansong.
Last week Mr Farage quit the party stating that “under Gerard Batten’s leadership the party’s direction has changed fundamentally” adding the “fixation with the issue of Islam makes Ukip unrecognisable to many of us”.
At a time when this nation is dangerously split enough already and our future course is hopelessly impossible to call, why would a party that once wielded such clout decide to follow such a divisive path as to single out one particular faith group for draconian treatment?
Let’s get one thing straight: grooming gangs, often involving men of Pakistani origin, are a scourge in too many towns and cities, and must be ruthlessly investigated – with the perpetrators put before the courts and upon conviction given sentences of breathtaking duration.
However for the party to concentrate on that now, with this nation’s future relationship with the European Union and the entire Brexit process in the balance, is the height of stupidity.