If voters needed any more reasons to give New Labour a sound kicking on May 3rd, then our PM Tony Blair has just given them a classic.
He has admitted lavishing money on run down inner cities and to failing to resolve the problems of yob families, drugs and street gangs. Now in the last days in power he has accepted that his target should have been the "tiny minority" who cause most of the problems on these estates.
I quote his words:
"What I have learned over these ten years is that the original analysis I had was incomplete and therefore misguided"And:
"Investment in poorer neighbourhoods and regeneration...will not deal deal with this small and unrepresentative minority."Well we have all known from day one that most crime is created by a small group, everyone can point to those people, the so called neighbours from hell. The family on benefits the can work yet chooses to live off the state, chooses to deal drugs, chooses to do what ever they want to do at the expense of everyone else around them. Yet its only now that PM Blair accepts that his government failed to resolve the problem and lets get back to his point about being misguided.
There is a vital difference between being on benefits because you can not work, lack the skills to get a job, or there are not any jobs in your area and choosing to live on benefits and supliment your income with some crime/work on the side.
Well he chose Labour MP Frank Field, to as New Labour put it "think the unthinkable" as minister for welfare reform - then sacked the chap just as he was coming up with the answers. In short Blair realised that Frank Field was actually going to change the whole idea of benefits and Blair bottled out of the reforms. Thank you Mr Blair as a result of your moral cowardice we have had to live with the results of that ever since.
Frank Field was in favour of time limits on benefits, to tilt the system back in favour of marriage and against one parent families. He also pointed out that there were some people who should be locked up for the sake of the law abiding rest of us.
Remember this quote Mr Blair from the man you sacked: "If people won't work, won't behave and make live a misery for everyone else, why should my constituents have to live next to them?"
"Your standing in the community should be affected by the way you behave."
Yet the left in New Labour, the social reformers like yourself rejected this solution and left the rest of us to live with the consequences. Had Labour listened to Frank Field when they had the chance to change things, some important things might be resolved, or at the very least improved.
Only the other week Frank Field was introduced in a meeting as "Frank Field - a politician who is too good to be in this Government."
So when the polls close on Thursday and Labour sit back and look at the poor results, maybe its worst beating since the days when they sat on the other side of the house maybe they should remember that they had to chance to do some real social reforms of welfare and social behaviour of those who choose to live among us yet apart from us, they chose to turn away from the challenge and now they will pay for it.
Link to Frank Fields site: http://www.frankfield.com/type1.asp?id=1&type=1
As much as I dislike this government and most of the piss poor MP's in it, I have to admit a liking for Frank Field. After all any man who can compare Labour’s leader-in-waiting Gordon Brown to the mad woman in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre is deserving of some respect. That and that time I saw him on tv lambasting the heads of UK banks over charges on credit cards.
The Birkenhead MP has made no secret of his dislike of the Chancellor but went a step further in his campaign to stop him becoming the next Prime Minister by claiming giving him the top job would be akin to letting Mrs Rochester out of the attic.
My bit on that: http://newportcity.blogspot.com/2007/03/frank-field-spot-on.html
Tags: Gordon Brown, New Labour, Frank Field
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