So when does John Reid become Prime Minister ?

I see that after Labour’s poor results in the local elections Mr Blair has swung the axe, sacking Charles Clarke, removing John Prescott’s department, and moving many ministers including Jack Straw and Hilary “I need an abacus” Armstrong.

I have mixed feelings about the promotion of Margaret “sheep’s brains” Beckett – she deserved the sack even more than Charles Clarke did, but at least she cannot do as much damage to Cumbria’s farmers as Foreign Secretary as she did while in charge of rural policy. The new secretary of state for the Environment, David Milliband, will take over responsibility for this area.

The dwindling faction of people loyal to Blair say that Milliband is very talented: if he wants to prove it a good start would be to pay our farmers the money they should have had months ago.

Forget his private life – John Prescott was a disaster as a minister. It is of course an outrageous waste of public money to allow the benefits of office - including the car, the salary, and two grace and favour homes - costing the taxpayer paying more than a quarter of a million pounds a year when Blair has finally realised that Prescott is not up to running a department. However, the taxpayer was getting an even worse deal when he did have a department to run and the authority to wreck local government. Let’s hope Ruth Kelly makes a better job of local government than she did of Education, but she can’t possibly be worse than John Prescott.

But what made me laugh is that yet again, John Reid has been put into a job whose previous holder has been moved or sacked following a row, scandal, or serious failure, this time as home secretary. Since Mr Reid appears to be the Labour party’s roving minister for clearing up the mess, and taking over from people who have failed, we have to ask – when does he become Prime Minister ?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Quote of the day 24th July 2020