The new “drive-thru” politics

Originally posted January 30th 2008

The body count from this week’s small artillery fire and hand-to-hand combat on the front line of the Parliamentary battlefield: one ministerial resignation; one MP suspended; two political careers in tatters; and all politicians again tarred with the same brush.

As “they” say: “What goes around comes around”. In politics you can depend upon some who will gleefully jump on the bandwagon of opportunism to seek to maximise the discomfort of their opponents. But for them there is always a healthy portion of free range scrambled egg on its way to their face. But they never seem to learn…

The other response to these crises is for political leaders to attempt to change the story by always having a ready made goodie bag of “eye-catching initiatives” to launch with a flourish.

But it seems that the store of these is running dry. They must be very near to the bottom of the barrel now.

The PM’s enthusiastic pronouncement of privatised skills qualifications had even his own party loyalists pulling on uncomfortable smiles.

Perhaps the new era of “drive-thru” qualifications envisaged will come “with fries”!

A postscript to an indifferent week: There is no truth in the suggestion that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, consulted Paddy Ashdown’s former Parliamentary colleagues before he came to the conclusion that he couldn’t work with the former Royal Marine and diplomat. The fact that most of us are still suffering the post traumatic stress disorder of enduring his dictatorial regime and being barked at at 6.30 am each morning with orders for the day has nothing to do with it…