Portillo on Jacqui Smith

The concluding paragraphs to a brilliant column by Michael Portillo in today's The Sunday Times, linked here:

The home secretary still thinks nothing untoward occurred. Almost every day some new revelation makes her look incompetent or unprincipled or both. It is beyond human understanding how she can bear to go on. If she were a pet, she would be taken to the vet for a painless end. If she were a boxer, the fight would be stopped before she took more punishment. If she were lying between the trenches, some kind soul would deliver the coup de grâce.

In PC Wren’s novel Beau Geste the French legionnaires under siege in their fort prop up the corpses of their fallen colleagues on the battlements to try to impress the enemy with their numbers. The home secretary is still propped up in office, but her political life has ended.

You may feel sorry for her. That would be a compassionate response but an inappropriate one. The attempt to use the criminal law to punish those who embarrass ministers has been thwarted. Were it not so, this would no longer be a free country. Her humiliation is essential to keeping us safe.

Mr Portillo might well have added that her resignation too, is now essential - I wonder why he did not.

Jacqui Smith should recall Lady Macbeth!

Although "kettling" by riot police goes back to 2001 and therefore culpability for allowing the technique must go back to Jack Straw, thereafter to David Blunkett, Charles Clarke and John Reid and would necessarily have to include the two Mayors of London Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnstone the actual blood spilled (in the abdominal cavity of the killed Mr Ian Tomlinson) must mainly be put at the door of the present incumbent Jacqui Smith.

The latter, who clearly lacks both conscience and common sense (personally I would not leave her in charge of a small group of five-year olds) maybe presently feels like Lady Macbeth in Act Two Scene II of Shakespeare's play when she boldly asserts:

"A little water clears us of this deed"

Only to lose her mind and by Act Five Scene I we see her dementedly wandering and bemoaning:

"Here's the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!"

With Smith gone demands can be made to discover the guidance provided to earlier Home Office ministers on the potential consequences of "kettling" and whether Smith's predecessors and the Mayors of London mentioned above carry any share of the culpability.

Charges against the Police Officers involved in a clearly authorised and condoned operation of "kettling", whose risks appear to have been well known not least from the fact that the police appear to have had a house-trained Coroner on hand to rush out with a now clearly erroneous post-mortem result, do not even begin to get to the nub of this matter.

The fact that this is a National problem and therefore most likely a Home Office concern is borne out by the events from Nottingham last week as explained in my earlier posting of today. One other consideration is if Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister is such a control freak and knowingly aware of Jacqui Smith's complete incompetence that he might have made himself ultimately responsible for the policing tactics used during the G20 meetings?

Jacqui Smith and Darling Expenses - the final Straw? Cameron's time is up!

Surely now is the moment to clean up British politics? I was reminded yesterday of a post on the subject of donations in July 2007 when it had been announced that no prosecutions would follow the inquiries of Yates of the yard into the donations disgrace.

John Redwood, MP for Wokingham and one of the ever rarer thinking occupants of the green benches, posted some ideas on limits on his blog on 20th July 2007, linked here, titled "I want more change from David Cameron". I was drawn to comment and see no reason to detract from what I said back then, quoted herewith:

# Martin Coleon 20 Jul 2007 at 7:33 pm

I quote from the above, ‘We want a more honest politics’ - well said, indeed we do!

A start could be made by senior and long-sitting MPs holding true to the policies they initially stated as ‘core-beliefs’.

Cameron was and remains a nothing. Now it is obvious that actual voters have more than taken this fact on board, what will those who entered politics espousing basic conservative and democratic beliefs now do about it?

Carry on taking the money appears the answer from a brief read of this blog!

The Democratic Deficit is not now mainly in the EU, it is in the lack of a courageous and principled opposition - that seems to me the main reason why Yates has been frustrated. With Cameron leading the opposition the Brown government feels free to do as it wishes and even the most articulate members on the opposition benches appear as if gagged.

Cameron having acquiesced in the coagulation of HBOS into Lloyds and now apparently ready to permit the rolling of the printing presses to further corrupt the currency, both without re-call of parliament or apparently any debate is, with George Osborne, now equally culpable in democracy's demise as Brown and Darling!

I believe that Cameron has clearly failed and in the process betrayed the country, any reform of parliament demands his departure as Party Leader.