Daily Mail.
16th May 2006.
Littlejohn.
What makes the Labour party think that the English would cheerfully submit themselves to rule by either of these old-school Scottish socialists, one of whom is an ex-Communist who thought that Britain would have been better off being ruled by the Soviet Union?
So now it's Dr John Reid's turn to be the Stop Gordon candidate. Apparently, he seriously believes he could be the next Prime Minister.
And why not?
After all, he's had just about every other job in the Cabinet. Reid has been on TV so often over the past couple of weeks that I began to wonder if they'd cloned him. I half-expected to turn on the cricket and find him opening the batting for England or running out at the Cup Final in Cardiff in a Liverpool shirt.
There was an advert in the Sunday papers for the forthcoming series of concerts at the Tower of London to celebrate 30 years of the Prince's Trust.
On July 7th, the show stars Dr John and Randy Newman. I'm assuming that we're talking Dr John the Night Tripper, the Louisiana singer/songwriter. But the way Dr John the Home Secretary has been putting himself about lately, you never know.
No-one can accuse him of false modesty or hiding his light under a bushel. So it's no wonder that reports of him planning to stand against Gordon are being given credit.
In the Westminster village they talk of little other than the succession. But what are those of us outside the insanity cordon supposed to make of it all?
For a start, Blair isn't going anywhere in a hurry. The fevered speculation is just that, fevered speculation. However, given the choice between Gordon and Dr John, I suspect that most of us south of the border would reply: neither of the above.
What makes the Labour party think that the English would cheerfully submit themselves to rule by either of these old-school Scottish socialists?
A poll for the BBC at the weekend reported that 52% of us are unwilling to accept a Scottish Prime Minister. The result is unsurprising given that Labour LOST the popular vote in England at the last election
It's taken a few years, but the English are increasingly coming to resent the Scotia Nostra at Westminster.
More and more people are asking why we should be governed by ministers who sit for Scottish constituencies. They shouldn't be allowed to pass laws affecting only the English, when their writ doesn't even run in their own backyard, since most powers north of the border have been devolved to the Scottish parliament.
There was an absurd illustration of this recently when Reid turned up on a picket line protesting about the closure of a hospital in his Airdrie and Shotts constituency.
He couldn't have done anything about it even when he was Health Secretary (for a couple of weeks) because Health is entirely a matter for the Scottish parliament.
The same applies on a whole raft of issues, from transport to education. Yet Labour still relies on the Scottish block vote to foist tuition fees and suchlike on the English, even though none of it applies in Jolly Jocko Land.
Curious - isn't it? - that we've just spent months arguing about whether or not we could have another non-English England football manager, yet there's little fuss as yet about having a Scot run England.
Of course, this wouldn't have been an issue had Labour's devolution masterplan included the simple device of excluding Scottish and Welsh MPs from voting at Westminster on purely English affairs. But it didn't and now Labour must reap the whirlwind. The plain truth is that Labour can't govern without Scottish votes. Few people seem to have noticed that while we were all laughing at Two Jags and analysing the sacking of Charles Clarke and the humiliation of Jaq al-Straw, ANOTHER two Scots - Des Browne and Douglas Alexander - slipped into the Cabinet under the radar.
Meanwhile, Gordon is trying to shore up Labour's increasingly untenable position by confiscating money from the South of England and tipping it into a black hole in the North.
The main reason the Tories are struggling to re-establish themselves north of the Humber is because Gordon has put half the country on the payroll.
In some areas, 60% of all workers are dependent on the state for their wages. Most of the rest of the population are on benefits - a bit like Scotland, actually.
What's the difference between that and Shirley Porter flogging off council flats in Westminster to yuppies?It's all vote-rigging.
In this case, Gordon is taking money from the Conservative South and using it to buy votes in Labour's rotten boroughs in the North and Scotland. I doubt Dr John - his so-called "rival" - disapproves.
There's no room here to go through all Labour's other attempts at ballot-rigging - postal voting, party lists, transferable votes.
I guess they figure that if fourth-past-the-post is good enough for the Champions League, it's good enough for British democracy, provided it produces the results they want.
When Peter Mandelson said "the era of pure representative democracy is coming to an end" he wasn't kidding, was he?
Now, when Blair (a Scot) goes, it looks as if we're going to have forced upon us either The Man Who Stole Your Old Age or an ex-drunk, ex-Communist, Glasgow bootboy, who not so long ago thought Britain would be a better place if it was run by the Soviet Union.
One reason Blair is staying on is that he calculated that neither of these old Scottish lags can beat Call Me Dave (Tory leader), despite the inbuilt bias in the electoral system which means the Tories have to win by at least 11 points to form a government.
That's a formidable target, but not impossible, especially given the unpalatable alternative.
Chesterton's "secret people of England" are beginning to stir.
dailymail.co.uk
16th May 2006.
Littlejohn.
What makes the Labour party think that the English would cheerfully submit themselves to rule by either of these old-school Scottish socialists, one of whom is an ex-Communist who thought that Britain would have been better off being ruled by the Soviet Union?
So now it's Dr John Reid's turn to be the Stop Gordon candidate. Apparently, he seriously believes he could be the next Prime Minister.
And why not?
After all, he's had just about every other job in the Cabinet. Reid has been on TV so often over the past couple of weeks that I began to wonder if they'd cloned him. I half-expected to turn on the cricket and find him opening the batting for England or running out at the Cup Final in Cardiff in a Liverpool shirt.
There was an advert in the Sunday papers for the forthcoming series of concerts at the Tower of London to celebrate 30 years of the Prince's Trust.
On July 7th, the show stars Dr John and Randy Newman. I'm assuming that we're talking Dr John the Night Tripper, the Louisiana singer/songwriter. But the way Dr John the Home Secretary has been putting himself about lately, you never know.
No-one can accuse him of false modesty or hiding his light under a bushel. So it's no wonder that reports of him planning to stand against Gordon are being given credit.
In the Westminster village they talk of little other than the succession. But what are those of us outside the insanity cordon supposed to make of it all?
For a start, Blair isn't going anywhere in a hurry. The fevered speculation is just that, fevered speculation. However, given the choice between Gordon and Dr John, I suspect that most of us south of the border would reply: neither of the above.
What makes the Labour party think that the English would cheerfully submit themselves to rule by either of these old-school Scottish socialists?
A poll for the BBC at the weekend reported that 52% of us are unwilling to accept a Scottish Prime Minister. The result is unsurprising given that Labour LOST the popular vote in England at the last election
It's taken a few years, but the English are increasingly coming to resent the Scotia Nostra at Westminster.
More and more people are asking why we should be governed by ministers who sit for Scottish constituencies. They shouldn't be allowed to pass laws affecting only the English, when their writ doesn't even run in their own backyard, since most powers north of the border have been devolved to the Scottish parliament.
There was an absurd illustration of this recently when Reid turned up on a picket line protesting about the closure of a hospital in his Airdrie and Shotts constituency.
He couldn't have done anything about it even when he was Health Secretary (for a couple of weeks) because Health is entirely a matter for the Scottish parliament.
The same applies on a whole raft of issues, from transport to education. Yet Labour still relies on the Scottish block vote to foist tuition fees and suchlike on the English, even though none of it applies in Jolly Jocko Land.
Curious - isn't it? - that we've just spent months arguing about whether or not we could have another non-English England football manager, yet there's little fuss as yet about having a Scot run England.
Of course, this wouldn't have been an issue had Labour's devolution masterplan included the simple device of excluding Scottish and Welsh MPs from voting at Westminster on purely English affairs. But it didn't and now Labour must reap the whirlwind. The plain truth is that Labour can't govern without Scottish votes. Few people seem to have noticed that while we were all laughing at Two Jags and analysing the sacking of Charles Clarke and the humiliation of Jaq al-Straw, ANOTHER two Scots - Des Browne and Douglas Alexander - slipped into the Cabinet under the radar.
Meanwhile, Gordon is trying to shore up Labour's increasingly untenable position by confiscating money from the South of England and tipping it into a black hole in the North.
The main reason the Tories are struggling to re-establish themselves north of the Humber is because Gordon has put half the country on the payroll.
In some areas, 60% of all workers are dependent on the state for their wages. Most of the rest of the population are on benefits - a bit like Scotland, actually.
What's the difference between that and Shirley Porter flogging off council flats in Westminster to yuppies?It's all vote-rigging.
In this case, Gordon is taking money from the Conservative South and using it to buy votes in Labour's rotten boroughs in the North and Scotland. I doubt Dr John - his so-called "rival" - disapproves.
There's no room here to go through all Labour's other attempts at ballot-rigging - postal voting, party lists, transferable votes.
I guess they figure that if fourth-past-the-post is good enough for the Champions League, it's good enough for British democracy, provided it produces the results they want.
When Peter Mandelson said "the era of pure representative democracy is coming to an end" he wasn't kidding, was he?
Now, when Blair (a Scot) goes, it looks as if we're going to have forced upon us either The Man Who Stole Your Old Age or an ex-drunk, ex-Communist, Glasgow bootboy, who not so long ago thought Britain would be a better place if it was run by the Soviet Union.
One reason Blair is staying on is that he calculated that neither of these old Scottish lags can beat Call Me Dave (Tory leader), despite the inbuilt bias in the electoral system which means the Tories have to win by at least 11 points to form a government.
That's a formidable target, but not impossible, especially given the unpalatable alternative.
Chesterton's "secret people of England" are beginning to stir.
dailymail.co.uk