Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Oliver Letwin is entering in the spirit of things at the Tory Party Conference. He's fully aware, unlike his leader and party chairperson, that the Tories are not going to win the next election even if Labour and the Lib Dems pulled out and started to campaign full time on their behalf. So the important thing for Letwin isn't to come up with policies that he'll put in to practice as Home Secretary, but to come up with policies that are popular with the party so he can replace Ian Duncan Smith as party leader. Therefore we have ludicrous but popular suggestions such as banishing all asylum seekers to a mythical island while their claims are processed. Personally I would suggest Fraggle Rock. Transport there would be a problem but at least they could run the lighthouse and they can live off of roasted Fraggle which tastes like chicken, so I'm told.
(Slightly worryingly, the closest David Blunkett comes to an opinion on this idea is "Until the Tories name where this place will be they will have no credibility in claiming they can process claims offshore," a spokesman for Mr Blunkett said. Maybe I'm being suspicious but that sounds rather like Blunko saying that it's not actually a bad idea just currently not implementable, so look for this in New Labour's Election manifesto)
The idea of semi-independence for police forces is interesting. Letwin seems to have stolen the idea from Labour, when Gordon Brown gave independence to the Bank of England to change the interest rates. This meant he couldn't get blamed for the decisions the BoE made. If the police force is no longer centrally controlled by the Home Office then it might mean that the Police are run by people who know what they are doing rather than by knee-jerk political playing to the gallery. But for a Home Secretary to give up control of the police would mean giving up the prestige of the number three job in the country, the Home Secretary would become Minister for Prisons and Being Nasty to Asylum Seekers and become less relevent in the Cabinet than the Leader of the House. Letwin is free to suggest it because by the time the Tories are in a position to implement it he won't be the one loosing half his responsibilities.
(Slightly worryingly, the closest David Blunkett comes to an opinion on this idea is "Until the Tories name where this place will be they will have no credibility in claiming they can process claims offshore," a spokesman for Mr Blunkett said. Maybe I'm being suspicious but that sounds rather like Blunko saying that it's not actually a bad idea just currently not implementable, so look for this in New Labour's Election manifesto)
The idea of semi-independence for police forces is interesting. Letwin seems to have stolen the idea from Labour, when Gordon Brown gave independence to the Bank of England to change the interest rates. This meant he couldn't get blamed for the decisions the BoE made. If the police force is no longer centrally controlled by the Home Office then it might mean that the Police are run by people who know what they are doing rather than by knee-jerk political playing to the gallery. But for a Home Secretary to give up control of the police would mean giving up the prestige of the number three job in the country, the Home Secretary would become Minister for Prisons and Being Nasty to Asylum Seekers and become less relevent in the Cabinet than the Leader of the House. Letwin is free to suggest it because by the time the Tories are in a position to implement it he won't be the one loosing half his responsibilities.
