{"id":2723,"date":"2010-12-04T18:14:09","date_gmt":"2010-12-04T16:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=2723"},"modified":"2010-12-04T18:14:09","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T16:14:09","slug":"2723","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=2723","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Shadow of Labour’s Past.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is going to become a mounting\u00a0difficulty for Labour. I think Ed Milliband knows it. The stack of problems waiting for the bonfire is growing. There are some good bits to keep. Devolution, Northern Ireland, Freedom of Information and Human Rights are the best. Against this we have a disastrous foreign policy, two wars and a compltely shot economy. But there is something else emerging. In some ways even worse.<\/p>\n

Labour has always had an unquenchable thirst for making new laws and regulations. It contributed to the end of the Attlee government after a mere six years, when it was the greatest reforming government in our history. The new Churchill government got the economy moving and the welfare state functioning, by ditching\u00a0 tons of rules and by disbanding what Churchill described a collection of inspectors, snoopers and busybodies larger than any peacetime army.<\/p>\n

As this country has fallen victim, once again, to its inability to function in snow, those of us who can remember 1947 and\u00a01963 have noticed a sharp deterioration in the quality of the remedial services, especially in country areas. Here farmers stand ready, as in the past,\u00a0to clear roads with their tractors, but are prevented from doing so by absurd new\u00a0requirements, including special clothing, hard hats, white diesel and insurance policies covering them, literally, for\u00a0 \u00a3 millions of public liability.<\/p>\n

Even the considerable personality of the Local Government Secretary,\u00a0Eric Pickles, is having trouble sorting this nonsense out, in order\u00a0to take the heat of his colleagues at the transport ministry. They must all have our sympathy. The reason that Labour\u00a0may find its fortunes sinking in opposition, as Attlee did, is that it is becoming more and more apparent that in the rush to define every detail of life in some new law ar regulation, New labour came close to creating a Lunatic State. The two year policy review needs to come up with a much less invasive form of Democratic Socialism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Shadow of Labour’s Past. This is going to become a mounting\u00a0difficulty for Labour. I think Ed Milliband knows it. The stack of problems waiting for the bonfire is growing. There are some good bits to keep. Devolution, Northern Ireland, Freedom of Information and Human Rights are the best. Against this we have a disastrous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2727,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions\/2727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}