These are the most extraordinary times. This Government is the most revolutionary since Oliver Cromwell's big cut on Charles I's neck 361 years ago.
The higher education system is being dismantled, as I wrote yesterday. The welfare system is being totally changed. So is the health service and, particularly, the education system.
Hundreds of bodies which have existed to hold government to account are being abolished or threatened with abolition.
Cameron and Osborne make Margaret Thatcher's admininistrations look like lily-livered liberals.
So this is the time when the Opposition must come into its own. The Liberal Democrats, who have provided a proud defence in the past, have been neutered by the baubles of office.
Which leaves it all up to Labour and particularly its new leader. But where is Ed Miliband at this critical moment? He is at home on paternity leave.
I am all in favour of fathers spending a few days with the family after the birth of a new child but surely there are some jobs which shouldn't be put on hold short of a terrible family disaster.
Tony Blair started the rot after the birth of Leo but he will have been bullied by Cherie into taking time off. Nick Clegg took leave after the birth of his third child but he was only leader of the LibDems then so no one noticed.
David Cameron should have broken the ritual when his latest arrived in the summer. He had only been Prime Minister for three months. Samantha surely would not have objected to him staying at work.
Now Ed Miliband, instead of leading the fight against what the Government is doing, is billing and cooing at home. Why? There might have been a few objections if he hadn't taken paternity leave - though not as many as for his failure to register himself as the father of his first child - but there should be a lot more for him not being around to do his new job at this critical time.
Take Me To Your Leader Writer
- David Seymour
- ...has written more leaders (newspaper editorials) than anyone alive or dead, an honour still to be recognised by the Guiness Book of Records or the Nobel judges. I have produced them for the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Sunday Mirror, Today, the Sunday People, the Evening Post (Hemel Hempstead), the Caithness Courier and the Student (Edinburgh). My creed is: Have opinions, Will travel.
David - I take issue with your assumption that Blair and Cameron's paternity leave was down to their wives. Perhaps they actually wanted to take paternity leave, in their own right, as fathers? A slightly sexist assumption on your part perhaps. I think we should allow men to be parents in a fuller sense than your language suggests.
ReplyDeleteSurely the whole point of Quangos was to STOP governments being held to account?
ReplyDeleteIt shows how poor they are when they do this its just not needed. Family members did their bit for me whilst I worked to earn the money to live. Its all this sort of thing that has damaged the country as we cannot afford it.
ReplyDeleteEd Miliband "billing and cooing at home"? Hiding behind the sofa, more like.
ReplyDeleteMiliband is already out-MacAvitying MacAvity. It would appear that he has nothing of note to say about anything. Well done Labour - you appoint the personality disordered Brown in the full knowledge that he is barking, and then appoint a complete nobody.
ReplyDeleteLove it.
The trouble with the internet is that people will be able to look this article up in years to come and use it to make you look even more foolish than you do today. "The higher education system is being dismantled", you say. No it isn't. And in ten years time, when the higher education system is better than it is today, someone will find this quotation and use it as proof that you didn't know what you were talking about, but resorted instead to childish scaremongering.
ReplyDelete