Labour peers are revolting. No, they are not smelly old farts, but they are in a rebellious mood. What has got under their skin is the appointment of Lord (Digby) Jones of Birmingham, the rotund former director general of the CBI, as Minister for Trade and Investment. He is what Labour folk call a GOAT – a member of Gordon Brown’s Government Of All The Talents.
The problem for some Labour peers is that he is not a member of the Labour Party. Worse still, some of them are convinced he is a Tory by instinct. Answering questions from Independent readers this week, Jones admitted he was not a socialist but said he did “not belong to any political movement.”
Although he takes the Labour whip, he has voted only occasionally since joining the Government in June. Colleagues at the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulation, where he has been dubbed “Comrade Digby”, point out that he travels a lot to promote Britain.
In his first mini-reshuffle this week, Brown quietly recalled the popular Lord Bach to the Labour whips office in the Lords in an attempt to smooth ruffled ermine.
But some Labour peers are so miffed that they are threatening not to vote for any Bills that Jones brings forward. One tells me: “This is a running sore. People are saying they are not going to vote with a Tory when he bothers to turn up. We’ve adopted enough Tory policies. We don’t have to become the Tory party as well.”
Immigration - means a lot of people coming to live in this island.
In this island we have problems already with waiting lists for NHS operations.
We have a serious problem with the lack of housing and especially the lack of council housing thanks to Mrs T.
Our school buildings are atrocious.
Our schools are producing illiterate children
We already have to many people on the dole. cost?
So why do we have an open door policy?
Excuse me if I am being too simplistic but are we living in a fool's paradise to think that the we can expect to absorb a million more folk without a problem when we cannot yet cope with the millions who already live here.
I am not a politician so probably see things as they are and not the way I am told to see them!
Posted by: Trish Niblock | Friday, 09 November 2007 at 05:45 PM