Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
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Finkenstein refers to critical moments in the past in the article ‘The same old row. But with one big difference’. He cites historical examples in every Labour Government where divisions over public spending led closely to the collapse of the Government. However in all instances the Prime Minister came round to supporting the Chancellor. Auguse 23 1931 Ramsay MacDonald split from his colleagues and decided to enter a coalition with the Conservatives, because his Cabinet would not support the Chancellor’s programme. April 9 1951 Clement Atlee received Cabinet Ministers at his hospitcal bed, where he was recovering from surgery and 1968 Roy Jenkins, drove down country lanes to Barbara Castle’s cottage to persuade her to accept cuts in the Transport Departments budget. He was backed by “tricksy” Harold Wilson. Healey only succeeded in 1976 because then PM Jim Callaghan won over his critics by showing that he and his Chancellor were indivisible.
The differnce with Brown is that he is not backing his Chancellor and Brown has ended up the wrong side. Whilst Hoon and Hewitt were ineptly plotting, Finkenstein believes the real battle going on behind the scenes was that the Chancellor, with Peter Madelson in support, was having a dispute with the Education Minister Ed Balls over spending. The age old ideological debate about cuts.
Labour have been hounded by this division through every Government. The conflict between increased public spending leading to the need for efficiency savings. Successive Labour Governments have failed to restructure public services to make them sustainable. Public services never become self-reliant and prove a constant demanding strain on resources. I would add that this Labour Government has added, like no other so many layers of bureaucracy and quangos, that are leaching public resources. This like no other, on inheriting a healthy treasury, is responsible for a reversal that is unprecedented due to irresponsible squandering of resources. This Labour Government had a chance to build, on a strong economic base, sustainable public services. The resulting crisis now in public spending is worse than any other.
After much officicial denial preventing the party facing up to the extent of the debt crisis some members (including the Chancellor Alistair Darling) with a lot of prompting from the Conservatives, are coming round to the fact that this “cannot go on.”
It is probably more appropriate to leave Mr Finkenstein with the last comment, as he can put it more succinctly than I can. “The common attack on Mr Brown, the one we heard again last week from inside his party, is that he is a poor leader, that no one likes him, that he is a loser. But this verdict, damning though it is, is too kind”. The division over spending and Brown coming down on the wrong side will be the real judgment on his Government. What is really wrong with Brown is that he has made “one of the great public policy mistakes of the past fifty years”.