A Nu Labour Timeline

News that the Home Office may be split into two departments fills me with a certain apathy.

At least until I think about the tangled events that have led to the government deciding to split a department that has been managed reasonably successfully under all previous administrations (both Labour and Tory). Think about it – it is all so painfully Nu Labour.

April 2006: It emerges that there is a serious problem in the Home Office. The Prime Minister expresses his full confidence in his Home Secretary.

May 2006: Prime Minister sacks the Home Secretary and replaces him with a tabloid friendly trouble shooter in a blaze of publicity. Said trouble shooter abdicates all responsibility for his new role by claiming his department is “not fit for the purpose”.

June 2006 to December 2006: Mutterings from the Home Secretary about sackings and restructuring hide the fact that not a tremendous amount is actually being done in the Home Office to solve any of the problems.

January 2007: Another crisis, owing to Home Office incompetence, rears its’ ugly head. The Home Secretary holds urgent crisis meetings in the hope tht it looks like he is actually doing something. The government is faced with a choice – invest time and money in sorting our the Home Office, or going for some sort of gimmick like splitting up the Home Office and hoping that no-one realises dividing the Home Office actually does nothing to help the immediate problems and as such is just a colossal waste of time. And what do Nu Labour do? Go for the expensive gimmick.

And that is what we are reduced to – government by gimmick. Nothing will get better in the long term because our leaders are obsessed by the short term. A responsible government would look calmly and soberly at the Home Office, and realise that solving the problems will require a lot of hard work and could take years. Our government sees a quick headline and the chance to make a lot of noise without actually achieving anything, so, of course, they jump at that opportunity.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so important.