Home Secretary Jacqui Smith: And The Point Was?

We’ve lost a lot of ministers over the past week, which has been a lot like losing painful blisters – a big fucking relief. But few have been mourned less than one Jacqui Smith.

Looking back on Smith’s time as Home Secretary is a lot like visiting the place that elected her* - pointless and a bit depressing. She came into office with the unique selling point of being a woman. And whilst she didn’t go quite as mad as the three men who preceded her in that great office of state, she also failed to make any sort of a mark whatsoever in office. She simply continued with what her predecessors in the Home Office wanted to do, like an unthinking droid. She didn’t really succeed anymore than Blunkett, Clarke and Reid had, and also failed to articulate any of the policies she had inherited in any way.

The only real success Smith had was a brief flash of leadership when trying to force one of Brown’s more contentious bits of legislation through Parliament. For a moment, some people started to see her as a potential leader of her party – an idea that now seems laughable. But it didn’t last.

Because it wasn’t just incompetence and an inability to communicate that ended Smith’s time in high office. It was also her desire to milk the taxpayer for all she could. Her expenses were eye-watering, and the ludicrous claim that she was lodging with a relative like a first year student coming to London for the first time would have been funny had they not stank so badly of potential fraud. The constant dripping of further proof of her greed and her corruption meant her departure became a dead cert. She should have been forced from office long before she decided to step down. And the concept that she had gone to fight for a marginal seat is laughable. If the people of her constituency have an ounce of sense, then Smith has gone back to wait to be evicted from Parliament.

As a minister, Smith was an embarrassment through and through. The only small blessing is that she should be soon forgotten. Perhaps her true legacy will be as a risqué pub quiz question – “Which ex-MP’s husband accidentally expensed the movies he liked to beat himself off to?” “Ah, that would be Jacqui Smith. Wasn’t she a minister or something? No, wait, I must be thinking of someone else…”

*Redditch has some nice areas around it, and may have improved in the past few years, but when I lived there, the city centre was one of the most depressing places I have ever visited.