Lord (Digby) Jones of Birmingham was always a poor choice for a Minister. But Gordon Brown is often vulnerable to the appeal of high-profile business leaders as his recent daliances with Alan Sugar have shown.
No.10 was forced to take sides with the Civil Service when Jones casually called for 50% of public servants to be sacked. Here he confused 'no-nonsense' with utter nonsense. Having found the pace of public administration with its pesky checks and balances too stultifying, Jones has now turned his ire on the Ministerial structure.
Writing for today's Daily Mail, he argued our elected Cabinet needed filling instead with placemen business leaders, like they do in the US (they don't). Digby's suggestion would place vast power at the hand of the Executive despite the fact that we have a Parliamentary democracy here, voting for party not President.
He may forget more about business in a day than I will ever know in a lifetime but Jones shows a manifest ignorance of politics and political history. Of course his plan would simplify the structure of Government by handing immense power to the PM and at a stroke destroy the principle of representative democracy.
But voting and elections seem a bit of a pointless exercise to business leaders like Jones and reminds them of those ghastly AGMs when the little shareholders raise their pain-in-the-arse resolutions.
Bernie Ecclestone has a similar if slightly more perverse view of Government and history which he vented to the Times earlier this month. By lowering the measure of good Government to an elementary test of "getting things done" it is quite logical to be admiring of Adolf Hitler, as Ecclestone is. After being roundly condemned by the nearly the entire world he qualified his points by saying he only meant the building of the autobahns. Naturally the annihilation of workers' rights in 1930s Germany in preparation for murderous persecution was a mere detail to our Bernie.
Next week's Constitutional Reform Bill contains a clause allowing life peers to resign from House of Lords. As Digby Jones holds Parliament in such contempt it would be fitting if he were at the front of that predictably short queue.
No.10 was forced to take sides with the Civil Service when Jones casually called for 50% of public servants to be sacked. Here he confused 'no-nonsense' with utter nonsense. Having found the pace of public administration with its pesky checks and balances too stultifying, Jones has now turned his ire on the Ministerial structure.
Writing for today's Daily Mail, he argued our elected Cabinet needed filling instead with placemen business leaders, like they do in the US (they don't). Digby's suggestion would place vast power at the hand of the Executive despite the fact that we have a Parliamentary democracy here, voting for party not President.
He may forget more about business in a day than I will ever know in a lifetime but Jones shows a manifest ignorance of politics and political history. Of course his plan would simplify the structure of Government by handing immense power to the PM and at a stroke destroy the principle of representative democracy.
But voting and elections seem a bit of a pointless exercise to business leaders like Jones and reminds them of those ghastly AGMs when the little shareholders raise their pain-in-the-arse resolutions.
Bernie Ecclestone has a similar if slightly more perverse view of Government and history which he vented to the Times earlier this month. By lowering the measure of good Government to an elementary test of "getting things done" it is quite logical to be admiring of Adolf Hitler, as Ecclestone is. After being roundly condemned by the nearly the entire world he qualified his points by saying he only meant the building of the autobahns. Naturally the annihilation of workers' rights in 1930s Germany in preparation for murderous persecution was a mere detail to our Bernie.
Next week's Constitutional Reform Bill contains a clause allowing life peers to resign from House of Lords. As Digby Jones holds Parliament in such contempt it would be fitting if he were at the front of that predictably short queue.
No comments:
Post a Comment