Is Mr Tony ill?

Sadly haven’t had much chance to blog recently with death and illness in the family but hey! Time to post.

The Prime Minister has started off on one about the need to reform the criminal justice system – again. Meanwhile everyone in the CJS wants some peace and quiet to let the last set of reforms and re-organisations bed down and made to work. Why is this of concern to Drugsblogger? Well we have – in my day job - a lot to do with the criminal justice system, running projects for it and dealing with offenders – so we get the sharp end i.e. civil servants yelling at us for results.

This call for further reform is a sign perhaps that it’s time for Mr Blair to go – he seems to be falling in to a number of traps:

‘I am hard – wired in to the concerns of the British people’. That he and only he is in touch with the mood of the people – the zeitgeist if you will. This is a common way for PM’s to start feeling after being in the job too long – viz. M. Thatcher. Actually, it’s almost certainly a sign that he’s losing it.
‘More new laws now!!’ This isn’t just confined to the PM, other politicians suffer from it too – a need to legislate or bring in new laws when what’s needed is the refinement and tweaking of existing law or policy to make it work properly. But legislating is what governments and parliaments do, so they have to do more of it to show that they are doing something. For example, the Home Secretary (who is it today by the way?) responded to the release and non-deportation of a large number of people who should have been considered for same by….. more laws. The reality of it is that the existing bureaucracies weren’t working properly together and that’s what needs to change.
‘You’re fired’. Indulging in major cabinet re-shuffles that give the impression of action but sadly look like the deckchairs on the Titanic. George Bush is another example of this problem.
‘We must get the message across’. A conviction that if only the government’s all-round fantasticness could be communicated to the people then the people would be happy and vote the government in again. Wrong, just wrong. Sometimes we do get it and don’t like it and no amount of spin, haranguing or announcements will change that.
I think Tony B has been a good, possibly great PM, but it would be sad if he gets too many of the above symptoms and goes down in flames and tears before bedtime.