Mike's Columns in the Portsmouth News
A reprieve for the Naval Base and why Brown is the "McCavity of British politics
Since my last column, we have had the news of a reprieve for Portsmouth Naval Base. So I would first of all like to thank all those who worked so hard to back the base across the political spectrum including the City Council, this newspaper, the Navy in Portsmouth and the dockyard workers and management. It really was a case of us all working together.
Of course, we are not totally out of the woods yet as there may well be some job cuts – although the Defence Minister has said that they will be relatively minor – and I will be keeping him to those words. I have also invited the newly appointed minister for the South East to visit so he can see the naval base and Portsmouth at first hand.
We have also had the first full month of Gordon Brown’s premiership. But it seems he is behaving rather like McCavity – the cat that was “never there” in T.S. Elliot’s poems. Just look at the record. The derisory 75p a week increase in the pension? That was Gordon’s. The architect of fiendishly complex tax credits that has seen billions in over-payments and fraud? Gordon. Or the backing of Tony Blair on university tuition fees, the Iraq war and the unfair council tax? Yes, those were all Gordon as well.
Elliott’s poem goes on: “And when the Foreign Office finds a Treaty's gone astray… it's useless to investigate – Macavity's not there!” Brown may have made sure that it was Blair who went to sign the new EU treaty but I believe, as I said in Parliament, it should now put to a referendum of the British people.
I will concede that Brown making the Bank of England independent has kept inflation and interest rates under control. It was resisted by the Tories in the ’90s and the Lib Dems were alone in arguing for it during the 1997 General Election campaign. And who was arguing against independence for the Bank then? Yes, you guessed it – Gordon Brown! However, like McCavity it seems “he always has an alibi, or one or two to spare!”
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