BBC Online reports that John Reid is planning a "uniformed border-control force" at Britain's air and seaports. Earlier this week the Home Secretary had announced 8,000 new prison places to deal with overcrowding in UK jails.
A borders police force and more prisons places are settled Tory policy and John Reid's catch-up interventions are further proof of NuLabour's magpie tendencies.
ConservativeHome has described Labour's inclination to adopt Tory policies as enabling us to "govern by proxy". A host of Tory ideas have been stolen by Labour over the last decade. The great problem is that they are invariably implemented ineptly or half-heartedly - discrediting the value of the original ideas.
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis thinks the same pattern is likely with John Reid's borders announcement:
"This is not just about uniform, it's about powers and whether we use all the people: the immigration officers, the customs officers, and the special branch who currently work in the ports as a part of that force; or whether it is just about uniforms. If it's just about uniforms, that's just window dressing... What is necessary is a properly constituted and powerful border control police making use of all possible manpower to maximum effect to protect our borders and with it public safety."
Many of these measures have been put forward by Labour Home Secretaries to appear tough and headline grab in the Tabloids like the Sun and Daily Mail.
Thus far the tactic has worked - but I believe it won't for much longer. People are becoming fed up that after 9 years in Government Labour have failed them on policing, crime and order and immigration.
Something on a slightly different point, is that when questioned on immigration, Labour ministers always quote asylum deportation figures rather than the rapidly rising immigration figures (figures that are probably far below the actually level as it is.)
Posted by: Chris Palmer | July 23, 2006 at 21:12
Yes Chris your I agree with your third paragraph. I was going to post anyway that Reid (by the way he not a medical or surgical Doctor so by custom if nothing else he has no right to call himself 'Doctor', and in yesterday's Telegraph, Simon Heffer did an article about his antics and all the way through he put 'Dr.', which stood out nicely!!), back to what I wanted to say, sometime over the last two days I saw Reid on telly saying with much assurance that ugh ugh number of illegal immigrants had been deported, fullstop. And we are supposed to believe him, ones reaction, now is to say 'Prove it'!!
Posted by: Patsy Sergeant | July 23, 2006 at 21:42
This continual nicking of good Tory policies surely proves once and for all, that DC is absolutely right to keep our policies schtum until such time as they are properly worked out, and its too late for Nulab to cream them of, and then do a cack handed job on them.
Posted by: Annabel Herriott | July 23, 2006 at 23:29
Exactly Annabel! We need to bang on about this point of stealing ideas and policies. Its something that has annoyed me for some years now and shud be exposed.
Posted by: G-MaN | July 24, 2006 at 00:41
Well today they are going to discuss the future of Peter Lilley's policy - the CSA
Posted by: TomTom | July 24, 2006 at 06:49
Chris, have a look at the Daily Mail today,Reids' 'spin' has certainly not worked with that newspaper!
Posted by: malcolm | July 24, 2006 at 09:42
By all means keep detailed policies out of Nulab's reach for the time being but do remind those to the right of centre that policies on taxation, law and order, immigration etc are being thought through and will be revealed in due course.
What we can do immediately - and what we ought to do while Nulab's incompetence is there for all to see - is to point out that the tories would be more competent in the management of the big departments of state than Nulab. Therefore we would be less wasteful and, as Oliver Letwin put it, the taxpayers would get "more bang for their buck".
Competence is one thing that Nulab appears quite unable to steal from us.
Posted by: David Belchamber | July 24, 2006 at 09:46
another load of garbage from Reid, one of the more depressingly awful ministers. We're supposed to be surprised that a "former" stalinist wants totalitarian solutions criminal justice solutions?
But I take issue at this notion, often raised, that he has no right to refer to himself as "Dr" Reid. He has every right.
I didn't spend 8 years of my evil life beavering away at something nobody's going to be the slightest bit interested in, ever again, to get called "Mr" by insurance and double glazing telephone salespeople.
There are 3 reasons for doing a PhD - the first is the snob appeal with the banks etc - the second is that you occasionally get to smile enigmatically when someone asks "Doctor, who?" (fnarr) and the third is that you live in hope of being in a theatre when an usher rushes up going "is there a doctor in the house?" so you can aid the afflicted with a session on inference for hidden markov models.
People who believe I would ever hide in the shadows and call out "Is there a doctor in the house?" in a thin, high-pitched, querulous tone, so that I can bound up and say "relax ma'am, I *am* a statistician", are of course wrong.
Posted by: Dr, it's Dr OK? Dr Graeme Archer | July 24, 2006 at 10:45
The latest stealing of Tory polices shows just while it would be total folly to start coming out wih detailed policys when we are so long from the next election.
David Cameron would simply announce a policy on a Monday, if it went down well with the press and public by the friday of the same week the government would be announcing it as its own.
As much as it would be nice to fight Labour with detailed policys of our own I believe we must fight them with our heads and announce policy`s in stages and in general terms and leave the detailed commitments to about a year or so before the next election.
Lets not let them have some of our own ammunition to use against ourselves!
Posted by: Jack Stone | July 24, 2006 at 17:27