Lost: A Government in Meltdown a Special Five-Page Report a Special Five-Page Report the Home Office's Incompetence, the Nhs's Inadequacy, the Deputy Prime Minister's Infidelity . . .Has the New Labour Project Crashed and Burned? The Home Office's Incompetence, the Nhs's Inadequacy, the Deputy Prime Minister's Infidelity . . .Has the New Labour Project Crashed and Burned?

Sunday Herald › May 02, 2006

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Summary

LABOUR had a plan to mark tomorrow, exactly nine years on from the day when Tony Blair won the 1997 general election. In the run- up to this anniversary and this week's English local elections, there was to be a co-ordinated effort by senior government figures to divert attention away from the cash-for-peerages scandal and the growing unease over the NHS's financial woes.

On the same day that advisers in Charles Clarke's office put the finishing touches to a speech that would claim truth was flying out of the window because of a "pernicious and dangerous poison" seeping through Britain's media, a senior Downing Street adviser was addressing high-ranking business figures echoing Clarke's claims that the nation's accelerating anxiety over security was being stoked by a cancerous "media conspiracy to keep the public perpetually terrified". The joint message was simple enough: the government wasn't making mistakes it was all media misrepresentation.

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Extract

Lost: A Government in Meltdown a Special Five-Page Report a Special Five-Page Report the Home Office's Incompetence, the Nhs's Inadequacy, the Deputy Prime Minister's Infidelity . . .Has the New Labour Project Crashed and Burned? The Home Office's Incompetence, the Nhs's Inadequacy, the Deputy Prime Minister's Infidelity . . .Has the New Labour Project Crashed and Burned?

Clarke's speech talked about "criminals who are dangerous to society" and for the "need to examine the facts". He mentioned the "right not to be killed by someone who has served his sentence for violent crime, but remains dangerous". But within 24 hours of the Home Secretary's speech being published in full in The Guardian, alarm bells were ringing throughout not just the Home Office, but the Department of Health and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, signifying the beginning of the end not just of Clarke's immediate political career, but also of New Labour and Blair's third term in office.

Clarke was only one part of a trinity of cabinet ministers under fire. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and Deputy Prime M...

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