Another Fine Mess

Housing Minister Caroline Flint has suggested that new council tenants could have to sign a ‘commitment contract’ committing them to look for employment, in order to access housing, and will eventually be extended to all council tenants.

Does she not realise that not every council tenant is a hoodie, that not every privately owened or rented property is a palace with genteel residents? No, of course she doesn’t realise. New Labour have long seen off anyone who displays principles, brains and an interest in the welfare of the British people. Which is probably why this scheme seems even more ill thought out than all those other schemes that New Labour have come up with (remember the ‘frogmarching criminals to cash machines to pay fines’ great idea?).

So, the tenant signs their commitment contract, breaks it and then what? No suggestions from Miss Flint. Perhaps she intends that anyone not getting a job is evicted. Perhaps she intends to cut benefits, which would undoubtedly lead to………….well eviction due to non payment of rent. Perhaps she could explain how , exactly, will making the jobless homeless, help them back to gainful employment?. Perhaps she intends to put support programmes in place, but that has all been done before and to no avail.

Or perhaps Miss Flint reveals the true Labour policy, and that is to leave all the jobless on benefit whilst driving down wages with immigrant labour. Of course, they are required to pretend to be working in the interests of the British people so need to give a placatory policy or two to show how they are tackling crime (by replacing bobbies with ill trained PCSOs), tackling feckless joblessness (evict them) and saving the NHS (by reducing the number of nurses and doctors).

‘Britain deserves better’ was the Labour Party slogan for the 1997 General Election. Another failed policy then.