13 January 2023 , 13:23
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This year has seen unprecedented turmoil in our most vital public service.
Political ideology has brought it to a grinding halt, but let's be honest - it had been stuttering and stumbling for years.
The service is badly-managed, inefficient, and sucks up money we just don't have while wasting billions of taxpayer pounds on middle-managers who cause repeated scandals, and undertake parasitic non-jobs like 'Minister without Portfolio' or 'Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead'.
That is why I am proposing legislation that will make it harder for corruption, waste, and sex pests to continue to destroy the one service on which everyone in this country relies: minimum service levels for Parliament.
Granted, the official picket line is indoors with leather seating (PA)In the first half of 2022, Parliament barely bothered to pass laws except those against brown people, poor people, or people cross about the Tories. Government was unable to function, mired in a row about illegal parties. The militant backbenchers then seized on the chance granted them by an alleged sex pest to sack the man who became their leader with a mere 66% of a postal vote.
Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade
They replaced him with someone who had the support of just 57% of members, and in 44 days she burned through two chancellors, £30billion of public sector cash, and wiped 10 times as much from the stock market. The fundamentalists then imposed a third leader without even bothering to ballot.
(Mick Lynch of the RMT, by comparison, has a strike mandate of 89% on a turnout of 71%.)
The government of this country lost months of working hours as its civil servants were forced to down tools as policies changed, prepared briefs for new ministers, scrap the briefs when the ministers resigned two days later, and then start all over again.
The militants who had already spent years destroying the Whitehall machine with unreasonable demands - like to be in an an office they've sold, at a desk they no longer provide, to make Brexit work when it never will - then pulled the plug out of the wall.
One of the ringleaders - seen here not even PRETENDING to work (Anna Turley MP/Getty)And this has dramatic, real-world consequences for every citizen in this country.
When the rail unions informed the authorities of industrial action in April, the phone was off the hook. When posties, physiotherapists, driving examiners, nurses, cleaners, paramedics, Scottish teachers, the border agency, and 100,000 civil servants grumbled about pay and conditions, asked for a negotiation, warned of strike ballots, held the ballots, won the ballots, and announced strikes, no politician lifted a finger to avert it.
Children have missed school, adults have missed work, and there is no-one in the land who knows from one day to the next what's working and what isn't. Deaths are 21% higher than usual for the time of year, which means the governmental failure to provide social care for the NHS has undoubtedly cost thousands of lives.
These militants have blood on their hands. Their job is to look after us, not look after themselves, but while their pay has risen by 28% since 2010, the average annual salary has risen just 7%.
They went on holiday; they went on Question Time; they went on and on and on about Brexit and face masks and other people's greed. But from the national grindstone they were absent, chattering amongst themselves about whether to bring back Leader Number One because he might have been awful but at least he knew how to throw a party.
He threw one all right - he threw his in the bin (GC Images)Had they been any good at their jobs, the revelation that drunks were having sex on Downing Street desks the night before Prince Phillip's funeral would be a disgraceful scandal. Instead, it's a footnote.
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That is why we need a new law making it harder for these people to shirk their public duties and harder for political fundamentalists to bring this country to its knees. To clean up their act, we must impose on politicians the same minimum service levels and democratic rules we set for all important public services.
That means no government can be formed unless it has a minimum 40% mandate on at least a 50% turnout. Had this been done earlier, we would never have had David Cameron as Prime Minister and could have been spared his disastrous austerity experiments, as well as Brexit.