With all the feverish talk of a snap general election, it would be great if I could write how I am looking forward to a clean and honest fight.
However, I have reluctantly concluded that the Brown government doesn’t know the meaning of honesty.
Strong words, I know, but having endured a decade of Blair, I had hoped, with a new Prime Minister, that we would see an end to spin.
Sadly, they’ve found a new and more pernicious way of doing it: taking credit for solving – or even attacking – problems they created.
Take the Government’s national policy of closing crown post offices like the one in Foregate Street and moving them to WHSmith.
The problems – including in Worcester’s case the wretched first floor location – were obvious from the beginning, but in the wake of public outcry Labour politicians are belatedly opposing the move locally, while supporting it in London.
The Government’s policy of imposing massive fines on local authorities that don’t increase recycling rates is the reason for fortnightly rubbish collection.
You wouldn’t have thought so a few days ago in Worcester when the Labour party won a council seat in a by-election largely by opposing one of its own policies!
The Government has been desperate to don the mantle of national saviour and look as though it’s coming to our rescue on foot-and-mouth, the Northern Rock crisis and flooding.
Does it really think we are so stupid that we won’t remember that the foot-and-mouth outbreak began because of lax security measures at a Government laboratory?
Does it think we don’t realise the Northern Rock crisis originated because of the culture of high risk borrowing and personal debt that this Government has perpetuated?
Does it think we don’t want to know why funding for the Environment Agency was cut for flood defences prior to the July floods – defences that would have meant many homes and business would have escaped the worst of the damage?
On all these matters why can’t the Government just put its hands up and admit it got it wrong? That is real integrity. That is the real politics of substance.
Every time it refuses to do so, and tries instead to take credit for solving its own mistakes, it further undermines the political process, and does great damage to the reputation of all politicians.