David Cameron today performed yet another u-turn, this time over justice policy - here Left Foot Forward catalogues the Tory-led government's litany of flip-flops.
“Yet another example of this government not being in touch with people and making proposals which they then have to abandon” – that was Ed Miliband’s verdict on reports the government are dropping plans to halve sentences in return for early guilty pleas, including for crimes such as rape. This, of course, is ‘the latest government u-turn’ – what has become the biggest cliché, or should that be truism, of the last year.
Free school milk, free books scheme, recycling slop buckets, cuts to school sports, England’s forests, Cameron’s personal photographer, control orders, NHS reforms, housing benefit, removal of responsibilities for National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), sentencing plans, anonymity for rape suspects, can and bottle deposits, VAT rise, plans to scrap NHS direct, child benefits, abolition of the 1922 Committee, automatic jail term for knife crime, weekly bin collections, debt advice cuts.
One could also add: no cuts to front line services and no top down reorganisations of the NHS, although pedants may call these broken promises, not official U-turns… well it’s nice to have some variety.
One could say this is simply a pattern of incompetence, but David Cameron and Nick Clegg boasted of setting out a radical policy base without the necessary mandate. This looked like arrogance at the time, now it looks like reckless arrogance. In trying to push forward such policies, some of which were not in the coalition agreement, it was inevitable that the Tory-led coalition would be forced to u-turn.
Have we missed any out? If you think we have, please contact us and we are happy to correct the record.
UPDATE
Many thanks to all our readers for their contributions. We can now add the following to the list: Ministerial cars (which ministers are still ‘swanning around’ in), PFI contracts, the ‘bonfire of the quangos’ (that fizzled out), and repeated ‘Pickling’ of the Audit Commission seems to have resulted in its preservation up till now. Please keep them coming.
UPDATE
Another day another… this time with the added benefit of a foreign office wag announcing the change in policy over the BBC World Service funding as a “massive U-turn” on the department website. The headline has been taken down and apparently disciplinary action could be taken. Don’t mention the U-turn.
38 Responses to “Cameron’s government has a plan B for everything but the economy”
False Economy
RT @leftfootfwd: Cameron's government has a plan B for everything but the economy: http://t.co/8GFb6Yx writes @dbr1981
Clive Burgess
RT @leftfootfwd: Cameron's government has a plan B for everything but the economy: http://t.co/8GFb6Yx writes @dbr1981
Stian Westlake
MT: @wdjstraw: Coalition is up to 20 u-turns: @leftfootfwd 's list http://t.co/WN4TZay << clearly listening to @TimHarford !
Anon E Mouse
Every time this government U turns and thank goodness it did on Law and Order – I’m with Labour there – it makes the chances for Labour less and less likely at the next election.
Apathy will be order of the day I feel but these U turns do seem like a good thing to me so far.
Having said that I do think Leon Wolfson may be onto something and wonder if the NHS U turn was really anything of the sort. As for the austerity I haven’t seen any yet and for whatever reason we seem to be spending more and more as a country…
Leon Wolfson
Mouse – Rubbish, the sort of U-turning we’re seeing is evidence of weak policy-making across the board from the Tories, and shows how weak their support from the population is for the changes (most of which are completely outside their manifesto) they’re making willy-nilly are. How this translates to “Labour suck” is…unfathomable to me. (And neither is it denting Labour’s poll lead)
And of COURSE we have austerity, corporation tax has been cut, don’tcha know?