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”
Stuart MacDonald
The coalition is up to 20 u-turns and counting. Can you add any to @leftfootfwd 's list? http://bit.ly/mgqQtT
Anon E Mouse
Leon Wolfson – I’ve been posting on this fine blog since it started and being described as a “rabid troll” from a supporter of a party that forced Gordon Brown on the country isn’t an insult.
I won’t go into the in’s and out’s of the poll lead – like the recent results in Scotland it’s a disaster for Labour but tell me why the party’s supporters are so touchy, so tribal, so unquestioning and so accepting?
Look at matthew fox and mr.Sensible above. They’d vote for a monkey in a red shirt and by having masses of useful idiots like them available to Labour it means the party will not change because it doesn’t feel it needs to.
And the result will be election loss after election loss. What people see as weakness in U turns others see as a sign of flexibility. People like Cameron because he’s like Tony Blair. (Not as good but better than anyone else in the commons in my opinion. I put Alex Salmond as better though).
Finally what are these “Tory pet projects” that are being funded? All I see is the coalition carrying the Blair reforms forward in the country…
A "political coward" running a "car crash" coalition - the damning verdict on U-turn Cam | Left Foot Forward
[…] the board, the prime minister comes in for criticism over the latest U-turn on sentencing, and the plethora of U-turns […]
Leon Wolfson
Well, I’ll use your own tactics then, Mouse. You know you just posted nonsense. See, like it?
And pet projects? Breaking up the NHS, privatising universities, cutting corporation tax…
IFS boss: Plan B "likely" if growth downgrade continues | Left Foot Forward
[…] goes onto warn that the current trend of government u-turns – most recently on sentencing – may force an unintended plan B. He writes: “The […]