Round and round in circles

Yesterday the government proposed some very sensible measures to toughen rules for EU migrants, including banning out of work benefits and quadrupling fines for bosses not paying the minimum wage. Labour suggested a lot of these proposals eight months ago, so I asked Andrew Lansley why they hadn’t acted sooner. I also asked him if the government would work with us to get their suggestd changes in place before 1 January when the work restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians end.

Next I raised the chancellor’s damascene conversion on payday loans. The move is particularly spectacular when you consider that the government have voted against a cap three times. This is yet another sign of George Osborne’s increasing proclivity for ideological flexibility. Or perhaps it’s just a PR strategy to say one thing and then do another. He said he would stop tax evasion but he refused to close the giant Eurobond loophole. He attacked unacceptable city bonuses, and then went to Brussels to fight for them. He promised to cut borrowing, but he’s borrowed more in just three years than Labour did in thirteen. And he said we’re all in it together, but prices have risen faster than wages in 40 of the 41 months since they took power. I asked Andrew Lansley to arrange a statement on the widening gap between this government’s rhetoric and the reality.

This week has revealed that we’ve got a chancellor who thinks it’s Marxist to intervene in energy prices, but positively Thatcherite to intervene in the payday lending market. We’ve got a sports minister who appears to know nothing about sport. And we’ve got a health minister who didn’t know how you access a walk in centre. It’s no wonder that coalition tensions are rising – and that’s just in the Tory party.

Apparently 25 Tory modernisers have been to visit the PM to warn him of a split if he abandons green levies. The Tories must be wondering where it all went wrong for the prime minister and his modernisation project. He promised a Big Society and delivered the politics of division and fear. And now his self styled successor, the mayor of London, thinks greed is good and that some people are too stupid to be equal.

Today’s news that the PM is U-turning on his U-turn on plain packaging for cigarettes says it all. He’s a prime minister running round and round in circles.