News from the New Party

Dysfunctional government

If only it were true, as Vincent Cable has suggested, that the Treasury has replaced the Home Office as the government department that is "unfit for purpose".  In fact, in the absence of any obvious improvement at the Home Office, the Treasury is now merely an additional disaster area in the government which competence forgot.

We note that Paul Gray, the head of HM Revenue and Customs, the body from which two CDs bearing the personal and financial details of twenty five million children, their parents and carers were released into the wild (i.e. put into the unregistered mail and lost), has resigned his position.  While we can hardly express satisfaction at this - it was after all not Paul Gray who lost the disks, or even created the disks - his sense of personal responsibility as a public servant is admirable.  Indeed, his conduct contrasts starkly with the behaviour of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in the face of another humungous shambles on his watch: at least the HMRC has not killed anyone.

For the Chancellor of the Exchequer, this episode is particularly damaging, coming as it does hard on the heels of the Northern Rock fiasco.  While it might not be reasonable to demand his resignation (though in the light of Mr Gray's departure, it would not be especially unreasonable either), the Chancellor must consider himself on probation.  The same must apply also to the Prime Minister himself, under whose stewardship the Treasury has endured the last ten years until this summer.

George Osborne's message to the Prime Minister was correct: forget about the vision (we know now that he hasn't got one anyway) and just deliver a basic level of competence.  This in itself may yet prove a challenge too far for this dysfunctional government.