The British English Transport Minister and one of the Scottish Prime Minister’s many unelected cabinet cronies, Lord Adonis, has announced that 10 English railway stations will receive a share of £50m set aside to improve the most run-down stations in the country.
No Scottish stations will receive funding as it is a devolved matter and they have benefited from decades of generous funding courtesy of the English taxpayer-funded Barnett Bribe.
The list of stations makes interesting reading when you correlate it with the political make-up of the local authority involved:
Manchester Victoria – Manchester City Council – Labour controlled
Clapham Junction – Lambeth Council – Labour controlled
Crewe – Cheshire East – Conservative controlled
Barking – London Borough of Barking & Dagenham – Labour controlled
Stockport – Stockport MBC – Lib Dem controlled
Warrington – Warrington – Lib Dem controlled
Preston – Preston City Council – Conservative/Lib Dem coalition (Labour majority)
Wigan – Wigan MBC – Labour controlled
Luton – Luton North – Labour controlled
Liverpool – Liverpool City Council – Lib Dem controlled
Only one of the stations is in a Conservative controlled local authority area, 5 are in Labour controlled local authority areas and 4 in Lib Dem controlled areas. Seven of the stations are in the north of England which is a traditional Labour voting part of the country. Given the extreme likelihood of a hung parliament after the 2010 general election, the Lib Dems are very probably going to end up as coalition partners to either Labour or the Conservatives. Of the two, Labour is ideologically closer to the Lib Dems than the Conservatives and are likely to be their coalition partner of choice. It is therefore in the interests of the current rump Scottish Labour government to divert funding to high profile projects in Labour and Lib Dem controlled areas than Conservative controlled areas.
The British Labour government’s motives in this are quite clear – to try and buy favour with the Lib Dems in the hope that the Lib Dems will provide the additional MPs they will need to cling to power once they have been all but eradicated from Conservative voting England. The Lib Dems will be too flattered to object to this blatant electioneering and David Cameron is too busy chasing Scottish votes in the vain hope the Conservatives might have at least one MP north of the border by this time next year to be concerned with what’s happening in England.
So yet again the Brit-Scot Labour government will get away with frittering away millions of pounds of English money to buy a few votes and the fact that this could have been stopped if there was a devolved English government will be completely lost on the Conservative & Unionist Party who refuse to accept that virtually nobody outside of Westminster thinks of Britain any more. And come the next election they might just regret that.
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Well, not bad in my opinion, but I’m faced with a problem personally…
- I don’t want Liebour to win
- I don’t want Cuts Conservatives to win
- I don’t want Liberal Undemocrats to win
So looks like i’m stuffed, still – at least the railways won’t look so bad.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:25 pmI think Cameron will be the next PM even if he doesn’t manage an absolute majority, simply because there is an economic nightmare facing the next government. It’s a poisoned chalice and both Labour and the Liberal Democrats will be more than happy to sit on the sidelines and snipe at the Tories as they (hopefully) try and sort out the mess bequeathed to them.
The logic will be that the unpopular decisions get taken by the Tories who will also be blamed for making those decisions. Labour and the Lib Dems get to cynically oppose necessary steps and then clean up electorally.
It will probably backfire though. Cameron is no Thatcher, he’s the self-proclaimed “heir to Blair”. So the chances are he’ll dither, fail to take the necessary steps and “things can only get worse”….
November 17th, 2009 at 4:13 pmI’m surprised that the Govt have any money at all to throw at the railways .
The stations are an utter disgrace – a poor show for England .
Labour Scottish ?
November 17th, 2009 at 10:31 pm350 Labour MPS of which 40 were elected from Scottish constituencies !
There is absolutely no chance of this being done, so get over it as for moaning about being in Labour strongholds ii England, it’s still ENGLAND wherever it may be!
November 18th, 2009 at 7:06 amStuart, it’s not about Labour strongholds as such, more the fact that English taxpayers money is being used for electioneering by the Labour government. Targeting railway stations in Labour and Lib Dem controlled local authorities is quite obviously an attempt to sweeten up the Lib Dems ahead of the next election.
McFeagle, Labour might only have 10% of their MPs elected in Scotland but it’s still very much a Scottish party. The senior posts in the Labour cabinet are held by Scots and have been for the last decade and come the next election Labour will be materially, not just ideologically, a Scottish party.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:01 am