Home Office Spin

Gordon Brown-Trousers, the most cowardly Prime Minister in British history, is in the mire again. His most recent humiliation (how many PM's can claim to have been so deeply humiliated so many times in just a few weeks?) stems from the notoriously incompetent Home Office, which was branded "unfit for purpose" by the last Home Secretary.

Unfortunately, Jacqui Smith, the current Home Secretary, doesn't seem to have been doing much to improve matters in her department. A couple of days ago, it transpired that up to 5000 illegal immigrants had gained clearance to work in the security industry and that one of them had even been tasked with guarding the Prime Minister's care. I bet his trousers went particularly brown when he found out about that!

As if this fiasco wasn't bad enough, internal Home Office correspondence revealed that the problem came to light months ago, and that the Home Secretary knew of it as early as July. But, instead of coming clean and admitting to the public and Parliament that, once again, the Home Office was at the centre of an almighty cock-up, steps were taken to keep the problem secret - not for reasons of national security, but because it would attract negative headlines and have been seen as the latest in a long line of Home Office blunders.

Hmmm, didn't Gordon Brown-Trousers promise to cut out the spin and double-dealing that ultimately made Tony Blair so untrustworthy? Yes, he did, but we didn't really believe him, did we?

But the story gets better. Yesterday, it emerged that, rather than 5000, there may have been up to 10,000 illegal immigrants working in the security industry. In the Commons, Crazy Cammeron had Gordon Brown-Trousers in a headlock, demanding to know when the PM first learned of the shambles at the Home Office. No reasonable answer was forthcoming, although, with characteristic bravery, Brown-Trousers made it clear that responsibility - and therefore, by implication, blame - lay with the Home Office rather than Downing St. Just the sort of chap you want at your side in a tight spot, isn't he?

Today, according to the Daily Mail, more documents from the Home Office suggest that, of the more than 200,000 security licences issued, an unknown number could have been granted to applicants who falsely claimed to be from the European Union. Did nobody check?? Apparently not. Left to these clowns, national security would go something like this:

"Excuse me, Sir. Are you a terrorist, by any chance?"
"Er, no."
"Right you are, Sir. Mind how you go with that bomb, then. Next!"

Of course, catastrophic intelligence failures (the IQ kind of intelligence, not the spying sort) are nothing new for either the Home Office of the Government as a whole and, disturbing though they are, it's pretty much what I expect from them. Nor does it come as any great surprise to find a Government department conspiring to cover up its mind boggling inadequacy.

I'm quite sure such cover-ups happen all the time, in every department. Even so, it is quite shocking to have your suspicions confirmed by incontrovertible evidence that someone as highly placed as the Home Secretary was prepared to keep something like this quiet for as long as she could get away with it. And if she knew, you can be sure that Gordon Brown-Trousers knew too - his reputation for being a micro-managing control freak is well known, so it's difficult to believe that something this important could slip under his radar.

But, as the Home Office documents show, it would have looked bad for the Government to admit to being incompetent fools yet again - and, despite his unbelievable protests to the contrary, Gordon Brown-Trousers was contemplating an early general election. When you remember that fact, it's easy to see why such a damaging revelation would have been kept quiet.

Once again, we see that the Prime Minister and his senior Cabinet members are not above misleading the British people for political gain. How many examples of deliberate, dishonest manipulation do we need to see before Gordon Brown-Trousers' position becomes untenable?

In my view, we passed that point when he lied about his plans for an election an his reasons for backing down at the last minute. His fate was sealed when he lied again about the EU Treaty being different from the Eu Constitution, and this further example of his Government's dishonesty is the final straw.

He's just not up to the job and he needs to quit. Now, please, Prime Minister.

Billy Seggars.