Falling Polls and Rising Poles

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has returned from his summer vacation to problems with the polls and the Poles.

The Labour Government's popularity (and especially that of Blair himself) has plummeted to a level not experienced since before they came to power in 1997. I predict that this decline will continue until or unless he comes up with a date for his handing over the reins to (presumably) Gordon Brown. He also needs to drop the messianic zeal which drives his policies and pronouncements on the Middle East.

As for the Poles, they are causing big problems, not because we don't like the Poles (on the whole we do) but because they are suddenly here in such astonishing numbers. Once again the Government has not been able to do its sums properly. When the first batch of Eastern European countries swelled the membership of the European Union a couple of years ago, most of the existing members introduced (legal) controls on the rights of the new Member States to cross borders to work. But not Britain - oh no! We are so stupid that we decided controls were unnecessary, and some ministerial nincompoop calculated that there would be an influx of roughly 15,000 workers from the new Member States. The reality is that half of Poland seems to have taken up residence here. The figure is somewhere nearer half a million workers already here and/or applying to work here.

The result is huge pressure on public services and housing, and a growing resentment regarding availability of jobs for the Brits. Places like Slough, to the south west of London, now have increasing numbers of Polish shops and there are posters and notices all over the place in Polish.

All this could have been avoided if we had displayed the same common sense approach of other EU Member States who opened their borders only under strict controls. I don't think there is anything wrong with immigration, because much of it benefits our society, but like anything else you can have "too much of a good thing". Anything good taken in excess becomes bad.

So, for Labour, the polls are a problem and the Poles are a problem, and yet strangely the Opposition Parties are not cashing in on the Government's woes. One would have expected the re-branded Conservatives under the leadership of David Cameron to be riding high and looking like the next Government, but they are not. (Perhaps David Cameron looks, talks and acts a little too much like Tony Blair?!) The Liberal Democrats are doing no better either. What appears to be happening is that people are just deserting all the Parties in droves.

A bad omen for democracy.