The Eagle has landed

ANGELA EAGLE was shot down by her fellow panel members and the audience on last night's Question Time for demanding the resignation of Lord Freud over his comments about the value of the disabled in the workplace. In replying to a comment from a councillor  (who has a disabled child), the noble Lord clumsily gave the impression that the disabled (especially those mentally impaired) should be paid a stipendiary £2 an hour when given work.

            

            Of course the Labour Party went off half cocked as usual and insisted that Lord Freud should tend his resignation for his comments. Thankfully David Cameron ignored the brouhaha at Wednesday's question time in parliament and kept him in-situ.

            

            Hoping to reignite  the nasty party image, Milliband went on the attack flanked as usual by Ed Balls and his deputy Hattie Harperson , both of whom enjoyed what they thought would turn out to be a Cameron lashing – something about as common from Ed in these weekly jousts as a straight answer to a question from the green bench political community as a whole.

            

            To say that Lord Freud handled things clumsily is an understatement. But to believe that any sane human being, or politician in an advanced economy such as ours would advocate the 'pittance wage' to any human being whatever his or her physical or mental condition, can only be playing politics six months before a general election.

            

            All parties do this of course and the public have at last wizened up to the practice, which is why Angela Eagle was criticised by the panel and audience on the BBC's Question Time last night. I am sure that if David Cameron had been on the panel telling us how he will stop the free movement of peoples from the EU entering the UK; the audience would have found him as equally disingenuous as Angela Eagle.

LORD FREUD MADE a mistake which he tried to rectify and apologise for. His £2 an hour comment was meant to include a subsidy to employers from the state, that would bring the disabled hourly rate up to that of the minimum wage; and he told the councillor that he would go away and think about the proposition.

            

             This seems to me perfectly just and reasonable if taken in the context he meant; which the Labour Party, for party political reasons refused to do in order make political capital out of the whole issue.

            

              The two main parties are facing a general election next May; and what they say between now and then, whether in their pronouncements or criticisms of each other must be taken with a pinch of salt. Promises before an election are easily rescinded after; which is why the voter is cynical and can no longer feel able to put their trust in the three main parties…and so enters Ukip: and everything the main parties now promise on such subjects as the EU and immigration, are due to the rise and popularity of Ukip, and the voters know it.

            

              The other day I heard Hattie Harperson say reasonable things on immigration (in light of the Heywood and Middleton by election) that six years ago, if someone had used the same comments, she would have declared him or her a racist. This is the impact Ukip has had on two of the main parties; and long may it continue. But rhetoric is one thing and application another. The public are beginning to understand the difference. If the electorate are cynical toward politicians and the political class generally (by which I mean the political commentators who have a symbiotic relationship with Westminster politics and its politicians), then I cannot see the three political tenors transforming the current climate of cynicism.

LORD FREUD is a victim of nothing more than synthetic political outrage by his political opponents within the Labour Party. But before he feels himself now removed from the hook his own incompetence landed himself on; he had better understand that such behaviour toward him by the Labour Party is no different from the practices deployed by all the main parties in order to map their road to power; and in the coming months leading up to May of next year, this road will become congested with the kind of behaviour Lord Freud experienced.

            

            Come the New Year, Nigel Farage will become under sustained attack from both the Left and Right of centre, as he was this year in the follow up to the local and European elections; an attack which the electorate choose to ignore. But come the new year Ukip's enemies within all the media, Left or Right, will seek to destroy Ukip's hopes in next year's May general election.

            

             Local and European elections are one thing but parliamentary ones are another. If Ukip poses any kind of threat come next May; the press will even accuse him of paedophilia on the eve the election; in the hope that it results in either a Tory or Labour government; or  even a Labour Lib Dem or Tory Lib Dem coalition.

            

             Ms Eagle (and the Labour Party) misread the public mood which all politicians are prone to do in the era of Ukip as an alternative to their guile  – something the healthily distrustful British public are all too aware of, and determined to exploit.

            

             Thanks to the behaviour of our politicians, the public have been made far more astute, now they have an alternative to the three main parties to vote for; and long may it remain the case.