Changes

The leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Wendy Alexander has just resigned. It’s an honorable thing for her to have done. There has not been a great amount of honor in her behavior up to now, but at least she has fallen on her sword, and lived up to the rules of her own party and Parliament, at last!

This is one of three examples of sleaze permeating the arrogant upper reaches of our political elite. It used to be said that the Tories always had sex scandals, whereas the Labour party were more inclined to financial scandals. Now sleaze seems to be universal and has no boundaries.

There has always been sleaze within any political system but there used to be an attitude within British politics that if you were caught in the full glare of public exposure you, the exposed, would hold your hands up, and in the old fashioned world, said, “it’s a fair cop gov.” You then vanished into an obscure retirement from public life, either to a remedial career in charity, if you were a Conservative of independent means, or to a career as a non-executive director of a series of small public companies on the make if you were Labour.

Now there appears to be no shame, even recognition of having done anything wrong, by those discovered with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. They are pried from office with media enhanced pickaxes, like barnacles from the political ship of state.

Talking of pooh stuck on the shoe of the world, President Mugabe has won his election in Zimbabwe. He would do so as he was standing against no one in his sham election. This proves that you can beat yourself.

The only present hope for the people of Zimbabwe is that the current meeting of African leaders taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, will mandate the use of extreme sanctions to drive Mugabe and his regime from power. His country is landlocked and his lifeline flows direct via South Africa. If that country turns off the tap he will be forced out. On the down side this will unfairly affect the already downtrodden citizens of Zimbabwe who have done nothing wrong. Therefore the least bad consequence is for the African states to quickly invade Zimbabwe and drive this wicked regime into the dustbin of history.