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COMMENT
 
Are the voters in a punishing mood?

IF – and it is not such a big if – Labour sink like a stone in Camden at the coming local elections the finger of blame can be pointed at one place: No 10 Downing Street.
According to a growing number of polls, there need only be a four per cent swing against Labour in London for Labour in Camden to face two possibilities – either a hung council or surrender to either the Tories or the Lib Dems both of whom are clamourously talking up their chances.
If the Labour administration at the Town Hall had been unduly inefficient or simply asleep during the past few years this could be said to be justice served. But by and large Labour has been running the borough reasonably efficiently for the past decade.
But, unfortunately for Labour, local good management is just one of several factors that determines the outcome of a local election.
At this particular time in the life of Tony Blair’s New Labour things could not be worse.
Not only does the spectre of the failed adventure in Iraq refuse to go away but in recent weeks the government has begun to smell as sleazy as the Tories under John Major in the mid-1990s.
If the political climate were different, perhaps it would be possible for Labour’s good story in Camden to be heard – and in many cases it has a good story to tell.
But the people may be in a punishing mood – determined to punish the government for the lies it has told, and the corruption it has allowed to spread.
Traditionally, Labour has always benefited from a big turn out. But it is hardly likely that the polls will be better than in the last election in 2002 when only a third of the electors bothered to vote. A double whammy of a low poll and a calamitous political climate now face Labour in Camden.

An easy ride for Way

THE council’s ‘probe’ into the savage economies being made at the Royal Free Hospital, in Hampstead, ended up as a damp squib on Tuesday.
Under the spotlight was the Free’s chief executive Andrew Way. But he must have known as he left the committee room that he had had an easy ride.
He could have faced a tide of withering questions but apart from sceptical probing by Andrew Mennear (Tory), John Bryant (Lib-Dem) and Peter Brayshaw (Lab)he was hardly bothered.
Matters were made even easier for him by the benign chairmanship of Janet Guthrie who fudged the issue by putting off a decision until June.
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