Parliament shut down last week, with MPs mostly heading back to their constituencies. I meanwhile headed off on a ten day foreign office trip to South East Asia. It’s more difficult to travel as a foreign office minister these days as we only have a slim majority and it’s important to be on the ground to get our legislation through. The hard work is not over yet; only last week George Osborne demanded that Cabinet ministers leading unprotected Whitehall departments come up with ‘bold and imaginative’ plans to slash billions of pounds from their budgets. Departments are being told to sell off Government-owned properties in order to fund 150,000 new homes by 2020. The Government currently owns £300billion worth of land and buildings across the country, with the Ministry of Defence alone owning around one per cent of UK land. The Chancellor is not hanging about especially since Labour seems to be tearing itself apart and seem incapable of mounting any form of opposition. Labour’s current agonies were laid bare in one of our last voting sessions when 48 MPs defied interim leader Harriet Harman by voting against - rather than abstaining on – the Government’s welfare reforms. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s surprise frontrunner in their leadership contest also managed to pull in members of the 2015 intake into the No lobby illustrating that these new members probably lean to the left as well. It feels like the ‘Blairites’, who remain active at Westminster, are being increasingly marginalised and becoming something of a minority.The trouble is no candidate will distance themselves from Labour’s appalling record, none of the candidates think Labour spent too much in government and all four leadership candidates denied that Ed Miliband’s manifesto was too left wing . No candidate has a credible plan – they’re all just bickering amongst themselves. Worse, the unions are again trying to fix the contest. Len McCluskey is planning to sign up a total of 70,000 affiliated supporters to Labour before the deadline. ‘We have got up until August 12; we think that we will go up to 60,000, maybe even 70,000.”
Meanwhile The Prime Minister delivered a major speech on tackling extremism. He said it was his duty to act against Islamacist terrorists wherever they may be if they pose a specific threat to British people. He also said that parents will be given new powers to have their child’s passport cancelled if they think they may travel to the Middle East to join a terrorist group.
I will be spending part of my recess in the West Country, the best holiday destination in the world. And I’m very much looking forward to it. We went straight from a long election campaign back into a Conservative majority Government so we are all a little battle worn. Tom Harris in the Telegraph says he wishes MPs were a little more assertive and unapologetic about taking holidays, not only for their family’s sake, but Parliament’s as well. After all there is a radical and reforming session ahead and we will need nerves of steel to see it through whatever side of the political spectrum we may choose to be on.