Ps And Qs: David Cameron Joins The Baby P Debate
BABY P. No rest yet. The court case has yet to be played out. The mother, step-father and lodger have yet to be sentenced.
Children’s Secretary Ed Balls has seen a report into the case. He has made his views know. But as is the fashion in modern politics, no-one makes a decision and moves on, they only join the debate.
His lack of a firm hand and inability to deliver a final ruling allows papers like the Sun to emote and start campaigns. They join the debate. We all join the debate. And nothing gets done. Not really.
Granted, Haringey council leader George Meehan has resigned, so too has Liz Santry, the borough’s “cabinet member for children”.
Note to Gordon Brown: the buck stops at the top.
And while Balls worries about not doing enough and doing too much, the Sun bangs on.
Only one of the four women the Sun wanted sacked has gone – although Sharon Shoesmith has only been suspended from her post as Haringey’s head of children’s services and still receives her £110,000-a-year wage.
“IT’S NOT ENOUGH,” says the paper that had made a mawkish land grab for Baby P’s remains.
But it is enough for David Cameron, who is so desperate to get the Rupert Murdoch’s Sun to support his Conservative Party at the next election, engages in a spot of ineffectual, meaningless, emotive pap Balls would be proud to call his own. The piece is equipped with a shot of Cameron pursing his lips like he means it.
In “And now full truth must be revealed” Cameron writes:
His face seems so familiar now, but it is still incredibly moving.
More than 1.3million signed The Sun Baby P petition, each name a cry for justice. Yesterday, those cries were answered. The sackings, suspensions, resignations were long overdue.
Thank God the Government answered our call for the independent inquiry that was needed.
Each name is a cry for vengeance. The Sun’s petition calls for four social workers to be sacked. And what is an independent enquiry but a sop to decisiveness, deferring any decisions to an anomalous body?
Cameron has read the report:
It reveals serious mistakes that led to Baby P’s death. It is vital that other professionals learn from these mistakes.
Mistakes, eh? Indeed. And what can you do, Cameron?
What have they got to hide? Why can’t the public read the facts in full? What kind of culture puts safeguarding the system before children, protecting bureaucrats before our babies?
Dunno. Dunno. Dunno. Can we join the debate and find out?
The army of Sun readers who signed their names to that petition want answers to these questions, and so do I.
The army has a celebrity voice. “Join the debate!” is his battle cry.
And while the politicos talk and talk and jostle to show who cares the most, nothing gets done and gush mourning sickness, nothing gets done…
Posted: 2nd, December 2008 | In: Key Posts, Politicians Comments (19) | TrackBack | Permalink
