The week in politics: Silly season has come early
We usually feel fuzzy-headed by this time on a Friday, but this week we’ve got a decent excuse. It’s been a bizarre seven days.
Just look at some of the stories which have been gracing the good (web)pages of politics.co.uk. The Speaker’s wife Sally Bercow has been embarrassing herself in nothing but a bedsheet. No 10 has been distracted from the important business of tackling the deficit by a bout of head lice. And then there was the Premier League’s transfer deadline and the enormous spending, which got at least one MP in parliament worked up. Is this normal? Is this sane?
The silly season has truly come early. Actually, the weird feeling has been reinforced by the focus on Cairo. The student fee protests were nothing to the unrest currently ongoing in Egypt, as ordinary people rose up to pressure president Hosni Mubarak to quit. Politics.co.uk is, naturally, focused on British politics. But sometimes global events prove too big to ignore.
As a Chatham House expert told us, it was the west’s weakened stance on human rights issues which had helped sustain Mubarak in power. Gradually Britain’s rhetoric hardened over the week, however. William Hague called for a transition, before David Cameron suggested Mubarak made it snappy.
There has been a bit of normal politics taking place, thankfully. The government’s NHS reforms attracted more controversy as they received their first major debate in the Commons on Monday. This week also saw the long-running war of attrition in the Lords come to an end, when government concessions over the endangered electoral reform referendum finally ended Labour peers’ filibustering.
Let’s hope we get back to normal next week – international crises permitting, of course.
