Thursday 13 May 2010

The Tory-Whig Coalition...

...The Bad And The Good News

Under the new Con Dem Lib / Lib Con Dem / Lib Dem Con agreement (or whatever it is called - we prefer the old school Tory-Whig conflation, sort of 'back to the future') we find item 5:

We have agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work. We will consider jointly the mechanism for implementing the limit.

We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes.

The latter is clearly the best we could of hoped for from any Tory-containing administration and, as for the former, the best we can say for that is that it will involve a great deal of 'horse trading' between the 2 new 'best of friends'. And that should slow it down a deal and maybe help to throw more light on how it will in the end prove to be largely unworkable.

Also in with the 'Good' goes the ending of ID cards and, less likely to happen, biometric passports (given EU and International agreements - we're sure the other half of the 'special relationship' will not be too happy about it).

And in charge of all this, one of less than a handful of woman currently appointed to the cabinet, the less that liberal Theresa May (not the 'glamour' model and star of The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up video, different spelling). All one can really say of her appointment is that at least it wasn't Damien Green (although he could still come in as a junior minister).

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