Kindergarten politics

Some hold that Prime Minister's Questions is a 'bear pit' although in my opinion it is more like a kindergarten class of noisy, rude and ill-behaved children. (Kindergarten. fm German: children's garden) That MPs seem to be getting younger and younger may have something to do with my advanced years, but I digress. 

On the subject of the kindergarten aspect of our politics I suppose it only natural I should return to the baby of them all, Chloe Smith. As we all know young Chloe has just been promoted to the position of Economic Secretary to the Treasury, albeit, presumably having been just an administrator with Deloitte, she knows nothing about economics. 

A correspondent from Norwich advises me that after her elevation a number of what he termed 'sycophantic' letters of praise appeared in the local press. The cynic in me wonders if these letters were spontaneous or whether they were 'orchestrated' by the local Conservative Party. One constituent, writing in the Norwich Evening News, was not so enamoured (no link unfortunately):

The last paragraph of J. Bennett's letter emphasises one of the reasons why the present system of democracy must be changed - and now!

Mixed message?

Osborne was very specific in his Commons statement that British taxpayers' money would not be used for the new Greek bailout, neither would it be put towards any special IMF package for the eurozone. Unfortunately that doesn't mean we can avoid further costs arising from our obligations to the IMF. He repeated his promise of two weeks ago, that "Britain stands ready to consider the case for further resources and contribute with other countries if necessary". (Now that is an offer that Christine Lagarde will probably grab with both hands). Yet just hours later Guido Fawkes tweets that the "first CCHQ press release from new Econ Sec Chloe Smith attacks Ed Balls for not wanting to send more money to the IMF to bail out €urozone."

The phrase: "Get your acts together, boys and girls" springs to mind.

Just saying.................

A young green shoot

Following the departure of Liam Fox and the subsequent reshuffle with Philip Hammond going to Defence and Justine Greening to Transport, one further appointment does not appear to have received that much publicity, although having said that two short articles have appeared in the press; namely the Mail and a local newspaper, the Norwich Evening News. I refer to the appointment of Chloe Smith to the position of Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

This young lady, whose career has been mainly spent working for the Conservative Party, other than a brief spell with Deloitte Touche as a 'management consultant', has had a meteoric rise since becoming a Member of Parliament in 2009 aged 27. Previously, on leaving school she had taken a gap-year working for former Conservative education secretary Gillian Shephard and then went on to the University of York where she read English Literature and also undertook summer work for Bernard Jenkin.

When considering the appointment of politicians to areas of responsibility, one does have to question moving someone (Greening) with a background in economics to transport where she has none; moving someone with a PPE (Hammond) with no background in transport to another area in which it appears he has no background, namely defense. Then we come to Chloe Smith, whose background is mainly in politics, who read English Literature and worked briefly as a management consultant, who would appear to have little or no background in economics, to the Treasury department.

One does have to wonder what experience or qualifications Chloe Smith has to fill such an important position in government and to also wonder how she has 'managed', within two years of first being elected, to now be knocking on the door of the cabinet at the tender age of 29. Heaven help us - as one comment said in the Mail - the ink is hardly dry on her birth certificate!