The return of eugenics

Mr Blair has finally lost the plot, in a last desperate effort to find a populist drum to beat before he is finally run out of town he has hit on the ultimate scapegoats - unborn children.

In his latest madcap rant on anti-social behaviour we are told that you can spot 'menace' kids before they are even born. By identifying problem families you can work out who are 'unsuitable' parents and provide them with 'help & assistance' in bringing up their children.

Who wouldn't be against help for people struggling to raise their children, put like that it sounds almost reasonable. Almost, but then you need to ask a few questions – who will do the identifying? Perhaps the local authority social services departments dominated by our old friends those Guardian reading, Labour voting, middle class lefties with bad 2:2 in Sociology who have been ruining lives for poor people for the last quarter of a century? What about the help, what shape will that take? Already we have dark threats that the state will take away the children of families that don’t control them properly, because we all know how well Council run children homes have served those children who managed to survive their tender care. And who will be the sort of people who get targeted? Well they won't be white, middle class barristers from Islington will they....

This is the same sort of wrong-headed nanny state mumbo-jumbo that we have come to expect from Blair & his tabloid army of collectivists, authoritarians & populists. We’ve gone from on the spot fines, to teen curfews and now we’ve reached ASBOs for the unborn - has anyone told SPUC? Even King Herod waited till the sprogs were actually born!

I’m afraid I have no confidence in the idea that the state will be a better parent than people. Instead of blaming the poor and means-testing them into penury why doesn’t this ‘Government’ give them the power to run their own lives, with control over the services they rely on, the financial means to make real choices and the responsibility for making their own choices about their lives and their family.

Blair has finally gone beyond parody – the Labour Party is a hollow rightwing election machine. It is devoid of principle, bereft of ideas, and needs to be put out of its, and our, misery. It is time to kiss nanny goodnight, say good bye Tony, Gordon & John and the rest of this increasingly appalling, wretched and clapped out shambles masquerading as a government.