The charge that the coalition should fear

perdix

The charge will only stick if people like James Forsyth lazily pick up Liebour's attempted narrative when they can't think of anything else to write.
The BBC have tried it but it fell a bit flat when British Forces pulled off the rescue in the desert. They probably decided the editorial pitch before the action was reported.

rrr

But they ARE incompetent.

They have chopped and slashed the green shoots of recovery.

The Masked Marvel

This explains why the BBC have had Wee Dougie Alexander on at every opportunity.

Keith-Clan

James I think you are behind the curve here.
What the rest of us were observing last week is that the Germans, French, Turks, Poles and even Portuguese were managing to get their people out - sometimes giving our guys spaces in their aircraft. Other countries seemed to be organised at the airports and their embassies were open whilst abandoned Brits were finding their's padlocked and empty. Meanwhile Hague seemed to be depending on Civil Aviation who weren't keen to fly into a (potential) hail
of bullets and the one plane stuck on the ground at Gatwick. The SAS were "somewhere" in waiting. Remember this country above others should know all about getting people in and out of Libya (Tobruk, El Alamain, Desert Patrol Group etc.)
The Foreign Office and Hague are now labelled as grossly incompetent in the eyes of the majority.
Ironically I was filling in a passport renewal which claimed my £75 fee would not make a profit, but would fund Foreign Office embassies and consulates to cope with this very situation......

Stepney

How quickly we forget.

Accusations of incompetence from a Labour leader who was in a cabinet that excelled only at one thing: absolute and utter incompetence - from the MoD (just look at the state of that now), to the Home Office (unfit for anything), to PFI deals, to the Treasury (took a strong economy and broke it into a billion pieces).

And how about educational standards, immigration, 10p tax, loss of private data, pension grabs, selling off gold reserves, identity cards, 96 day detention, making a friend of Gadaffi?

Incompetence? The last Labour government won the lifetime achievement award on that one. No government will ever beat their record.

Vulture

What IS really inompetent is the Coalition's failure to wrap Labour's links to Libya' mad dictator around their scrawny necks.

Liebore were up to their eyeballs hand in bloody glove with Colonel Mad Dog and his rabid puppies - Blair, Brown and Mandy were best mates with these murderers; they connived in getting the Lockerbie bomber out of jail free and that Labour house school the LSE is funded by Ghadaffi's ill-gotten millions, with LSE old boy Saif al-Islam Ghadaffi delivering last year' Ralph Miliband memorial lecture, no less.

It's astonishing that wee Dougie Alexander is allowed to squeak bout Libya given his party's fervent support for the genocidal maniac dictator.

Victor Southern

The charge has absolutely no validity. We have done really well in getting our nationals out of Libya - nobody got hurt.

strapworld

Marr allowed Mandleson to get his defence in first yesterday. Telling the world that he only met the son of Gadaffi once or twice!! Did Marr question this? Of course not.

The problem we have in this country is that whilst conservative spokespeople are 'grilled' Labour politicians are treated very differently. Never asked if they wish to apologise for the deficit, never asked if they are ashamed about the state of the civil service.

We do need a Fox news type of broadcaster. We need interviewers who will give Labour people a real kicking. The LSE should have the Gadaffi money taken from them immediately and those who accepted it publicly disgraced.

The problem we have is that the Left wing is far better organised than the right wing.

And then we have Cameron. enough said.

Pete-s

If the coalition cannot show all the gross incompetence of Liebour. PFI, the economy, excessive spending and borrowing, immigration, defence, lying to parliament, etc...... Then they are done for.

Chris lancashire

Yes, it's the latest Labour "line to take".
Getting a plane into Libya one day late rates as a 1 on a scale of 10 of incompetence. Selling gold at a £7bn loss is an 8, presiding over a credit bubble that ruined our banks is a 10.

Labour certainly knows a thing or two about incompetence.

TrevorsDen

Turks still have thousands in Libya and the Greeks have large numbers as well.

The claims about our own nationals is nothing more than hysteria.

The FCO is hardly a jewel in the crown, the FCO's prevarication and softness to Argentina kicked off the Falklands crisis.

I wonder how people who dismiss Cameron react to their heroine Mrs Thatchers incompetence over the Falklands?
I am a great fan of Mrs T but I am no a one eyed bigot like so many of Camerons right wing critics.

Mr Lancashire - Real incompetence is sending troops ill equipped in to a war zone with no proper plan and just the vague hope they will not have to fire a shot.
Real incompetence is putting our troops into basra - you guessed it - ill equipped and without a plan and in insufficient numbers such as we were actually defeated.

Labour know all about military and diplomatic incompetence. Ask the family of Dr Kelly.

Fatbloke on tour

Failed Blogger @ 10.26

Your credibility sailed on the last T22 frigate as it headed out for one last deployment before it started out for the knackers yard.

Oh well HMS Cumberland gets a taste of action four weeks before she is de-commissioned.

Are you still trying to push the whopper that the Cumberland and her three sisterships are not being chopped but are being replaced by the T45's?

arnoldo87

@TrevorsDen

One-eyed bigotry is not the sole preserve of right wingers giving Dave a going over on this blog. There are also true-blues who won't concede that Labour did anything that was not a disaster. Both positions are ridiculous.

Labour certainly was incompetent in its assessment of the difficulty of the Afghanistan campaign, and on troop numbers in Basra, but in the latter case the Army chiefs cannot be entirely blameless.

However, I fail to see what military and diplomatic incompetence has to do with the David Kelly affair. Here was a weak man who broke his employment contract and tragically paid the price when it became public knowledge. As Vince Cable found out, you need to think twice before communicating your political secrets and thoughts to strangers.

You are right about Maggie, though. Foreign policy was not her strong suit. She was bold and turned a disaster into a triumph in the Falklands, but supported fascists such as Pinochet and the Apartheid regime with no discernible gain for the U.K.

echo34

Meanwhile Afriqiyah airways continues its scheduled flights into Gatwick from Tripoli. 2 hours late Saturday, an hour tardy yesterday.

Gawain

The media has the memory span of a fish. Does no one remember the Icelandic ash cloud and the hordes of tourists and school parties stuck in airports all over Europe ? The last government was berated for it's incompetence and people were left to fend for themselves. It suggests that the media's perception of what government can do varies considerably from the civil service view of the world.

The other question I have also not seen asked is what contingency plans did the oil companies and contractors employing British workers in Libya have in place ? The directors of these companies have higher salaries than the Prime Minister and earn fancy bonuses on top of this. It strikes me that they have neglected their employees. If they were doing business in an unstable country run by a madman without a good evacuation strategy they are not worth their money ! If we're not careful they'll be calling for the SAS to clean the executive loos next !

Commentator

Judging by the quality of his post above, TrevorsDen should offer his services as a speechwriter to Colonel Gaddafi.

Cynic

"The Miliband team knows that if the coalition comes to be seen as incompetent, then it is done for." Well, Labour, which was clearly incompetent, was re-elected twice and hung on for 13 years. Hardly a ringing endorsement for that statement, is it?

TGF UKIP

Nothing, James, but nothing, could better demonstrate the innate incompetence of your mates than their complete failure to stick Labour with the deserved reputation of Britain's worst and most incompetent government ever.

Their failure as an opposition is now compounding their difficulties in government. Useless then, even more useless now.