His age and other health problems made the drugs less effective and their side-effects were pretty appalling

His age and other health problems made the drugs less effective, and their side-effects were pretty appalling.”Please concentrate more on Africa than on Sandy,” Dorothy Logie implored this week She was sure that was what her husband would have wanted.. As a Prime Minister who is healthily sceptical about the value of tradition for its own sake, Tony Blair should not hold out against the growing clamour for reform of the anachronistic role of the Lord High Chancellor – to use the old name by which Lord Irvine engagingly lists himself in the official Palace of Westminster Directory. Lord Irvine’s job is an ancient one, far more so than that of Prime Minister. If his carelessness in signing an appeal for Labour Party funds in a letter to lawyers – over whose careers he holds considerable sway – has served a purpose, it has been to expose the job as obsolete as well as ancient. As a Prime Minister who is healthily sceptical about the value of tradition for its own sake, Tony Blair should not hold out against the growing clamour for reform of the anachronistic role of the Lord High Chancellor – to use the old name by which Lord Irvine engagingly lists himself in the official Palace of Westminster Directory. Lord Irvine’s job is an ancient one, far more so than that of Prime Minister. If his carelessness in signing an appeal for Labour Party funds in a letter to lawyers – over whose careers he holds considerable sway – has served a purpose, it has been to expose the job as obsolete as well as ancient.
We do not think that Lord Irvine should resign from the Government.

He may be arrogant, and on this occasion he has been foolish; but he also brings a rare streak of liberalism to this government. And in a government notoriously insouciant about how government office can be used to improve the Labour Party’s bank balance, the Lord Chancellor is neither the only nor, probably, the worst offender. New Labour’s belief that it has a monopoly of wisdom, in which somehow all right-thinking people share, has all too often blinded it to the reality that party-political donations are frequently made out of naked self-interest.It can be said in Lord Irvine’s defence that, for reasons of both propriety and grandeur, he is highly unlikely to busy himself with a study of party donor lists before deciding who should be a QC or a recorder or a judge. But by pushing the anomalous political role of the country’s most senior judge to its ultimate conclusion, he has shown all too graphically that the powers of his office are at least open to such abuse. The office must therefore be changed.As with much of the country’s unwritten constitution, the integrity of the Lord Chancellorship depends on an informal bargain in which the incumbent imposes a rigorous self-discipline that removes any such risk of abuse.

Lord Irvine’s predecessor, Lord Mackay, was an ideal, if unusual, person to hold an office which combines membership of the Cabinet with the job of appointing all but the most senior judges, not to mention conferring silk on barristers.He was an ascetic figure with a pronounced disdain for party politics, and a rigorously meritocratic approach to judicial appointments. Lord Irvine may be no less meritocratic – though the appointment of his old colleague Philip Sales as the Treasury Devil, the government’s principal litigator, casts some doubt on this. But by allowing, among Labour lawyers, even the perception that the Lord Chancellor might be pleased by a significant donation to Labour Party funds, he has decided to tear up the informal bargain.Thus it is shown that Lord Mackay’s exceptional political neutrality preserved the reputation of the Lord Chancellorship beyond its natural life It will no longer do. It may be too glib simply to assume that a Ministry of Justice – or even an independent judicial appointments commission – would solve all the problems. But the Prime Minister can only honourably stand by his man if he is willing to commit himself, in the forthcoming manifesto, to an independent inquiry into how best the powers of judicial appointment can be separated from political office.At a time when judges, though judicial review and application of the Human Rights Act, offer one of the now pitifully few checks and balances against government, it is no longer defensible that the government appoints them. If Mr Blair fails to make such a commitment, then, to his own detriment, his belief in constitutional reform will be seen to have been eclipsed by his passion for patronage.. The Tories have spent months lurching towards any bandwagon that passed them on the right.

But when it comes to the public sector, they have shown awful timidity and swerved the party firmly back to the middle of the road Yesterday, they did it again. The Tories have spent months lurching towards any bandwagon that passed them on the right. But when it comes to the public sector, they have shown awful timidity and swerved the party firmly back to the middle of the road. Yesterday, they did it again.
Dr Liam Fox, shadow Health Secretary, outlined a policy that, for all his huffing and puffing about New Labour incompetence, seemed barely different from the Government’s: a pledge to spend the same amount; the same emphasis on improved cancer and coronary heart disease care; and the same aspiration that the private health sector should do more to complement the NHS.The NHS is just as safe in our hands, the Tories want to shout The trouble is, few believe them. Polls show that the Conservatives consistently trail behind Labour in the public’s estimation of which party will do the best job on health.