Onetime trans-bashing clueless-embarrassment-to-the-nation equality minister Harriet Harman now has a new role - as a clueless opposition MP.
On balance it's an improvement. Her inability to grasp even pretty damn simple ideas while governing the country damaged our equality legislation and made life worse for people. Now she just embarrasses herself and her party. I'm a lot more comfortable with incompetents in opposition than in government.
So today she's getting herself in the headlines for condemning the left-right coalition's plans for individual voter registration to replace household-based registration. She says it's a terrible thing to do: it will disenfranchise people who are young, black, or poor, and suchlike. It is the act of politicians who are seeking to rig elections.
And the BBC reports her as bewailing that "the Lib Dems - to their eternal shame - (are) colluding with the Tories in changing the law on the electoral register."
So, changing to individual voter registration bad. Apparently. What does Harriet want instead?
She wants ...individual voter registration. Only, rolled out in 2015 not 2014.
Now, maybe I'm just peculiar (it has been suggested) but it seems to me that either this is a terrible thing to do, it rigs elections, disenfranchises the black / poor / young etc... or it isn't. Which year you change over to it isn't going to change that, not when your wiggle room is a matter of twelve months.
Get a grip, Harriet, you election-rigging, youth-hating, poor-bashing [etc!]
With an official opposition of this calibre no wonder the only effective opposition to the coalition is also on the government benches.
