Has Labour hit that ‘motorway cones hotline’ moment?

Every outgoing Government reaches that point when it becomes obvious, including to the Government’s own supporters that it has run out of ideas and purpose. For the Major Government, the announcement of the motorway cones hotline seemed to be that defining moment when the reforming party of the 1980’s that had introduced monetary stability, tackled the unions and privatised the utilities had been reduced to little more than a pernickety, old fusspot.

Yesterday, Gordon Brown launched Labour’s local government campaign. At the heart of the new policy programme was a commitment to publicise the mobile phone numbers of community support officers. Brown commented:

"Every community of the country is going to have neighbourhood policing with police to call upon, with their mobile phone number available, be able to put a face on the person, be able to call them up and have local meetings to discuss the local issues you're concerned about."

You can only draw similarities with Major’s Citizen’s Charter initiative. How many people really want to chat to their local bobby about ‘local issues’? Most of us are minded to leave them to get on with the job of catching criminals. It is only when we are the victims of crime that we want to contact the police. And unless we are victims of crime on a regular basis, we are hardly going to keep PC Plod’s mobile details in our wallet; more likely, we would call 999 or the local police station.

It is the fact that this experience can be so infuriating, just as queuing in motorways can be, that has motivated the Government to act in this way. The problem though, is not getting through to a switchboard, but the layers of bureaucracy you need to go through to report a crime. But does anyone believe the publication of a mobile number or telephone hotline will make any difference? Tesco wouldn’t publish a telephone number if customers were complaining that goods weren’t arriving on the shelves; they would sort out their supply chain logistics. The Government should similarly put its house in order.

With the Government buffeted by economic crisis and their poll ratings plummeting, Labour can ill afford cock-ups like this. Otherwise, the perception that this is a Government on its last legs will become the conventional thinking. And, as John Major can confirm, that is a very difficult position to come back from.