Tory clown Patten paid price for school tests fiasco By our lobby correspondent THE ONLY significant casualty of the July 20 cabinet reshuffle was Education Secretary John Patten, who took the rap for the disaster of school testing - and for his wild public statements. Faced down by the tenacity of the NUT action, Patten was clearly a lame-duck minister lacking credibility with parents and staff.
But the other super-unpopular member of a super-unpopular government, Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley, stayed in her hospital-closing job. Bottomley nounced, Chancellor Kenneth Clarke let it be known that the government was once again considering extending VAT to cover books, newspapers, children's clothing and other zerorated items.
The idea is to reduce the None of the Euro-sceptical "bastards" (Lilley, Portillo and Redwood) got ditched. Part of that is to signal that Major's government will be hard on public spending by appointing Aitken to the Treasury.
But behind it is a real shift in the attitude to the European Union. The process of European economic and political union is stalled.
Major can thus afford to make peace with the Euro-sceptics on their chosen issue, while cutting public spending harshly - the other right-wing cause celebre - fits in with Major's income tax cuts plans anyway.
NEARLY a million people voted in the Labour leadership election from a potential electorate of 4,231,429 in a 22.5 per cent turnout.
In a travesty of the much vaunted democracy of 'one member, one vote', some party members had as many as seven votes.
An MP, who was also a trade union member, Co-op party member and a member of the Socialist Heath Association, Socialist Education Association and a couple of other affiliated groups had seven votes.
Sections
And even all those votes had different values. The 327 Labour MPs and MEPs; the 249,430 constituency party members; and 3,981,672 affiliated union and socialist society members form the three sections of the electoral college, each of which have equal weight.
On the turnout in this election, a trade union or affiliated society member's vote was worth 0.00042 and a constituency party member's vote worth 0.0019 of an MPs vote.
In other words one MP's vote was the equivalent of 2,380 union members or 526 constituency members.
In terms of the actual votes Beckett defeated cast, the result gives Blair 53 per cent and Prescott and Beckett 47 per cent combined.
Given the media bandwagon and speculation of a landslide victory this is not an overwhelming vote for Blair's programmie.
Many voted for Blair as an "electable' leader rather than for his policies. With very little to choose between the other two Blair inherits a situation with a sizeable minority voting against him.
In the trade unions where there was any recommendation by the executive it affected the voting.
Beckett's vote was higher in the TGWU, where she achieved 33 per cent for leader as opposed to between ten and 18 per cent in the other major The only major unions with a majority against Blair were the GPMU print union and the rail union RMT - both with majorities for Prescott.