By IRNA-PTI
London : Britain may go for general election in about one-and-a-half years — in the middle of 2008, a British Minister and one of Premier Gordon Brown’s closest confidants, has suggested.
The polls are due in 2010. “You can talk about cancelled elections until the cows come home, but no one out there is. It has not been a big issue for the public. I don’t think it will have any impact on the general election result in a year-and-a-half’s time,” Ed
Balls told ‘The Daily Telegraph’, obviously referring to the setback Labour suffered after an U-turn on a contemplated mid-term elections in October last year.
Balls, the Schools Secretary, admitted that the “data discs loss, Northern Rock and the issues around immigration have been genuinely worrying to the public. They have been serious. So we’ve taken a hit for that.” The 40-year-old also reflected on the roller-coaster popularity Gordon Brown endured since he became Prime Minister and after attempts in June and July to present him as a
“change candidate”.
“We can’t claim to be new. In an election, the public will have to decide whether Gordon Brown and the team around him are better at seeing the future, devising policies and handling those issues that come up,” Balls said.
While the Prime Minister was enduring a spate of worrying headlines, Balls, who in June was propelled into one of the most high-profile Cabinet jobs after being an MP for just two years, also had a run of seemingly poor school reports.
The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development found that Britain was slipping alarmingly down the charts for reading and maths.
Another study showed a decline in science ability, while a further report on literacy made grim reading for Ministers. This from a party that was supposed to be about “education,
education, education”, the newspaper report said.
According to the report, next week Balls will renew hostilities in the Commons with the Tories over raising the school leaving age to 18. He admitted to being “taken aback” by the opposition’s dismissal of what he called “the first big 21st century policy” the Government is introducing.
“We are not saying that every 10-year-old today, when they get to 16 has to stay in school. That would be the wrong thing to do. But we know that lots of young people want an apprenticeship and this Bill will see an obligation on employers to provide them.
“Young people without skills earn less, are less likely to get good jobs and that then has impact on wider society with a burden on the taxpayer,” he said.
Next week, the Schools Secretary will be grilled by the Commons education select committee on faith schools amid concerns among some MPs that Muslim schools are “insular”.