About time too

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, confirmed the policy reversal for those with four years’service in a Commons statement following an intense three year campaign, led by Joanna Lumley, the actress.

The victory brings to an end more than 20 years of demands to give Gurkha veterans equal rights and has left Gordon Brown and his ministers embarrassed after misjudging the public mood.

That’s all that anyone was ever asking. That those who serve in the British Army in the Gurkha regiments get treated the same as other foreigners who serve in other regiments in the British Army.

The question is, why was the Government so blitheringly incompetent in realising that this was the right thing to do?