Who will rid us of this bungling quango queen?

JUST how incompetent do you have to be to get sacked from a public sector job? I only ask because bungling quango queen Jenny Watson seems utterly fire-proof.

Despite presiding over a series of scandals and examples of incompetence, MPs have just awarded her another four-year term (on a £100,000 salary) as head of the Electoral Commission, the election supervisory body.

They appear to have forgotten she was heavily criticised for the most chaotic general election night in British history when, in May 2010, queues developed outside some polling stations, preventing many voters from casting their ballots.

At the time, an election monitor from Sierra Leone said the British system was vulnerable to corruption because we don’t make people to identify themselves when they vote. It is a pity MPs didn’t follow the lead of Government ministers who last year refused to renew Ms Watson’s contract as a member of the Audit Commission, the publicsector spending watchdog.

Under her leadership, the Electoral Commission has also been condemned after staff spent taxpayers’ money (in the form of Government-issued credit cards) for personal expenditure — such as buying lunches, paying for London Underground fares and topping up their own mobile phones.

Ms Watson is a long- standing member of Britain’s quangocracy, having once headed the nowdefunct Equal Opportunities Commission as well as working for the Left-wing campaign organisation Charter 88 and the gender equality group The Fawcett Society. She is also the co-author of a book called The Human Rights Act Toolkit.

After the Electoral Commission’s shambolic performance on May 6, 2010, the respected civil rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti described it as ‘ unworthy of a mature democracy like ours’.

Jenny Watson’s reappointment is ‘unworthy’, too.