House Magazine Diary for May 2001 House Magazine Diary 01 June 2000 TS Eliot was wrong. May’s the cruelest month. Not April. Bloody weather. Boring business. Disastrous elections. Collapsing morale and falling membership. William Hague casting clouts and only little Leo on the other scale. Yet what did we expect? Labour councils are our front line. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George June 2000 Monetary Policy 01 June 2000 Dear Eddie Our position remains simple and straight forward. You should reduce interest rates by an initial two per cent. You have described our views as "out of date". They are that Britain must boost growth to a substantially higher level by expanding demand, making the pound competitive and keeping it there. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for April 2000 House Magazine Diary 01 May 2000 Spring at last. Renewal and regeneration. A new start. But not this year. The weather is awful, the government in trouble. Our style is bossy and with the project formulated and run by a small number of power-motivated men (no women at the top). So Cabinet Members and backbenchers alike become spectators relaying messages we don’t quite believe to people who don’t listen. The chosen ones listen only to focus groups, cutting out the traditional middlemen of the party because it’s like using carrier pigeons in an age of email. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George May 2000 Monetary Policy 01 May 2000 Dear Eddie Our concerns centre on the real economy of production and employment. So our recommendations to the Monetary Policy Committee this month are the same as in previous months: reduce interest rates substantially. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for March 2000 House Magazine Diary 01 April 2000 I came back from New Zealand fit, tanned and raring to go. Now I’m ’flu-ridden, flabby (again) and things are turning sour. Mid-term grumbles, slightly late, but nonetheless indicating some annoying shifts. We told them at the last election we weren’t promising anything, and wouldn’t do much so as to prove ourselves safe, conservative and orthodox. We’ve followed that agenda exactly. Yet now they’re grumbling that we’ve done nothing for them. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for January 2000 House Magazine Diary 01 February 2000 Returning from New Zealand to Pomerania is depressing. From a young country to an old one, a clean country to a dirty one, a country run for people, to one run for the elite. I don’t want to be back but should never have gone. Alistair Campbell has let things disintegrate. After two and a half years of herd-like sycophancy the press has reversed polarity and started biting the hand that’s fed them so well. It doesn’t matter. It’s all trivia of no concern to the people. Yet suddenly we’re portrayed as a party at the end of its tether, doomed to defeat, divided and deceitful and incapable of fulfilling our promises. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George February 2000 Monetary Policy 01 February 2000 Dear Eddie We haven’t been able to put the views of the Labour Economic Policy Group before your last two MPC meetings owing to absence in New Zealand. So a belated merry new Millennium. Please make it happier economically than the last with its low growth and miserable performance. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for December 1999 House Magazine Diary 01 January 2000 In Grimsby re-selection rages. People on every street corner and pub discuss whether they want a geriatric MP or a thrusting young woman: they shall not grow old as we that are on the Left grow old. As I struggle round the streets on my Zimmer frame, "blitzing" in slow motion, humorists ask "Didn’t you used to be the MP for Grimsby?" Retirement homes (though not yet the Lords) bombard me with brochures. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for October 1999 House Magazine Diary 01 November 1999 Re-selection rages. In Grimsby they talk of little else but whether the party will sack its geriatric MP in a frenzy of modernisation. The Member himself hopes that Grimsby is too far from London or Castleford to be attractive to the golden lads and girls. Meanwhile he’s playing safe: praising the Leader, defending party policies wherever he can find them, explaining that money allocated seventeen times before is still new money, and advocating goodwill to France, their poisonous food, rotten wine and vicious farmers. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George November 1999 Monetary Policy 01 November 1999 Dear Eddie Interest rates in this country are too high in both real and comparative terms and the exchange rate has long been far too high. So our recommendation this month, consistent with all our earlier representations, must be that you reduce interest rates by 2% and that you aim to bring British rates into line with Europe’s since there is no conceivable reason why ours should be double theirs. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George October 1999 Monetary Policy 01 October 1999 Dear Eddie Like many people and the economic commentators we ourselves esteem, we were both surprised and concerned by the MPC’s paradoxical decision to raise interest rates last month. The reasons given for it just do not stand up. If house price rises are such a problem a mini-rise in rates has no effect at all while the ritual claim that a small increase now checks inflation and prevents a bigger one later is questionable when inflation is so low. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George September 1999 Monetary Policy 01 September 1999 Dear Eddie Your Monetary Policy Committee is divided. With no consensus on the future course of inflation it isn’t sure what to do next. In that situation it will play safe and opt for no change. This won’t please the pundits and institutions who represent Britain’s excessively powerful financial interest. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for July 1999 House Magazine Diary 01 August 1999 Summer doldrums. Weather too hot, hours too long, work too hard. Everyone, particularly Tony on whom we depend so totally now that our role has been reduced to his chorus and backing group, tired and frazzled. Its all gone wrong. Serbia, a triumph that must now be paid for. Ireland a failure. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George August 1999 Monetary Policy 01 August 1999 Dear Eddie Like us, you will have observed with dismay the growth of speculation along the old outdated lines that because the economy shows signs of a slight stirring to performance above the pathetic you must increase interest rates. The fear is that inflation is certain to result from the fact that growth is half a percent higher than expected and unemployment is still falling. Read more...   HOW TO SUCCEED IN POLITICS WITHOUT BEING TRYING A Guide for MPs by Austin Opinions 29 July 1999 It’s a bit late to say that you’re insane to have come here when you could have done a useful job by running a brothel, or a focus group, or even influenced government as a journalist, meeting the great, calling Ministers to account, and understanding it all. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George June 1999 Monetary Policy 01 June 1999 Dear Eddie It is clear from the confused comment and speculation in the run-up to this meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee that uncertainty prevails. Economists and pundits disagree about the state of the economy, the way it is moving, and what action you should, and are likely, to take. We don’t think there has ever been as much disagreement. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for April 1999 House Magazine Diary 01 May 1999 We’re approaching two miraculous years in power. Everlasting honeymoon. The problems remain but few now worry. Government talks about something else. Tories can’t say anything, having caused them. The Liberals talk about Kosovo. Even the Labour Party, while not ecstatic, rallies round as the elections get closer. It’s a wonderful world. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for March 1999 House Magazine Diary 01 April 1999 The good ship "New Labour" sails on its majestic way. The captain smiles benignly from the bridge. The Purser hands out the pennies. Loud hosannas ring. No sign of the predicted storms. The Almighty clearly approves. Life’s wonderful for New Labour but deeply puzzling for Old. Though the onset of Alzheimer’s is reconciling even us to Prozac politics. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George April 1999 Monetary Policy 01 April 1999 Dear Eddie We note with some concern that last month, the first for some time in which the Labour Economic Policy Group did not make a submission to the MPC, was also the first for some time in which you went wrong by opting for "wait and see" instead of continuing the process of interest rate reduction. Read more...   House Magazine Diary for January 1999 House Magazine Diary 01 February 1999 Friday 1 January Up early to walk along the canal from Todmorden to Rochdale. Every mile underlines the damage the South has done to the North by destroying our industries. The long-standing differences between humanity’s finest flowering, the Yorkshireman, and the folk on the other side also emerges. Tykes ask "How much did yer pay for yer ’ouse, eh Austin?" in surly fashion. Witty Lancastrians say "Give us a loan for a mortgage, Lad" and laugh. I don’t. Read more...

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