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Normally I hate the return after the summer. It`s like going back to school. Yet now it`s wonderful. We’re all waiting for Gordo. Contenders are all friendly. John Hutton smiles for the first time ever. Harriet Flirts. John Reid cracks a menacing joke about why I`ve killed the North Sea cod. Satraps ask what we think of Peter, Gordon, John and less likely candidates. Even the Whips are trying to be friendly, though most have forgotten how, and Tommy McAvoy is practicing benign. Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive.
Monday 9 October. First week back begins disastrously. My wife, whose name I`ve forgotten, being old, has taken over the management of my career, insisting that I mustn`t appear old or ill or I`ll be downgraded. She makes me have my hair cut short, wear a suit, stand up straight, go swimming every day, and generally give the impression of youthful vigour. Tony ageing rapidly and me rejuvenating should cross over at 58.
She also insists that I must be a model MP, so the Whips won`t turn me out, making me vote on every crazed motion and bill the government brings before us. It`s like living with Tommy McAvoy.
But it all goes disastrously wrong. I miss two divisions the first day, one the next, and a another two on the third. The problem is that I`ve forgotten `Whipspeak`. When they say “another division possible” I automatically assume it won`t happen and go home. Only to find there are votes in my absence.
Thursday l2 October To the Oxford Union for their annual “No Confidence” debate. Despite a galaxy of talent, plus Steve Pound, on our side, three of Yesterday`s Men on the other side beat us. Oxford has no confidence in any government that isn`t Conservative. Tony hasn`t convinced them that he`s a better conservative than any Tony. Gordon is denounced as the reincarnation of Stalin.
Friday l3 October To the Ilkley Literature Festival for the Donald Baverstock Lecture which a number of his disciples from Yorkshire Television have financed. The old gang who started YTV come together. Four are happily retired, three (one dead) are millionaires. I’m still looking for a purpose in life, being a limpet looking for a rock. At my age all my rocks have died or crumbled.
Monday l6 October The relaunch, sixty years on, of J.B. Priestley’s “Bright Day”, his marvellous book about Bradford before they pulled it down – though fortunately they`re now pulling the abortion of the 1950s rebuild down again. J.B.`s son, Tom Priestley, is there among the cream of Yorkshire MPs and Peers. One who I pressed to come asked, “Who is J. B. Priestley?”
To the Public Accounts Committee’s hearing on NHS finance. Clearly the civil servants are aiming at a Ground Zero NHS. They`ll ride out the closures and redundancies caused by the Trusts getting back into balance. At the same time they’re launching a programme of closures of smaller hospitals to concentrate services on big mega-hospitals miles away. Combining these two approaches is brilliantly calculated to make Doctors Against Closure the largest single party at the next election.
Thursday l9 October This may be part of a collective death wish. Jack Straw has told Labour Lords he’ll exterminate the life peers as well as the 92 hereditaries. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas so uniting the entire House against reform must screw up government business for at least a year before the election.
Clare Short has resigned from the party. The death wish clearly extends to the Whips who`ve treated Clare in an inept, clumsy fashion, well calculated to force her out. Clare is wrong to go, but I can’t criticise her. The loss is ours and Party is a ***** Goddess.
Friday 20 October To York University to speak to the Labour Club. Good attendance and an interested audience but the kids seem bemused by what’s going on. The committee tell me politics is dying at York and I may well have administered euthanasia.
Sunday 22 October To the wedding of the son of my assistant of forty years ago at Yorkshire Television. Arrive late festooned with cameras, none of which can be made to work. New style weddings are much soppier than the civil ceremony I endured. They cost thousands. Mine, I think, was excessive at £7.50. Most of the expense is due to the photographer who spent two hours taking 600 pictures of the bride, groom and family in every possible situation while the hungry guests chewed sofas or drank themselves into stupors. I`d have done the photos for free. If I could get my cameras to work. I don’t think I`ll bother getting married again. Even if my wife would let me.
Monday 23 October. Public Accounts Committee session on tax credits. The Revenue has screwed up a brilliant idea. They don’t like it and can’t get used to handing out money instead of taking it in. So, like the Poll tax, the civil servants ensure that it screws up.
Home for tea. Assured by the whips that the next division will be 8-30. My wife is taking her Tommy McAvoy role so seriously that she’s even beginning to talk in an incomprehensible Scottish accent. She whitters at me to go back early. I don’t. Arriving at 8.30 I find I’ve missed the vote. Tommy is furious. So is Linda when I get home. I can’t keep living with double McAvoys every day
Wednesday 25 October Public Accounts Committee hearing on the Child Support Agency, the biggest governmental disaster in British history, the administrative equivalent of the Battle of the Somme. We’ve wasted hundreds of millions, ended up with one and half billion in unpaid maintenance and are now proposing to go back to individual arrangements between couples. Which is what we started with.
Then to compere Fishing News`s Fishing Awards. Fishing News has served the fishing industry since 1913, almost as long as I`ve been a fishing MP. Sadly, like the Labour Party, fishing dominated by the Scots, is now moving North. Even the cod prefer devolution. The evening is saved for Yorkshire by the Young Fisherman of the Year, the skipper of “Our Lass” from Whitby. He gives a brilliant speech, announcing that he owes his success to his Uncle Harry for having a heart attack given him by Aunty Betty’s cooking, which gave him the boat. Afterwards I pose for photos with be-kilted Scottish fishermen to impress Gordon. Does he know they`re all S.N.P?
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Having seen how much David Blunkett has got for his diaries I am doing mine for posterity. Please help me find something interesting to do. Any offers of seduction, sex, scandal, drugs, rock and roll, even promotion, would make life interesting.
David taped his diaries but I`ll put mine on DVD, You Tube and My Space. I`m better looking than either David Blunkett or Sion Simon. In today`s treadwater politics a diary could help pass the time. But what we really need now is an early General Election. Go for it Gordon!
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