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NOT THE YORKSHIRE POST.
Jim Callaghan was a Labour leader of a type we’ll never see again. Brought up in the party, steeped in the trade union movement, and programmed to its instincts. That production line is now closed down. Also he was a leader. Not charting his own course like Tony Blair and changing it every day, but leading the party and holding it together by listening to it. That was a great gift. I remember him listening to us as students in Nuffield College urging him to devalue, to us as MPs in the dining and tea rooms which he used to visit regularly, and later to me talking about the state of the party. He told me I`d become too cynical.
I stood at the 1977 by-election in Grimsby to defend Jim Callaghan’s government because it was holding the post-war settlement of welfare state, mixed economy and public spending together in the face of the worst economic crisis since the war. He did so with no majority and morale in the party stayed high. Far higher than now.
He kept it going to 1979. Quite an achievement but brought to an end by the trade unions and the winter of discontent. Jim expected the party to do its duty in the way he did. The unions didn’t and the party had a nervous breakdown with the strain. That was the strange death of Social Democratic Britain. Jim gave up in what seemed to me at the time to be despair.
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Lynton Crosbie, Michael Howard’s Australian x import is building a reputation as smart and as tough as Alistair Campbell`s. He even made John Howard, the Australian PM and “boring as batshit”, into an exciting election winner.
He`s a genius at the dirty politics which began in America with Lee Attwarter and has been continued by Bush’s adviser, Karl Rove. In Australia that produced the ruthless treatment of asylum seekers and the claim that they`d been throwing babies overboard and in America the boat veterans sneer at Kerry’s war record. Now it`s here with dog whistle politics - the art of emitting signals heard by the hounds but too high pitched for more sensitive souls. This is the “are you thinking what we’re thinking” approach of inferring without saying. If I tried it the answer would be “you dirty minded swine”.
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None of us realised in 1999 when we passed the legislation to restrict party identification on the ballot paper to official candidates so as to stop people standing as “Literal Democrats” or “Conversative” that we were creating a situation where nice nuisances like Howard Flight could be purged.
Michael Howard has opened up the way for leaders to reconstruct their parties in their own image by disposing of nuisances. Tony Blair’s already doing it at the other end by replacing retiring MPs with his bright young apparatchicks and chaps. Now he can simply dump the Marshall-Andrews`s, Dennis Skinners`s, Clair Shorts`s, Jeremy Corbyns`s, and anyone else he happens not to like, and force left wing parties to adopt nice, well scrubbed, Blairites. What a clean, housetrained party we’d be.
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Tony has created a new system of government by Gofers on Sofas. The bright ideas President Tony loves are raised in sofa sessions among his small group of Gofers, particularly the head Gofer, Charlie Falconer. Tony says yes. They then go away and implement them backed by all the brilliant junior Gofers Tony’s recruited.
A crowd of Gofers follows Tony as he strides purposefully out into the world and through to the Commons in an excited giggling group. What was once cabinet government by ministers following the will of the party has become Gofer Government following the will of Tony. It`s here that all the mistakes are made. Gofers, Straw and Hoon, invade Iraq, Gofer Milburn screws up the election, Gofer Charlie screws up Constitutional and Lords reform and Gofer Tessa goofs on gambling. It`s also where the war with Gordon Brown is stirred, and indigestible morsels like Foundation Hospitals or terrorist legislation are thrust down the gullet of the party. Gofer it Tony.
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Shock horror. The Yorkshire Post has told an angry world of my desire to throw old people out on the street if they won`t pay their council tax (see my Election Blog on austinforgrimsby.blogspot.com. I`ve learned two lessons from the experience. Never enlarge on questionnaire answers. Just tell them what they want to hear. Never explain to idiots. Particularly when they’re on a journalist sewing course for stitch ups. I tried explaining to the YP reporter that she’d got it wrong, but being of limited intelligence she didn`t understand. Every old age pensioner vote is now lost. Nothing to do now but retire and move house. I sent to YP one last farewell letter. They edited it down. So here it is. In full:-
The Editor
The Yorkshire Post
Yorkshire Post Newspapers Ltd
PO Box 168 Wellington Street
Leeds LS1 1RF
Dear Sir
My how standards of journalism have gone off at the Yorkshire Post since I stopped writing for it. In her efforts to create a row Jane Charnley’s report (Anger after Labour MP – page 1 24 March 2005) is stitching up, not honest reporting.
So let me put the record straight. I made it clear to Ms Charnley, as to the Pensions questionnaire, that I think the (Tory created) council tax is a bad one. It should be replaced by implementing the recommendations of the Layfield Committee through Income Tax or Central Government payments. I support an ability to pay system. Why didn’t she make that clear?
I warned, however, that the Lib/Dem option of a local income tax would run up against the problem that governments would be unlikely to let property off the tax hook and property taxation creates a difficulty for old people in bigger houses.
That’s all. I didn’t say they should move. Nor did I describe them as “hard luck cases”, though I pointed out that to legislate for exceptional and hard luck cases is bad practice. I emphasised throughout that I was talking about “exceptional cases” although Ms Charnley was trying to convince me that 40% of old people live in houses that are too big and that one bedroom and a box room was excessive. Failing in this insanity and in her attempts to find out how many bedrooms I have (too many to count Jane) she took half of the story and hawked it round for comment by people who weren’t told that I was saying that council tax was unfair, in an unreasonable attempt to create a row and portray me as wanting to evict old people from their homes in the same brutal way as her editor evicted me from my column. Shame on you Jane. No prospect of a job for you on my “Not the Yorkshire Post” Weblog on austinmitchell.org.
Yours sincerely
AUSTIN MITCHELL (aged 86) |
