|
Written by Austin Mitchell
|
|
01 March 2007 |
|
The Clarke/Millward meeting in the City Inn wasn`t a Labour Party meeting at all but a media-fest. Britain`s Best and Brightest crowded the front 15 rows and asked all the questions. About 20 lower IQ politicians huddled at the back. I, as photographer, sat in the middle.
It was a launch without a missile. No programme apart from rhetorical questions. No leader. No purpose, apart from praising Gordon with faint damns. We certainly need a policy debate. But this promises to make a website the opium of the Party.
I was right royally conned on Wednesday, 28 March. The Offender Management Bill is a very bad Bill: the last throw of Blairite “privatise public services” lunacy. I`m flatly opposed to it. It will achieve nothing and having just reorganised the Probation Service there`s no point in yet more privatisation. So I fully intended to vote against privatisation. I did so on amendment at report stage.
Not enough. Tommy MacAvoy said the Government would be beaten on third reading by 287 to 283 because the Scot Nats were voting en masse against an English Bill to humiliate Labour before the Scottish elections. Did I want to do that? Ian Cawsey chimed in even more anxiously. Did I want to endanger his and Shona`s marginal seats?
So I said I`d abstain. Not enough. It was so close I had to vote for the Bill. I asked why the Government couldn`t make concessions to accommodate our views and avoid defeat instead of bluffing it out and forcing me and a few other rebels into eating our words in humiliating fashion. No answer.
I`m too weak. I agreed. John Reid embraced me in the lobby. Yet it was all unnecessary. The Bill carried by 293 to 268, a majority of 25. I was conned. I feel soiled. It will be diluted in the Lords. It will end up as an unworkable mess. Both sides will have made fools of themselves. Morale in the Probation service will be undermined. Nothing will have been achieved.
The Leadership election campaign is Becketising as Waiting for Miliband. Who won`t come. If he`s any sense.
David is being turned into New Labour wonderman by the Anyone But Gordon tendency. He couldn`t live up to the myth. He`s a bright keen policy wonk who`s not stayed in any one job long enough to be tested, too serious to stand up to Cameron, too Blairite to appeal to the Party, and too young to be elected. So he won`t stand and there are no more Vice chancellorships in New Zealand if he did.
It all goes to show how desperate some people are to stop Gordon. |
