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2002 was the year The Project turned into Animal Farm. Except that instead of pigs turning into humans, our Super-leaders turned into ordinary, harried, hapless humans just like us. Now we’re just like any other government: shambolic, error prone, drifting from blunder to cock-up, missing every target we’ve set instead of driving forward purposefully to the two basic ones: full employment by 2004, Universal Happiness by 2005. The press has turned nasty and decided to be Ham’s opposition on the grounds that the Tories aren’t capable of doing the job.
It was bound to happen but after five years of walking on water by the cunning trick of striding from submerged Tory to submerged Tory we’re now floundering in it. Normal politics have been resumed.
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January
It’s marvellous to welcome the New Year in with a dynamic , popular government led by a radical Prime Minister busily putting everything to right. I am, of course, in New Zealand. Returning to Pomerania reveals a rather different situation with 410 characters in search of a policy, no one sure what platform we won the election on, and ominous talks of Privatisation, Modernisation and, in the case of Iraq, combining the two as Nuclearisation.
February
Beginning to wonder whether MP is a real job at all. Is it demanding enough for an adult? Parliament isn’t important anymore. The political journalists tell the government what to do and have taken our job of controlling and criticising the executive. Opinion polls tell government where to go. It listens to its focus groups, not to us. The line of march is decided by marketing, not us or ideology. We’re neither intelligent or trustworthy enough to even be part of the sales force. There’s not much to do except sit around like the Michelangelo painting (but less decorously) waiting to be touched by the hand of God and promoted to PPS or - (first class graduates under 18 only need apply) – put straight into the cabinet.
I’m perfectly content to do whatever Tommy McAvoy tells me because he's promised to discuss my promotion prospects with Tony. Yet I do hear a lot of grumbling from others less loyal and patient than I, and even more from the growing numbers who’ve lost jobs and want revenge, though of course they call it a clear policy.
March
Back to New Zealand with the Environment and Food Committee to study how to make agriculture successful by cutting off subsidies and forcing farmers to grow for the consumer, not support. It's what we should do in Britain but we can't do anything so sensible because of the EU. The Stalinist approach of “Agriculture in One Country” has been replaced by a Trotskyite policy controlled by France which benefits massively from all the dosh we pay in. The only reform permitted is to make us pay more.
April
Distinct symptoms that the economy is turning sour. Yet my regular advice to Eddie George doesn't seem to be getting through so he's not brought interest rates down by the necessary 2%. Economic policy in this country has always been run to serve the purposes of London and Finance and still is now. Rocketing London house prices so terrify the Bank that it won't reduce interest rates which are the world's highest around. The pound stays high, manufacturing areas are crucified, we lose jobs and call it “stability”.
Giving MPs big grants to live in London has isolated us from the real world. We now get richer every week with the rising value of houses bought on public money. This makes us an elite and very different to our constituents. So despite the decline of the economy, perceptible all around us, we continue to think that things are going well because we are. No wonder that we want shorter parliamentary hours so we can go home and watch our houses grow in value. It's repellent to see us forcing injustice on council tenants while money rolls into our pockets as home owners. Always stay in touch with the people. I do, mostly by telepathy. New Labour doesn't. Which is why the ground is shifting beneath our feet while we continue our little games as though we are the party of perpetual victory.
May
The Byers assassination. The media are now so powerful that by hunting as a pack they can change policy and hound ministers out of office. It was more difficult with Steve than later with Estelle. He's a chap and backed by the Downing Street Chums Club, whereas she was a woman, left lonely to twist in the wind. Despite the addition of women to cabinet, Downing Street remains a Lad's Club. The women can be brought forward to defend Cherie but usually the lads aren't too tolerant of the problems of women ministers; the anxiety, the loneliness, the lack of male bravado. However concerned the woman; however popular she might be outside, which Estelle undoubtedly was, Steve somewhat less so.
The signals are clear, the truce between media and government which has lasted so long is now over. In default a real opposition in Parliament, and nowadays within the Labour Party too, they're going to do the job. They'll do it much better but in more brutal and personalised fashion. Sadly, the rest of the PLP doesn't care much either way because in death there is hope.
June
Tony seems upset. Guess the country isn't being worthy of him and he resents the media's claim to be a power in the land. This is the stage of the political cycle where we should start worrying about leadership. Everything now focuses on the Presidential PM. Nothing is done without his driving it forward but nothing is spent without Gordon consenting. On these two positions much is being held up. So we're like the Dual Monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. No great damage in having two leaders as long as the dual monarchs get on, but much more worrying if relations between Gordon and Tony become the kind of Interfada lobby correspondents describe. I, of course, have to take their word for it. No-one tells us anything. We Nodding Dogs on the backbenches are fed on Pedigree Chum, Pal and Party Pap, so we're all mates together.
July
To New Zealand. Again! - for the election and Labour's victory, muted by a Proportional Representations system which forces them to get a new coalition partner. The thing about PR is that it requires government to put together coalitions and get widespread consent for every measure it wants to pass. With a huge majority a government like ours gets whatever it wants without question or persuasion. So it is able to treat opinion in parliament with contempt like a rubber stamp. Not so in NZ.
I'm there for the launch of my film and book about how New Zealand's changed since I left, and they had to adopt a new national anthem: God Defend New Zealand. Neither book nor film goes down well with the intellectuals, either of them. They want me to attack New Zealand as a nation of slobs without the culture of a Yoghurt. On the other hand, both do well in the ordinary person's market. They quite like me being unctuously enthusiastic about this paradise of the ordinary person.
August
Politics are in hibernation. I'm in California learning to surf. Locals assume it's a refilming of Moby Dick.
September
Politics again dormant and in view of the absence of any debate I contribute to, I do a week as presenter on Calendar, the Yorkshire Television regional programme I used to front with Richard Whiteley. Unfortunately, unable to see the autocue or hear the earpiece owing to age. But I enjoyed it. It's nice to be a celeb now they are loved and politicians despised.
To Copenhagen for a conference of Agriculture Committees. Determined to get to grips with the Euro at last, I change £50 into Euros for my visit, to find that they don't use it in Denmark. Go to the conference confident that the EU will be forced to reform the Common Agricultural Policy but quickly get the sense that the others don't feel the same. The French and Germans don't turn up. The Italians denounce developing countries as producing inedible and unhygienic food and taking European jobs. My passionate plea for reform which is always loudly applauded in Grimsby is received in stunned silence. Must be bad translation.
October
The Labour Party Conference, which looked as though it might be livelier than usual, turns out to be duller, so I drive it from the headlines by changing my name to Haddock and walking round Blackpool with a large, eight foot prawn. All the fishing MPs were asked to change their names to their favourite fish for National sea Food Week. I was the only one daft enough to accept. Amazingly the gimmick look off like a rocket. Almost as many television appearances as my wife; endless telly tours of Blackpool fish and chip shops (where I found only cod), loud welcomes wherever I go. I got cold feet when the House authorities, Who's Who and the driving licence people begin ringing up to ask what they should record me as. Change back. Bang goes my cunning plot to ensure that Grimsby gets a new candidate at the next election – “That brilliant man, Haddock. Much better than that Old Fartonian Mitchell”.
November
The Queen's Speech is a rag bag rather than a coherent set of ideas. We're beginning to drift. The economy drifts down hill. Tony drifts naively towards Europe. Gordon does a superb job of pretending all's well. The Downing Street Intafada becomes more open. What a load of creeps we are in the PLP and the Party. Members leave instead of protesting. MPs grovel for promotion. There's no discussion, no debate, no challenges. This is mass labotomisation.
December
North East Lincolnshire and Hull are rated as failing authorities, at the bottom of every list, except charm, pleasant living, cheap housing, lovely towns and nice communities. It's a stroke of political genius to issue a damning report like this just four months before the elections. Perhaps it's John Prescott's innate sense of fair play to give the Tories and Liberals a sporting chance. Very New Labour to go into battle stabbing our front line in the back.
Return to Grimsby to recover from a session of “busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do”, and explain to the Labour Group that at this stage of the cycle we need a futile gesture. New Labour's is them. They explain their enthusiasm for the government in three words. Two of which are “the government”. Write to ministers to ask for urgent meetings to discuss what they're going to do to help us. No reply.
Family Christmas
Santa brings me a modernisation text book. All blank pages. Leave for Shetland with Helen Clark from New Zealand, and Jonathan Hunt, the Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament. Shetland is our second choice, we couldn't get tickets to Siberia. It turns out to be closed for Hogmanay. Helen insists on walking all over the island.
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My New Year resolution is to find where the Labour Party has been buried and the tomb of the Unknown Socialist. I joined a party of “us against them” of equality, of public spending and of socialism. Where is it now? New Labour is a marketing machine, anxious to live down all that and so successful at it that we've a huge majority and no discernable programme except staying in power. The only consolation is that the Tories are going to the dogs faster than us. Still, interesting times lie ahead. So Happy New Year! |
