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CHRONICLES OF THE ANCIENT HERMIT OF GRIMSBY
(Or a year in Parliament through the eyes of Austin)
"The trouble with being old", as Lord Longford said to me "is that you've seen it all before". This is my 94th year as MP for Grimsby (is it still there? Has it been washed away by melting ice caps?) So I agree with his Lordship. I've seen new dawns before: 1945, the wonder of 1964. I've seen PR before. "You Know Labour Government Works" (and no questions about "For Who" then). I've seen admirable leadership (my heroes Hugh Gaitskell and Jim Callaghan). And I've seen it all turn to dross, as spray-on glitter usually does.
Which isn't what happened to the party this year though after two years of walking on water we have had our Saville Row suits splashed. Not yet to crotch level - that's for Clinton, but certainly up to the knees. The Mandelson scripted Fairy Story is over. Now it's retour à la normal. Normal politics is being resumed. That's not a disaster. In fact, I'm delighted: we can't have escapism and PR as a system of government forever. At some stage you have to wrestle in mud and our leaders and all the New Chum MPs might as well learn the art, the rest of us got to know so well because it will now it become their way of life. Or death. So I'm not gloomy. It's always better to live in the real world not fairyland. Hence my chronicle of how we got there.
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October.
Enjoy the last Conference of the twentieth century. A good boost to a new year of delivery Socialism. Or Turd Wayism, or whatever will be on the new menu. I particularly like the attack on the "conservative enemy" which I take to mean the old boy public school oligarchies who dominate everything. Even the Labour Party. Unfortunately, the media interpret it as an attack on them and so do our new business friends. They view it as a statement that Labour is no longer the Conservative Party and begin to recoil from us in horror. Which opens the opportunity the press has been waiting for to attack us. Thank heavens Tony's got a Labour press secretary. Even if he isn't.
November
Queen's Speech points to a hard working session and total dedication to our sheep-like skills of voting through measures about which we've not been consulted and know very little. We must be the only Social Democratic party in the world which is neither and so gives its MPs no say on what they vote through. Fortunately, the New Chums don't mind. In their view that's what they're there for, however much geriatrics like me may grumble.
December
Re-selected at last. Which is more of an insult to Grimsby than a triumph for me because none of the young thrusters seeking seats could be bothered to go there and live for a year as would the candidates. Decide that this is the moment to go to a Socialist country - New Zealand - to see a Socialist government coming in and increasing taxes and stopping privatisation as its first acts. Attend the opening of their new session. Then climb a mountain with the new PM who tells me I'm fat, self-indulgent and lack drive and initiative. She's noticed I'm becoming New Labour.
January
Missed the Millennium. Thank heavens! Britain looks from the photos to have been in the grip of a drunken, pathetic, noisy rabble. The Dome, our symbol of New Labour, is a whimpering disaster. The Wheel won't turn The River of Fire doesn't flow. The weather is awful. Disastrous beginning to Labour's Annus Mirabilis.
February.
Party membership continues its inexorable decline, though to stop us knowing this we now get neither returns nor membership cards any more. In Grimsby we're upset yet I find on talking to colleagues that it's the same everywhere. Even Hartlepool and Sedgfield. Joining Labour is like a raffle ticket. They've bought it. They've won (us). So why waste more time and money on buying another when it means boring meetings and policy discussions?
March
I've come to an accommodation with Tommy McAvoy, the pairing Whip. I won't vote against the government's more insane measures (now coming in fast and furious with more, now, from Jack Straw and less from Alistair Darling and David Blunkett) and he will allow me to go home, even to visit Grimsby occasionally to find out of it's still there. He finally broke me by bringing in Anne Campbell when I was going to vote against some enormity and demanding that I explain to her why she couldn't go to a crucial function because I was playing silly buggers. I sobbed convulsively.
April
Gordon Brown the other inhabitant of the Downing Street Weather House, has always had a sure touch on socialist gruel. Yet it slipped on pensioners no matter how important it was to do most for the poorest a 75p basic increase (which most don't even get) was and is abusive. I write back in spidery handwriting to explain that I can't read letters. I can't afford glasses on my pension increase and have forgotten what they're writing about.
May
Nemesis comes in the local elections. North East Lincolnshire doesn't have any. If it had our Labour Council, hanging on with a majority of two would be massacred. Tony is the great explainer. He thinks that he's only to put the case and people will be convinced. Unfortunately our people are less likely to vote and more difficult to please. We've wasted two years showing ourselves respectable. So we're not delivering what they want: growth, more public spending and better services. Worse, we've treated many of our friends: teachers, nurses, trade unions, local government as the enemy within. Councillors are Labour's front line. Instead of helping them we've shot them in the back.
June
Sense the tide turning against use. William Hague is the antithesis of Tony. As a Yorkshireman he's a man of few words and most of those are "bugger off" while Tony throws words at every problem. Hague is doing well in the Commons with his Oxford Union counter punching. Our usual mantra of "it's all down to the Tories" does not work with him. He just ignores it and jumps on any populist bandwagon which happens to be moving. Now several are: petrol, asylum seekers, crime and the rest. The Tories have only two policies: shoot burglars and keep the pound. Yet they're getting a response on them, while we give lectures on looking hurt, trying to understand for the very first time why the people don't love us as much as we love ourselves. Are they worthy of us? I know how it feels but our leaders have never been tested before. No previous Labour leaders have ever got so far without being battered, hated, despised and all the other ills Labour flesh was heir to before we ceased to be Labour. It must be disconcerting to find themselves still hated after giving up everything we assumed to be hateful and stopping threatening anyone. Except our own people.
July
A month from Hell. Benji the Bin Man has contributed more to our understanding of British politics than Sir Ivor Jennings, David Butler and Peter Hennessy combined. He certainly knows more than we backbenchers. The memos enrage me. Tony thinks trite thoughts and circulates them. He invents half-baked remedies and never tells ministers. He listens to panic merchants like Gould II and wants to be associated with every crazy "initiative" presumably because "an initiative a day keeps Bob Worcester at bay". Sadly, people are ceasing to believe what we say in a world of endless initiatives, no improvement.
Meanwhile, Gordon is taking over the world. He's fulfilling our spending dreams though three years late. I'm all for his Comprehensive Spending Review. He's married and therefore as miserable as the rest of us. This isn't a financial strategy it's a leadership bid. Yet Gordon is an economic Jekyll and Hyde, Mr. Jekyll is boosting spending but Mr. Hyde is ruining manufacturing by high interest rates and a grossly overvalued Pound which he wont do anything about.
I thought both would have been disastrous before now I've told him so in dozens of letters to which he never replies. Now on the principle that a stopped clock is the right time once a day I will be proved right. Yet the whole issue of overvaluation and its damage to manufacturing is being muddied by the Euro-enthusiasts who interpret every problem caused by overvaluation (and the sky is black with them) as an argument for the Euro. Totally barmy. We couldn't go in at this rate or anything like it.
The government needs to get the Pound down if it's to enter the Euro. It needs it down even more to save manufacturing. Yet it does nothing so perhaps it's got no real interest in either. Meanwhile, the Tories and the anti-Euro brigade must say how well Labour's doing because it shows what we can do for ourselves and Labour's Euro-fools must knock Gordon's record to support the case for going in. Giles Radice is having a wonderful time trying to balance predictions of doom with praise for Gordon's record and now he has to stop his Treasury Committee killing each other because both parties have provided it with people loyal to the line so there's no middle ground.
August
Everyone needs a break. Tony because he looks about to crack, Gordon because he doesn't. Me because I'm exhausted, wasting my youthful good looks tramping through lobbies after midnight to defeat opposition by 300 to 10. The whole nation is seizing the opportunity of a grossly overvalued exchange rate to go abroad, leaving the country in the hands of John Prescott and the Official Receiver.
Issue a statement that I'm prepared to pose for photos on my holidays. No-one responds. So I buy a camera which allows me to photograph myself and leave for California to watch the American conventions on the beach. These two mindless crapfests are what we are becoming: Politics will become an argument between two wings of Rotary about nothing very much.
September
Feel the political sap rising again spend the month addressing lots of meetings on the Euro, the election, pensions, housing and all our other problems. People actually attend! This is dangerous. They're getting interested in politics. Can't have that with an election coming. Meanwhile, the subterranean, silent, secretive election campaign for the Speaker-ship goes on. I'm all for a Speaker who supports and defends the backbenchers. We're treated like sheep, kept in the dark, deluged with faxes, asked to chant silly mantras and caged in the Commons until all hours, to maintain huge and unnecessary majorities. May the best woman win.
Sadly backbenchers are too gutless to assert ourselves, take select committees from the Whips and use our power to chuck out downright silly legislation. This is no job for an adult. Yet the decline of Parliament is our fault. All the modernisation reports, the improvement in hours, the boost to feeding facilities in the world are no substitute for guts.
A bit late to find them. Now we're entering election year, which means lots of yah boo sucks and months of not rocking the boat and reading from our party briefs. We'll win no doubt. Yet if we didn't do what's necessary to improve the lot of our people with an overwhelming majority what are we going to do when its smaller? We'll be paralysed with fear. Best to shut up. Ours not to reason why. Ours but to vote and cry. Where were you in the New Labour's Revolution, Granddad? I abstained. Of course the Fairy Story isn't quite over. The tide will flow back to us. Yet it will never be glad confident morning again. |
