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We’re approaching two miraculous years in power. Everlasting honeymoon. The problems remain but few now worry. Government talks about something else. Tories can’t say anything, having caused them. The Liberals talk about Kosovo. Even the Labour Party, while not ecstatic, rallies round as the elections get closer. It’s a wonderful world.
Except for backbenchers. We're no longer necessary: a political coccyx which no-one sees a use for. The party wants us to stay home and campaign. The Whips are too nervous to let us go because they treat a majority of 178 as if it were five. So we're kept kicking our heels, pushing the Refreshment Department into profit, and wasting our youth - at least mine. The Tories could play havoc with a dozen condottieri keeping us all up here night after night, ageing the new chums and undermining morale. But they've neither the energy nor the Dirty Dozen. Only Eric Forth. So the Good Ship New Labour, four hundred guys and gals aboard, drifts happily with the current. This is the death of politics. Indeed, no-one misses them apart from the embittered old. Welcome to the Dale Carnegie state. One country. One class. One Party.
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Monday 29 March
First day of my attachment with Humberside Police. I'm late. Asked for my policing interests I omit the real ones: pornography, prostitution, the police helicopter and how to avoid radar traps, and dutifully volunteer for community policing with perhaps a night patrol in Central Hull (so much quieter than Grimsby). End my first day exhausted, impressed, but worried about how thin the blue line is being stretched. Thanks to diversion of money to the Met. Why is Treasury still allowed to insist on "efficiency savings" every year making anorexia remains a way of life?
Tuesday 30 March
New Labour is on the ball technologically. I have, therefore, had my own Web Site for two years but not being competent I hadn't seen it until last week. Then I found that my son, who designed it on the cheap, had included pictures of donkeys on the beach in Cleethorpes, misspellings, and ludicrous claims like "hobbies: drinking and kerb crawling". So today it's cleaned up and reorganised by a professional. Click in on: http://www.austinmitchell.co.uk to find out my views on Serbia (undecided), Tony Blair (ecstatic - with a photograph) and the Third Way (awaiting re-surfacing). Vaut le visite as the Michelin Guide says.
Go to the Radio One reception to represent the younger MPs because the New Chums are so prematurely middle-aged. Pose for photographs with Zoë Ball and John Peel to help them in their careers and write Mark Radcliffe's jokes down for use in addresses to schools. Talk to several youngsters, who turn out to be BBC Executives.
Wednesday 31 March
Day of disasters. Arrive on College Green lured by the promise of a long interview about my career and aspirations for a new Channel Four programme to be called "The News Show". It turns out to be a trick as I begin to realise from their eagerness to get me to sign a release form before doing the interview. Investigating afterwards and too late, I found that the company is a fake, the item is for the existing 11 O'clock Show, and the aim to make fools of MPs - or is it even bigger ones? I duly obliged by a lengthy harangue about the Third Way (the H is silent), correcting the interviewer, then trying to seduce her, and boasting how close I am to Tony Blair. Only 200 yards, a busy road and big iron gates separate us. Rather than the dizzy bird she posed as, the interviewer turns out to be Terry Donovan's daughter (media jobs are hereditary these days) who is probably a fellow of All. Souls and married to someone in the Cabinet Office. It's all too easy to make MPs look pompous but at least they didn't ask me to pose with a giant inflatable penis. Or did they? There was something going on behind me.
Afternoon.
Pose with Gordon Brown and a big ten penny piece. When I drop it Gordon cruelly comments "These things demand economic skills Austin" and turns to beam on Shona. Tommy McAvoy is one of those feminists my wife most approves of. After generously letting four of us go to a debate at UCL for which no Tories turned up, he has explained to me in his patient, loving, almost feminine way, his policy on my applications for pairs in the form of an invitation to re-arrange two words, one of which is "off" to form a well known Scottish phrase or expression. Until I puzzle that out from Salmon's Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable,
I hesitate to criticise the Whips but today they are at their worst. Like oracles with nothing to say. At first they prophesy a long night's journey into day. Then suddenly it's "We've fixed it so you can all get away early", then it's "Don't go. Two votable orders after the statement". That was wrong but fools me into staying for a vote that doesn't happen. Again!
Linda has arranged for me to be driven north by son Jonathan which is also infuriating. I can't call in at Northampton, even though I've given Sally Keeble notice I'll be coming in her constituency. Jonathan announces that he's tired so I have to drive. No rest or recreation.
Thursday 1 April
After arriving home at 3am I get to Grimsby for 8.30 am for the Humberside launch of the Regional Development Agency, our only sop for missing out on Scotland's exciting adventure. Insanely, they've called themselves "Yorkshire Forward". Grimsby hates Yorkshire. The Council has only recently removed the slogan "Yorkies Prepare Your Coffins" on the road in and I've kept the fact that I'm a Yorkshireman quiet by pretending to be a drug dependent pedophile.
Anxious Yellowbellies run round asking each other whether the slogan is an April Fool Day's joke. The Council Leader is so shaken she refers in her speech to Yorkshire's traditional industries "mining and steeling". Yorkshire is becoming Greater Serbia with us as its Kosovo and the rest of Lincolnshire its Albania. Adjourn to my office to deal with constituency problems and manage to fall asleep during one particularly difficult case. The constituent wakes me angrily crying "Shona would never do that".
Friday 2 & Saturday 3 April
Devoted to catching up with the pile of unanswered mail. Fail. Life is a treadmill moving faster all the time.
Sunday 4 April
Jonathan Hunt, New Zealand MP, is staying with us. Linda plans a great family picnic at Hardcastle Craggs. Laden with coolie bins and picnic baskets we stagger through the woods to find a table, unfortunately losing son-in-law who goes off in the wrong direction and is not seen again. This upsets daughter who goes to find him and doesn't come back either. Son then decides to climb out of the valley to make mobile phone contact with his girlfriend. Jake, our Labrador, invades the picnic next door, stealing the children's sandwiches. Linda produces three bottles of Champagne in the confident assumption that we're all middle-class now so they won't be noticed. In Yorkshire! Loud shouts of "That's why MPs are paid so much" and "Bloody New Labour". She then announces her theory that there would be no Serbian crisis if NATO had women leaders because of their gentle, non-confrontational, caring, networking approach. Just like Tommy McAvoy. When I maintain the Socratic dialogue by replying "Rubbish!" she stamps off, cursing men in general and me in particular, leaving Jonathan Hunt and I with three bottles of champagne, several coolie bins and baskets to carry. Plus Jake. When I joke that I now know how they feel in Kosovo, Jonathan walks off too, announcing that this is not a subject for humour. New Zealand is doing its share by accepting 75 refugees.
Monday 5 April
Send my submission to the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee. Last month I missed and for the first time in months they went wrong. So I give them my simple instruction to bring British interest rates below Europe's so the Pound can establish a proper relationship with the ever-diminishing Euro, and counter the looming recession. There's no reason at all why our rates should be so high.
The Chancellor won't have a macro economic policy so the Bank must do it for him. The Pound is still in the ERM bands. Rising oil prices and Euro uncertainties will buoy it up so they should halve interest rates to boost the economy, give manufacturing a chance and get the Pound down to some level where government could think about locking in with the Euro where we must maintain relative rates for two years. Locking in starts now because we can't go in at this uncompetitive exchange rate. Those who'd consider that are insane. Or Liberals.
Bankers, like generals, always fight the last war so they've locked us into a battle against dead inflation. Low interest rates should be the norm. It doesn't now pay to produce for export in this country. Unless we get the Pound down we'll have to bribe the foreigners who own our industry to persuade them to carry on.
Tuesday 6 April
Entire family go off to London announcing that they wouldn't stay with me, even for an attendance allowance. Left to fend for myself I go in the car to get fish and chips. Manage to lock myself out of the car with the keys in the engine. Sit on a wall for two hours eating the fish and chips - something I've not done for forty years - a One Man Focus Group to hear the views of the people. Which are "Can't you afford a restaurant on your wages?" or "Don't you MPs have anything to do?"
If I'd been New Labour I'd have used the enforced wait to campaign.. Instead I thought through my position on Serbia. It's fatalism. Once embarked - without being consulted - on bombing everything else follows. Bombing means refugees, means bringing them here, means ground troops to make Kosovo fit for Albanians to re-live in, means prolonged involvement. No use now either supporting it or opposing it. Parliament is irrelevant. It'll grind on and ministers won't listen to us because they, in turn, aren't listened to. Which may be why all ministerial speeches are now addressed, not to we the people, but to Slobb Dan, as if he watches the Parliament channel. I know our policy was Education Education Education but I didn't realise we'd turn cruise missiles and Harrier jets into educational tools. To teach Serbians.
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Welcome to Britain's New Political Order. No passion. No poles. No fixed positions. No blocks. No Right. No Left. Just multi-hued blancmange. The Left is divided between "troop senders" and "stay outers". The Tory party has no alternative except nit-picking. Usually for shadow ministers. The Liberals are all over the place, but mainly in Kosovo. So Tony walks on water by assembling different coalitions for different purposes, and support will rally to whatever he does because he's so patently honest and concerned. The policy may not work. But it's done for our good.
So why get angry or dissent? It achieves nothing in this new ball game. Very Presidential. Tony says "follow me" and we all do with differing degrees of enthusiasm. A thousand focus groups can't be wrong. In any case, there is no alternative. This is the death of politics.
Harold Wilson started out as a more promising - or at least promising more - Blair and quickly lost trust. Tony will stay loved and respected. Unlike Harold, he's not a politician but patently sincere. Even when he's wrong. Can it go on? Luck doesn't run forever. Sod's Law if government will return. The Tories might even get their act together. So let's enjoy it while we can. It may be boring for we politicians. But the people love it!
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