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After seven years in Fairyland it’s back to normal and the politics of déjà vu. The old press line up against us has re-emerged. Except for the Sun. Old Tory drums beat the old calls about Labour being the Party of high taxation, over regulation, flooding the country with foreigners who have designs on our jobs, women and houses.
The People’s Tone is becoming Harold Wilson without a pipe and it’s generally back to the Seventies. It shows that being nice to the ungrateful half dead doesn’t work. If Tony`d done what his own Party wanted, the other lot couldn’t hate him more or treat him worse, and he’d have a lot more support when things go wrong. Thursday 20 April Snotty letter from the Serjeant at Arms complaining that our Photo Exhibition included too many mentions of Jessops. Write back to say it is, after all, the Jessops Parliamentary Exhibition, it costs them a lot of money and what the hell does he expect if we’re to get sponsors. Should they perhaps call it the “Anonymous Donor Exhibition?”
The Serjeant at Arms` Department makes it difficult to have exhibitions in the Upper Waiting Room and messes sponsors about, but then sanctions pathetic exhibitions by curious pressure groups featuring pictures of dead horses. This week’s exhibition was an empty space with no boards, no displays, nothing. Was it the All Party Shyness Group?
Why don’t they clamp down on those rather than successful ones? Then they could keep all exhibitions up to our high standard instead of nit picking.
Wednesday 21 April Retirement dinner in the Commons for Geoff Druitt, Yorkshire TV’s political interviewer. His victims gather to praise him. John Prescott admits he’s never had cause to thump him.
Geoff tells us how it used to be when the Commons had characters. Sir Marcus Kimble, appearing in a debate on Incomes Policy, turned to his fellow Tory as the countdown went on and said, “I’ve been shooting in Scotland for three weeks. This Incomes Policy thing. Are we for it or against it?”
Friday 23 April Open our new Consumer Support Network created with government money just as North East Lincolnshire closes down its own advice service and fires the staff. Grimsby is in the grip of big spending cuts, rushed through in panic by the Con-Lib coalition, with the caring, sharing Liberals volunteering as a human shield for the Tories as they cut services for the poor and youth, then claim that John Prescott is making them do it.
Afternoon To MPs Back to School Day in a primary and a secondary school. Both marvellous. At the first six schools are linked up on the web to fire questions (usually “When are you going to retire?”). At the second the kids have written a series of moving essays, poems and letters to Tony Blair. Promise to take them to him and perhaps smuggle my job application in with them.
Wednesday 28 April My old friend, Jonathan Hunt, Speaker of the New Zealand House of representatives, speaks to MPs and the London Branch of the NZ Labour Party. Jonathan opposed Proportional Representation. Now he likes it. It gives the people greater influence and forces governments to get broad consent for legislation. His account of how the NZ Parliamentary Labour Party has to agree to every piece of legislation and every change of policy turns listening Labour MPs green with envy. Impotence is a way of life in our PLP. But then NZ is a democracy. We’re a presidential dictatorship.
Friday 30 April Speak to media students at Grimsby College to face the usual questions, “When are you going to retire?”
Evening Grimsby’s Great Debate on elected Regional Assemblies. I had invited John Prescott to come and put the case but he won’t travel abroad these days. So it`s left to Diana Wallis, the Liberal Euro-MP, and myself. On the other side is John Watson, formerly Tory MP for Skipton. John was very brave against Thatcherism. Asked who he’d want as Prime Minister if Mrs. Thatcher went under the proverbial bus he said “The bus driver”. Yet now he’s terrified by what is essentially a conservative device to fragment power and weaken the strong executive at the centre.
Sadly, he gives a brilliant speech. My own contribution is howled down as the audience denounces politicians, Labour, Europe, Yorkshire, and Tony Blair. But particularly Yorkshire. Grimsby would rather be merged with Iraq or North Korea than Yorkshire.
Leave early to avoid Grimsby’s first lynching. To the restaurant where Grimsby’s power elite has gathered to meet Jonathan Hunt. All three have turned up. But our request to open a New Zealand High Commission in Grimsby is turned down. |
