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Friday 1 January
Up early to walk along the canal from Todmorden to Rochdale. Every mile underlines the damage the South has done to the North by destroying our industries. The long-standing differences between humanity’s finest flowering, the Yorkshireman, and the folk on the other side also emerges. Tykes ask "How much did yer pay for yer ’ouse, eh Austin?" in surly fashion. Witty Lancastrians say "Give us a loan for a mortgage, Lad" and laugh. I don’t.
Evening
To what used to be Bradford’s Library Theatre where I went as a kid because it was the only way of seeing dirty French films. Now it’s the Priestley Theatre and it doesn’t show French films any more so it’s OK for Euro-sceptics. And me. "You’d better sit upstairs" says the receptionist. "There’s no heating on downstairs".
Monday 4 January
Euro Day. After months of excitement the Euro hits a waiting world like a wet Wednesday in Wombwell. Issue a statement to the world’s media hoping it appreciates massively. No-one carries it, but the Euro begins to soften immediately, making Sterling’s overvaluation worse.
Tuesday 5 January
Grimsby delegation to DETR to plead for a fairer deal. Join a long queue of other local authority delegations shuffling up Victoria Street. There have been so many demands for meetings that ministers have asked presentations to be done on video rather than in person. Must establish a production company to make them. With suitable background noises such as sobbing, cries of despair, and melancholic strings.
To Oxford to the Farming Conference. I began to hear the grumbling, muttering, whinging noises at Reading but assumed at first it was something wrong with the car. I’ve been preparing for this for weeks by listening to the Archers and Emmerdale. The programmes are a bit too sexy for New Labour but if farmers spent less time on sex and more on their animals (though some combine the two) they’d do better. I hope this rural sex obsession doesn’t infect our new MPs from all the farming seats we’ve won.
Make the mistake of attacking farmers as idle layabouts, scrounging from Brussels and suggesting that we’d do better to import our food from cheaper producers overseas and sell off the farms for supermarkets, Multiplex cinemas, and drive-in brothels. Charles Kennedy wins the debate by the usual Liberal trick of promising the farmers higher subsidies from the one penny Liberal tax increase. The assembled farmers cheer him to the echo. When they begin to chant "Long Live Paddy", he quietens them quickly.
Wednesday 6 January
Meeting with the publishers of the Great Parliamentary Picture Book Lady Wharton, Lord Cranborne and I are shooting. They seem unimpressed. "Not enough women MPs", "Not enough activity", "No shots of Tony Blair", "Can you get Peter Mandelson to write a preface?" "Is that camera shake because of age?"
Leave in despair to belt North to the Grimsby Chamber of Trade. Having forgotten my briefing notes from the Treasury, I tell the truth and give a depressing picture of the year ahead. Several leave sobbing. Others say they’d much rather have heard from Shona. "She cheers us up". Home to find the work piling up again. This is becoming another misspent recess.
Thursday 7 January
The Bank of England accepts my advice for the third month running, though not far or fast enough. The Euro goes down against the Pound, making us even less competitive. We should manage our interest rates for competitiveness now but Eddie’s Doomsday Machine won’t let us. It’s like a financial Maginot Line, guns pointed in exactly the wrong direction, firing at inflation which is no longer a threat, while recession creeps up.
Friday 8 January
To Leeds for the launch of the Yorkshire Development Agency. Full attendance of MPs, including Kevin Hughes, who asks if I might be voting with the government this year. Also the Euro MPs, most of whom are my generation and, therefore, de-selected or so low on the list that they haven’t a chance. Encourage them to throw out the entire Commission next week but they’re too nervous to do so. The R.D.A. emphasises that it must compete with a Scottish Development Campaign with more money and the booster of their own Parliament. We need elected regional government in Yorkshire and Humberside but it’s postponed, like so much else, until the next Parliament. Perhaps I should form a Yorkshire Nationalist Movement, then good things will flow our way.
On to Hull for a meeting between Humberside MPs and the Chief Constable who tells us his force is being cut to help the Met. Then to Grimsby where my house has been broken into. I blame Peter Mandelson for creating the impression that Labour MPs’ houses are a cornucopia of wonderful things. My son suggests I should pay the burglars to come back and take the computers because they’re so old. Perhaps they’ve been accessing my file in Millbank and putting in even more derogatory information.
To Shona McIsaac’s New Year party where everyone who’s no-one in Humberside has turned up but the doorman asks me who I am and if I’ve been invited. Must be the red tie. Shona unveils a full colour newsletter she’s sending to every household in the constituency. Grimsby party members begin to mutter that I’ve never done anything like that. "Isn’t Shona wonderful. Wish she was our MP".
Sunday 10 January
Linda is becoming the Roy Hattersley of the women’s pages, writing articles about every aspect of women MPs. Usually it’s a catalogue of male crimes (mostly mine) against them. Tony Blair will have to apologise to women as well as the Boers, the Irish, the Africans, the Indians and everyone else. Except Iraq.
Our phone rings all day with requests for her articles, interviews, media appearances. When I unsuspectingly begin to give my views, I’m told "Get off the line - we want Linda McDougall". Life is hell when your wife becomes more important, popular, able and interesting than you are. Ask Peter Jay.
Monday 11 January
Re-naming of Grimsby Hospital as the Diana, Princes of Wales Hospital. My suggestions of the Princess Di or even the Di have been rejected. An expensively produced plaque commemorates the re-naming by Frank Dobson. But no Frank Dobson turns up because of a statement in the Commons. A substitute plaque and a substitute opener are trundled in after Shona declines the request to do the job least she hurt my feelings.
Goody-two-shoes Shona then announces that she’s leaving early in case there’s a vote. "There won’t be one before seven", I assure her on the basis of my long experience. So she arrives ten minutes before me and votes. I arrive at seven to find everyone’s gone home. An angry note from Kevin Hughes on my desk and four weeks of messages on my pager which I’d left in a drawer. Home sadly. Linda’s out, doing media interviews. A little note tells me to get something out of the fridge. It’s empty. Civilisation is flickering to an end.
Tuesday 12 January
Inspired by Margaret Cook’s literary triumph, Linda has decided to write her autobiography. It, too, is turning into a long list of my faults, inadequacies, and misbehaviour, plus all those other grievances married couples accumulate against each other.
Linda, too, married a monster. Glancing through "Austin’s Disco Years" I find she didn’t realise it was a sociological research pioneering Focus Groups. When I thought I was loved by all viewers, she puts a sinister interpretation on it. There’s a long diatribe claiming that when I presented 24 Hours I’d never get home before midnight, and a section describing my purchase of an M&S Italian suit and hanging around Islington to attract Tony Blair’s attention and get a job. Plus claims that my well-known sympathy for the Women’s Cause is only feigned because she’s had to put up with (84 page list begins).
Margaret Cook has done a terrible thing unleashing all this. Frustrated in their desire to know what’s going on in government by our failure to pass Open Government legislation, the public now want Open Bedrooms and Bank Accounts. From us.
As more and more ministers lose jobs my prospects should improve. Now they’ll be ruined by Linda’s revelations.
Wednesday 13 January
Peter Mandelson is officially welcomed to the backbenches at the PLP. It’s a hard life, Peter. More demanding on foot leather than brains and a bit remote from N.W. Twee. But keep nose clean and head down, fulfill the "contract" by blitzing for two hours every week and making two hundred new contacts and within a year you could get a select committee. Privileges perhaps. In time you might get to be a PPS. Ian McCartney? John Prescott? Gordon Brown? The world’s your oyster.
* * *
I like to come back from recesses refreshed and renewed. This time it’s coughing, spluttering, debilitated by ’flu, overweight, bemused about what happened to "the project" and why our leaders keep squabbling and screwing up when the rest of us have been so well behaved, boring and clean living. Despite the restless desires of the flesh (something I don’t feel, of course, if Tony wants a safe pair of trousers). It’s a bad introduction to the bunker year that lies ahead as the economy turns sour.
Still, at least we’ve survived post-Mandelson three weeks. We’re learning to live without him. He’s finding how fascinating a backbencher’s job is. The Old Testament Prophets are clubbing together to employ Charlie Whelan. I’m embarking on my relaunch of New Me under the slogan "Trusted, True. Mortgage Paid Off" or "Old Mitchell for Old Problems". Wonder if Peter’ll write a press release or two for me? |
