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Ten days in the death of Parliament (Continued). "Things can only get boring", the song went. They have. I’m suspicious of anything called "the third way" coming from Clinton but it clearly involves soft and rare decisions, endless consultation, focus group prescription, lots of reviews and sitting bang in the middle of every round. A formula for staying in power forever by boring for Britain. But it makes Parliament irrelevant.
Why are we here, apart from doing as Tommy Macovy tells us in his incomprehensible way? The Chamber used to be like a fun fair at the end of the road, constantly calling us to its thrills and excitement. Now it’s a quiet room where the spiritually weary can go for R&R. Indeed, they could well install those energy saving lights which they’ve put in everywhere else. These come on only when there’s activity so we’d save a fortune. When the Whips’ Office concludes its rolling seminar on Althassar’s philosophy and its relevance to the third way they should organise coach tours and boat rips to keep us amused.
*****
Monday 1 June
Question Number One to the Dome Secretary. I had intended to raise the issue of Surf ball. Peter told us this was "the sport of the 21st Century". Now it’s vanished. So I could ask whether the financial predictions for the Volksdome aren’t a lot of Surf balls. But Peter oozes charm and I realise that attacking him might dim my prospects in the coming reshuffle. So I read out a question thoughtfully supplied by his media adviser with some deterioration in the style and the grammar. He smiles graciously back. Why have I discovered this so late? It could do me a lot of good. Start to compose lists of possible jobs I’d like.
Tuesday 2 June
The Great Proportional Representation debate. I’m too busy bobbing in and out to meetings, P.R. rallies, and television interviews to get called. I became the leader, secretary, organiser and sole member of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform when all the officers suddenly departed to the SDP. We’re all P.R. enthusiasts now. It’s a New Labour orthodoxy while the Tories who once supported it to keep out Tony Benn hate it. I see it as consumer protection. In consumer politics the people don’t now want the strong government the old system gave. They want choice, influence and a freer system which makes politicians dependent and reflects their voting preferences in Parliament. When wilt thou save the People, Oh Roy of Jenkins, when!
Wednesday 3 June
Locked out of the launch of Captain Euro strip cartoon. He’s a latter day Dan Dare but defending a wonderful, prosperous Europe (so not today’s vision) against the evil machinations of Dr. D. Vider (Geddit?. He looks rather like Michael Howard). Written by idiots. Sponsored by the European Parliament. Available to schools for Euro education. Paid for by us.
Media Group reception at Channel Four building to a background of Channel Four type activities, Petanque, Morris Dancing and Lesbian keening, which drowns out Chris Smith’s speech. Attempt to get Sky management to admit how much their audiences and profits have suffered since they dropped my programme. Elizabeth Murdoch is only able to sob and wipe away a tear. Snatched away, as is now usual, for a vote that doesn’t take place. Decide to stay in the Chamber in case my Amendments on extending rights to the Channel Islands come up. All day I’ve been receiving calls from the Channel Islands. Some suggest that a man’s right to beat his wife on Sark provided the stick is no thicker than his thumb should be extended to the mainland. Others invite me to go over to be fitted with concrete boots. When my Amendments do come up it’s too late for the full-throated support of the huge numbers who back me to express itself fully. Or indeed at all. Jack Straw announces that the sheer terror at having to face my savage invective has caused all the islands to cave in. They’ll introduce rights for themselves. A triumph. Withdraw my Amendments.
Thursday 4 June
The Bank of England has clearly gone mad. On fuller consideration, though, it’s Gordon Brown’s own appointments (except DeAnn Julius - the first to back my argument for a reduction) who’ve gone on interest rate rampage. I name the new wreckers. Politically motivated men working covertly, in secret ivory towers, to ruin the British economy. Their aim? Debilitate it so much there’ll be a European takeover.
Afternoon
The Fabian Local Societies tea. I’m totally humiliated by Yvette Cooper who reminds me that my great hero, Tony Crosland, wrote The Future of Socialism thirteen years before she was born. Tony is dead. Marx and Keynes are dead. I’m not looking so good, she announces in a brilliant speech setting out what needs to be done in Education and Training to liberate the people, advance fairness, end exclusion, and make Britain competitive. Sadly, we were making the same speech in the Fifties, though we also wanted to do other things as well. I can’t point this out because the audience are so busy cheering her to the echo and chanting "Oldies Out".
Drown my shame in Fabian Tea but people keep coming up to me and saying "I didn’t realise you were that old". "Aren’t Labour’s young people marvelous" and "I suppose this will be your last term". Wait until seven for a vote which, as is traditional, doesn’t take place. Drive North sobbing.
Friday 5 June
Spend the morning working as a volunteer in the WRVS shop at Grimsby Hospital. Extensively recognised, possibly because I don’t look like a typical WRVS member, but unable to add up and quickly confused by any order for more than two items. Short- change one nurse and give another too much which the unrelenting WRVS ladies insist I put back personally. The Grimsby Hospital is to be renamed after Princess Diana who opened it. Warn the press not to shorten this to the Di Hospital.
Open the People’s Art Exhibition organised by a young artist who says there’s art in everyone. The results are marvelous. Huge ornamental beds turned into works of art like fish and football grounds. Fascinating photography. Some superb prints. T-shirts. Lots of nudes including nude males in women’s clothes which I pass by quickly.
Sunday 7 June
In London to record an edition of "Hypotheticals" on political ethics. Bernard Ingham and Giles Brandreth star and Nicholas Scott is an avuncular Prime Minister, but I am reduced to miserable silence by the dramatic revelation half way through that I never declared my bottle of Elvis Presley champagne and my two Royal Box seats to watch Grimsby Town at Wembley. "For Heaven’s sake, don’t tell Shona McIsaac" I plead.
Never having been in London before on a Sunday, my children take me for a picnic in Dulwich woods and then to visit the magnificent Tooting Bec Lido, the largest in Europe. Strip off and do some aesthetic posing which is usually greeted by applause in Grimsby. Here it produces only ribald laughter and shouts of "your sort should be locked up".
Monday 8 June
Decide I don’t want to kick away the ladder that took me, as the first of a thousand generations of Mitchells, to university so I’ll abstain on fees and grants because I can’t see how burdening working-class kids with debt and making women graduates unmarriageable because of their negative dowries will attract more of them to university. The middle-class will always be helped by Dad.
Watching the debate illustrates the new technique of government. First, announce an unacceptable decision which we’d have opposed strenuously two years ago. Then put women and children on the front line between ministers and their critics and get them to
defend it with specially supplied factoids and other half truths. It works. Except that I got so appalled by the level of argument that I decided to vote against. Dissent is a nerve-wracking experience at my age and is not made any easier by the effusive
welcomes extended by the Tories in the same lobby. I’ve never done this on a non-European matter before. Where will it end? Will it affect my chances in the reshuffle?
Tuesday 9 June
The Great Parliamentary Bike Ride. Annoyingly, my chance to shine with new stabilisers fitted to my mountain bike like a motorised Zimmer frame with pedals so I don’t fall off, is ruined when a squad of French MPs dressed for the Tour de Londres turns up and zooms ahead en masse shouting "A bas les Rosbeefs".
Shona McIsaac turns up in gleaming lycra and hogs all the photographs for the
Grimsby Evening Telegraph. Arrive at the House of Commons hot, smelly, sweaty and exhausted. They should provide shower and changing facilities for we cyclists though perhaps in Smelly Socks House they’re less necessary than elsewhere.
The Grimsby Evening Telegraph now describes me as "Rebel MP" but it’s wearing being revolting at my age because we dangerous Lefties have to demonstrate our abstentions in person. So I end up bolting food and drink to get into divisions in time not to vote and sit burping and answering menacing questions like "What the Hell are you doing?"
Wednesday 10 June
The Table Office malevolently refuses my Question requiring Jack Straw to issue CS Gas sprays to all police forces and to Westminster Traffic Wardens for dealing with parking offences.
Wife is closeted with the Chief Whip for one and a half hours and refuses to say why. Is this the result of my rebellion? I thought we were to be reported to our local party not our wives! Discipline is being run by women. Margaret Hodge says "Austin.
How could you!" Shona tells me I’m an idiot. Now it will be Linda going on and on and on. This is no way to treat the old. Particularly not the heroes of the 1979-83 War who’ve never got any compensation.
Rapidly coming to the conclusion that there’s no longer a Left Right division in the Labour Party. Just a gulf between youth and age. The New Chums owe everything to the party. It picked them, groomed them, got them elected, and provides their every waking thought. Labour made them. Labour offers them a future.
We oldies, on the other hand, survived despite the party. Now we look at New Labour through the filter of experience. Age weans. So the oldies are out of place in the youth rally but can’t go down the corridor to the retirement home. I can’t even become the Derek Draper of the OAPs and a Demos report on us would only add to the boredom. So all we can do is sit on, hoping for jobs which will never be offered, and muttering more loudly than a German with Oedipus complex. Bring back normal politics. At least Gordon Brown is doing his best to do that as the economy slips down. |
