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The good ship "New Labour" sails on its majestic way. The captain smiles benignly from the bridge. The Purser hands out the pennies. Loud hosannas ring. No sign of the predicted storms. The Almighty clearly approves. Life’s wonderful for New Labour but deeply puzzling for Old. Though the onset of Alzheimer’s is reconciling even us to Prozac politics.
Thursday 25 February
To the Globe Theatre with the Heritage Group. Mainly hereditary peers. Wonderful visit. Will they still be allowed on these visits when they’re abolished? Without them there’d only be me and Ann Cryer. Instead of abolishing the hereditaries the government should have filled their time and kept them away from the chamber by endless pensioners’ bus tours. Just like Labour backbenchers.
Friday 26 February
Quick tour of Grimsby problems all becoming acute. Seven hundred job losses in food processing. Growing anger on the fish dock. The local council so squeezed it’s envisaging cuts we never had to consider under the Tories. There’ll be redundancies just when local government should be taking up the slack. Somehow Councillors have no gratitude for all the fact sheets I’ve been sending them telling them how well they’re being treated.
My day is cheered only by Sir Patrick Cormack’s annual state visit to Grimsby, bringing with him Heads of several museums to tell us how well our National Fishing Heritage Centre is doing. Here is a formula for national regeneration. Now that the Bank of England’s policy towards manufacturing is to close it down and give the workers Aspirin, as each local industry dies, we should move it into a into a museum financed on Lottery grants. Then you can give visitors to the museum a small, one ounce, packet of what was once the local product to show them what it was like. Fish (from Spain), coal (from Germany), textiles (from Portugal), steel (from Spain). Soon we’ll be importing tomb stones.
Tuesday 2 March
In Madrid to meet Spanish fishing ministers and officials in their magnificent headquarters built to a scale and splendour beyond even the dreams of Jack Cunningham. Spain has been far more adept at the Euro fiddles necessary to survive in the EC than we have. First they persuaded Europe to buy the Spanish fleet fishing opportunities in foreign waters when no such offer was made to us (or even asked) when we lost Iceland. Then they reached their target fleet reductions to get access to European funding by reflagging Spanish vessels as British - putting us over our targets so we get no Euro-dosh. Clever stuff beyond the wit of our lot.
After a quick tour of the Prado, on to Vigo where the British Consul takes us for a magnificent fish meal. As we leave the restaurant it’s pouring. The others decide to call a taxi. Being a hardy northerner and a sloshed one, too, I decide to walk, confident that I know the way and can recognise the hotel (whose name I’ve totally forgotten) because it has a large red sign HOTEL. Unfortunately, after tramping the streets for half an hour in the pouring rain and getting three hotels opened up only to find they’re not the right one, I realise that all Spanish hotels have a big red sign saying HOTEL. Eventually to bed late, soaked, frozen, and still sloshed.
Wednesday 3 March
Up early for Vigo fish market where I’d hoped to detect illegal landings of minute fish stolen from British waters, Grimsby cod, with the brand burned off, and an inspection regime so lax that thousands of tons of illegal fish can be landed with no-one noticing.
Unfortunately, our massive committee party, accompanied by Andrew George’s team of personal photographers and journalists, is so conspicuous and the dock so packed with police, inspectors and officials, that all we see is the enormous range of fabulous fish being landed.
Dead jealous, John Hayes and I decide to do our own spying on behalf of Euro-sceptics everywhere. We slope off on our own followed only by ten plain clothes agents. Asking in John’s pigeon Spanish for "little fish" we are directed to the pilchard market. Giving our followers the slip there we double back and begin to empty fish boxes, finding some minute monk fish and tiny soles at the bottom which I photograph eagerly while asking if they spoke English when they’d been caught. John stands guard, holding back the muttering crowd of dock workers (mostly big women with Monica Lewinski hips). I thought they wanted to attack me. John later explained that he’d told them in Spanish that I was Tony Blair (well, it was dark) and they all wanted to be photographed with me. Then on to the superb new market and processing hall built for the fishermen by the (publicly owned) port authority. In Britain the fishermen would have to pay to build it, then be charged for using it.
Thursday 4 March
Not a sound was heard, not a funeral note as our bus to Corrunna we hurried. To find the fish market closed and the local quota hopper owners upset, claiming that Elliot Morley is making them bankrupt by requiring them to land part of their catches in Britain. They have, therefore, decided to buy Milford Haven and Fleetwood and colonise them on behalf of Spain. Everything we’ve seen in Spain indicates a fishing industry doing very well thank you very much and well supported by governments, both regional and national. This confirms Mitchell’s Law of Europe. You can’t compete in a political market unless government backs, finances, and fiddles for you. "Fiddle for England" should be the slogan.
Friday 6 March
To Grimsby to chair a meeting between Anglian Water, OFWAT, the Council and the fish merchants threatened with huge new charges under the Waste Water Directive. One produces his new bill: £63,500 compared to last year’s £7,100. These charges won’t come in at competing fish markets in Hull, Aberdeen and Peterhead for some years. Indeed, they may never do so in Scotland. Water is still publicly owned there. Anglian Water offers the Nuremberg defence, "We’re only obeying orders" and says it can’t phase in the charges.
Saturday 7 March
To Sainsbury’s to promote the new Pork Mark for the Meat and Livestock Commission. A friendly passer-by suggests that I should wear the Pork Mark myself, I’ve put on so much weight. Smile benignly as one does in the constituency. Has Shona put him up to it?
Monday 8 March
Alan Johnson’s adjournment debate on redundancy payments for fishermen. It’s been shuttled to and fro between DTI and MAFF for several days. Neither department is keen to answer it. Grimsby fishermen who lost their jobs in 1976 have been waiting for a quarter century for the compensation they were then promised. They’re getting fed up having to stay alive forever to get justice.
I’m charged to speak for them. Unfortunately, I’m also booked to speak to Colchester Fabians. Distribute notes on PMT and toxic shock syndrome to all the women Members I know in the hope of encouraging them to speak in the debate on International Women’s Day so it doesn’t finish early. Deliver a very short speech in Colchester in praise of the Third Way, so incomprehensible no-one has any questions. Then belt back to London to find that not only have all the previous debates been held up but they’ve overrun and there are hundreds of petitions to be presented. By the time we reach the adjournment I’m falling asleep so the speaking is left to Joan Humble and Shona who sing the praises of the fishermen’s wives.
Wednesday 10 March
Take part in a two hour discussion programme on Monica Lewinski with Alan Clark. He tells me that I’m a man of no sexual experience whatsoever. Ask him to put it in writing to show to Tony Blair. He refuses.
The women on the programme all viciously attack Monica. Clark and I think she’s lovely. I can’t help wondering why British politicians don’t attract groupies. When I worked in television I used to have to beat them off. In politics none at all. It can’t be because I’m too old. I’m younger than Alan Clark. I thought at first it was a mistake to send Jon Snow to interview Monica as a woman would have been more sensitive and not asked silly questions like, "Did you feel a tingle?" Now I know that a woman would have been so malevolent, cutting and condemnatory she’d have torn Monica limb from limb. Or am I sexist to say that?
Back to the House of Commons to meet the New Zealand Labour Party Chief Whip. He tells me that though the Tory government in New Zealand doesn’t have a majority Labour can’t beat them. MPs no longer have to vote in person in Parliament. They just register their allegiance with the Chief Whip who then votes for them. The voting figures are locked in. The Independents who’ve deserted the government won’t turn up to bring it down. So a minority government carries on. Hope the First-Past-the-Posters don’t discover this as another argument against Proportional Representation.
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New Labour New Decision Time. Here we are half way through the term of our wonderful glossy government and I’ve done nothing but slouch behind grumbling and grudging. It’s gone on from success to success with the longest honeymoon in history. None of the problems I’ve predicted have materialised and everyone loves it except the Labour Party.
Is it time to stop whinging, start drinking Labour Lite and make my confession to Saint Peter meekly kneeling upon my knees? Or does the fact that he’s been de-frocked and is exhausted having to work far harder as a backbencher than ministers ever do mean that I’d now have to be received into the Church by Alistair Campbell who who might thump me? It’s a difficult choice. Sulk on in the hope that a stopped clock is right twice a day. Or join the happy clappy church and with the ultimate recognition of possibly getting a ticket to the Millennium Zone - even if it’s not until March next year. Watch this space. |
