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Hail and Farewell, Fantasy Parliament. Here we are, pretending to be MPs, running round in small circles, migrating from meeting to meeting, passing incomprehensible legislation which won’t be implemented, desperately ignoring the fact that the election is forty-five days away, all clinging to the Parliamentary raft as it slowly sinks.
Friday 2 March
To Leeds for the Regional CBI meeting with Yorkshire and Humberside MPs. Splendid new offices with an MP from each party telling the assembled business people what’s in manifestos. Even if mere MPs don’t know.
Gerry Sutcliffe points out how well we’ve done under Labour, Tim Kirkhope portrays the country as strangled by regulation. It’s "don’t mention the Euro" day. Except for Phil Woolas who boldly proclaims the need to get the Pound down to get into the Euro. "So it’s a platform of Devalue Now" I ask cheerfully. "That wasn’t what I said". But it is the consequence. If this Government isn’t going to get the Pound down to save manufacturing it’s not going to get it down just to get into a Euro it now doesn’t particularly want.
The only real complaints come from manufacturing. "When Labour came in there were seven spinning mills in Keighley. Now there’s only one and that’s likely to close". MPs nod silently. I struggle to speak but Gerry Sutcliffe won’t remove my gag.
Then to the university to speak to the Labour Club. They’re amazed to meet a New Mitchell full of praise for a Government which has just become Labour again and giving a speech so loyal it could have been written by Peter Mandelson. Having invited Old Mitchell they begin to doze off in boredom.
To Doncaster to meet Margaret Jay and take her to Grimsby for this year’s Crosland Lecture. The series was started by her father back in darkest 1980. He came to our house, asked how much I’d paid for a wonderful primitive painting of which I’m very proud, and crisply announced "You were robbed".
Margaret is more tactful. Her lecture is about the problems of reforming the second chamber. It meets with a surprising interest and a dangerous radicalism in the Grimsby Labour Party. I announce that no-one’s approached me about going there - yet - so I intend to fight the next election. Loud sobbing noises from the back of the room. Unless I’m offered the Washington Embassy. Shocked surprise from Margaret. That can only be because it’s reserved for re-purified Mandy.
Saturday-Sunday 3-4 March
The Director of the NZ National Orchestra and his wife came to stay for the weekend. Manchester airport is the worst signposted in the world. Nothing to tell you what plane’s coming in where. So I park at two terminals (£1.60 each to get out) before finding the right one. Arrive at the gate an hour late. Fortunately, the plane is later. Take them on a tour of the cultural highlights of Yorkshire and Humberside. All three are closed. Saltaire for renovation. Bronteland for Foot & Mouth. Grimsby’s Fishing Heritage Centre because the Council’s run out of cash. Local Government has been scandalously treated. We’ll have to have Council and General Elections on the same day because after treating Labour Councils so badly for four years, we owe them the one favour we can still do for them.
Wednesday 7 March
Budget Day begins disastrously for the Mitchells. The heavy shower head falls off, nearly concusses Linda and smashes a big hole in our new super-dooper giant size bath. This will cost £4,000 to replace. Contents insurance won’t cover fixtures. Our building insurance says the builder is responsible. He denies it. Meanwhile, no baths. Go to Gordon’s coronation smelling gently. A smell which builds up all week. Begin to sit down-wind in every meeting.
The Budget is a triumph for Gordon Brown. The first Labour Budget since Denis Healey. Gordon now bestrides politics and the media like the Colossus of Dunfermline. Whatever happened to Tony Blair? The Budget is just right. Redistributionist and boring. The Tories are totally wrong-footed. But somehow I can’t get excited. Nor can the Commons. Is it because we’ve heard it all in advance? At least it’s the burial service for New Labour.
Saturday 10 March
Is it my imagination or are surgery cases getting more difficult as the election approaches? Today’s are fiendishly complicated.
Adjourn to the Young People’s Council. Not only does North East Lincolnshire have its own Young People’s Council but its own Youth MP, a likeable lad who has to do the jobs of Shona and I, and from the look of him better, though he tends to spoil it by actually listening to people. Always ill-advised.
Today his assembly is discussing the Council’s decision to get rid of hot school meals. They’re against it. Why are the young always so dangerously radical? One youth produces the clinching argument that if kids are forced to eat sandwiches rather than nutritious hot food the schools will smell of farts all afternoon. Make a swift exit when they start attacking the Council, the Labour Party, the MP, for grinding the faces of the poor. Here we are as a Government fighting apathy among young people. In Grimsby I need Prozac to keep the buggers quiet.
On to Stoke Rochford, the NUT’s college, to speak against the Euro at the GMB’s Regional Conference. Giles Radice is on the other side. I lose disastrously, largely because I speak for twice as long as Giles who restricts himself to the simple message "Support the Euro and live happily ever after".
Am attacked by the audience for being boring, long-winded and incomprehensible. Then denounced by two Euro MPs and the General Secretary. First the humiliation of being defeated in Referendum Street. Now this. I’m clearly going to be a major liability to the anti-Euro forces. I must stop frothing at the mouth and learn to condense my argument to a few, simple concepts. Like "The Euro will give you Bubonic Plague" so I can meet the Euro-enthusiasts at the same intellectual level. Drive home sobbing.
Sunday 11 March
Celebrations because it’s eight hundred years to the day since Grimsby was granted its first charter by King John. When Hull had their juvenile seven hundredth anniversary recently they had weeks of celebrations, concerts, events, fireworks and fun. Grimsby has been allocated a budget of six thousand pounds, most of which goes on today’s service and civic dinner. Plus hiring an extraordinary town crier (which I didn’t know we had), bringing the Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant of Nottingham (but not Robin Hood - too Old Labour) because the Charter was signed in Nottingham, plus the Dean of Wells whose predecessor signed it. We also get lunch and a lecture from the District Archivist, plus the Franklin College Medieval Music Group playing the top twenty of 1201.
Grimsby then had 400 people. So slow was the advance of civilisation they didn’t get MPs until ninety years later. Then Parliament met in Lincoln so Grimsby could afford the travel expenses. The town historian says that the early MPs were "unimportant and undistinguished", though able to do occasional small services for the borough. Nothing’s changed.
I must suggest boosting the funds for the anniversary by selling the Freedom of the Town to the Hindujas or any other available millionaires, together with a special cut-price offer to Asylum Seekers. Why should central government raise money in this way when it’s awash with cash. Let local government get it.
Monday 12 March
Leave incredibly early to speak at a newspaper conference in Blackpool. The editor of the Grimsby Telegraph has conned me into it by threatening to tell Ms Filkin about the free holidays I’ve been having in the Mablethorpe Penthouse of a Grimsby millionaire. (We do have one.)
It’s wonderful to be in Blackpool again after Labour’s long absence since we went upmarket to the south coast, but the town looks rather sad. Closed shops, hotels and restaurants, litter and poor people shuffling round.
Except at the Hilton (ne Pembroke). The newspapermen look more affluent. Local papers are in a very powerful position. Spin doesn’t penetrate to the point where the manure hits real people. They serve real communities, not over-educated political junkies. You can’t fool them. I’ve kept the Grimsby Telegraph supplied with photos of me holding big cheques with Gordon Brown, mock TV licences with Alistair Darling, and New Deal papers with David Blunkett, though I did draw the line at Euros with Peter Mandelson.
I’ve besieged them with the usual press hand-outs we all get, "Today Tony Blair jointly announced with his close friend, colleague and adviser [YOUR NAME HERE] that Labour is to bring back the stocks for young thugs"" It’s done me no good at all. Today I try to convince the newspapermen that the future lies with them. You can’t wrap fish and chips in a lap top. Life is going to become more regional and community based. The way to seize it is to be entirely non-political. Just like New Labour.
The message doesn’t get home. One hard-bitten journalist sourly insists "politics don’t sell newspapers". Another observes "politics is so boring I doubt that we’ll cover this election". I was going to give them my passionate Free the Mandelson One speech but was told as I walked in that there’s no need. He’s given it himself to editors in Grantham.
Back home to do some work. The drive to London. I’m told that I’m needed. There’ll be votes after ten. Get back at nine. Fall asleep. Don’t wake up until midnight. I’ll never face Tommy again. But is there any need to, with the election so near?
Tuesday 13 March
The highlight of the All Party Parliamentary Photography Group’s year. Our annual exhibition opened by Mr. Speaker with Mike Maloney, the chief photographer of the Daily Mirror doing a slashing, and very funny, critique of the photos. Particularly mine, I noted resentfully. I’m reduced to four entries this year because Baroness Hilton used her police experience to stop me sneaking ever more photographs into the selection process in the way Gerry Wiggin taught me.
Everything goes well, though the committee refuse to support my proposal to report Maloney’s remarks about my photographs to the Committee of Privileges. Bang goes his peerage. Heave a sign of relief at our success when the phone rings. The Guardian. Do I know that there are two "obscene" photographs of naked children in the exhibition? After the row over similar pictures at the Saatchi exhibition they feel this should be reported to the police to have the Sergeant at Arms dragged away in chains. I splutter and defend freedom bravely but then take a felt tip and go over and draw some clothes on the children, only to discover that Denis has also included statues with genitalia big enough to be a Yorkshireman’s self image. Cheeky bugger. The Old Monster is obviously trying to grab the spotlight from Gordon Brown. Quite right too. The country should be run by Yorkshiremen, not gloomy Scots.
Off to Millbank Tower for Tony Blair to be photographed with me (fully clothed) for his election manifesto. Two hundred MPs and candidates queue to get 18 seconds of intimacy with the Leader. Plus two photographs. Peter Mandelson isn’t in the queue. Perhaps he’s featuring Gordon this year.
*****
I’ve never known such an odd election build up. Normally elections come when things are going well or government can’t carry on any longer. This election is limping up on us a year ahead of time. The country is in crisis. Agriculture is building its own funeral pyre, Fishing is going bust, Tourism is terrified. The crippled railways are killing more people, Manufacturing is hard hit by the overvalued Pound. Ministers look to be at the end of a not very long tether, and buckets of whitewash are having to be applied to smelly scandals.
Moreover, our great British con trick of keeping the Pound high so as to export our capital to get higher returns in the US while luring in foreign capital to invest here as the Brits won’t is now going pear shaped. As American returns collapse and the foreigners pull out of Britain because it’s no longer profitable to produce here, the con trick has been blown, our offshore hedge routine is going bust. Yet despite all this we’re still expecting an increased majority and pundits tell us we’re impregnable. Is it a dream?
Perhaps the election will be cancelled, postponing the chill moment when we must go out to meet the people. For four years we’ve governed to please the Mail and Markets, not the people. We’ve spun and bamboozled them. We’ve counted every pawky tenner three times. We’ve left them to struggle on on very thin gruel Now, unless we get Sir Anthony Hammond QC to write our election manifesto, we’ll find out what they really think of us. It may be a shock. |
