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It`s wonderful to escape from our febrile Fun Factory. Our non-election-election is killing me. Junior Ministers desert the SS Blair to climb on the Big Brown Boat, Charles Clarke does the dance of the seven veils. The Deputy fight becomes a crowd spectacular with everyone but me standing. I don`t know who to crawl to. I smiled and waved at Gordon who looked straight through me. I never see Tony to ingratiate myself (no change there)and I shouted “Hi Dave” to Miliband but the wrong one. Only Michael Meacher talks to me. Obsessively.
Tuesday 6 & Wednesday 7 March Jack Straw has either totally screwed up on the House of Lords or he`s an inspired genius whose cunning plan has got reform kicked into the long grass. The Commons voting for total election, the Lords for total nomination. makes compromise impossible. So our accidental success in getting the most effective second chamber we`ve ever had can stagger on for a while but peerages offered to persuade MPs to give up seats for child geniuses are now worthless. Bang goes my prospect of becoming Lord Haddock of Grimsby (best before 2010) so they can bring a super version of Liam Byrne in.
Monday 12 March The EU, still struggling to find itself a role, is seeking one as saviour of the environment. It proclaims grandiose targets which will, of course, never be achieved, but at least it provides me with a new joke: “How many prime ministers does it take to change a light bulb?” No-one laughs.
Wednesday 14 March Trident debate. From Clause 4 onwards Tony`s method of party management has been to chuck himself off cliffs and force a reluctant party to catch him. Once again it works. Don`t follow his example, Gordon. The time will come when people won`t bother to take their hands out of their pockets. Now we`re committed to spend £20 billion on a weapon we don`t need, another £20 billion on ID Cards we don`t need either, plus £10 billion on the Olympics. No wonder they call Tony the Dear Leader.
Wednesday 21 March Budget Day. A pretty good Budget except for the decision to scrap the 10p tax rate. That will hit single low earners and isn`t well received in Grimsby.
Saturday 24 March Lunch for the Prime Minister of Barbados who`s giving the Wilberforce Memorial Lecture. The Director of the Chamber of Commerce opens dramatically announcing “Two Hundred Years Ago in this Great City…” We look round in astonishment, being in Barton on Humber on the other side of the estuary.
Special guest is Wilberforce`s several great great`s grandson, a direct descendant who`s a spitting image. No John Prescott today, though at a Labour dinner in Leeds last week he denounced people who said the Deputy Leader`s was a non-job. “It`s a nob job” he announced. Harriet Harman wasn`t there.
Tuesday 27 March I thought myself lucky to have got today`s Adjournment Debate. Until I discover that it won`t come on until 1.00 am. I`ve always fancied chatting up Vera Baird but I`m so old my powers now fail after ten o`clock.
My speech is described by the Grimsby Telegraph as “a foul mouthed rant” though I`d expected comparisons with Demosthenese or Cicero. It`s an attack on enforcement bailiffs who charge hundreds of pounds for distraining on cars and hits a nerve, producing a flood of letters from aggrieved citizens who`ve been charged hundreds of pounds for clamping because councils collude with the clampers instead of controlling them. In Grimsby charges of £250 produced mutiny but a spokesman for Southwark says £700 is “not unreasonable”.
Wednesday 28 March A day of Socratic dialogue with Tommy MacAvoy. I was going to vote against gambling because Labour shouldn`t be promoting regeneration by gambling. After several hours with Tommy, a shouting from Dick Cabourn and affectionate embraces from Shona McIsaac my stand is whittled down first to an abstention, then to a vote for the government. But David Miliband says w`re building the “I Can Society”. I protest to Tommy. “You can`t” he replies tersely. But Tessa kissed me as I went into the lobby. Richard Cabourn forbore to swear and Tony Lloyd promised me a tour of Alexandra Road chip shops and a free chip butty. But no chips.
Friday 30 March Drive to Boston. Lincolnshire Police have speed cameras every hundred yards. So people from Humberside (described in the south as “the occupied territories”) where, wisely, the police haven’t introduced such abominations, no longer go south for their holidays. I drive at 15 mph with a fixed grin to Boston Grammar School. The old looking Assistant Head tells me he was at school in Grimsby when I was first elected, saying “You must be older than you look”. “I’m older than I am” I reassure him.
Sunday 1 April Excited by Catherine Bailey’s new book, Black Diamonds, on the Fitzwilliam family I drive to Wentworth Woodhouse, England’s biggest, and Yorkshire`s best, stately home. An attempt to buy it by South Yorkshire Police has fallen through so I decide to buy it on my generous Parliamentary housing allowance. Disappointed to find that someone else has grabbed it for £1.6 million. I`m reduced to taking photos.
The book reminds me of the 1984 miners strike. It began at Cortonwood, on what used to be Fitzwilliam land. Two days later I was speaking to the local Labour party on proportional representation. The Miners Welfare was packed with hundreds of miners all out on strike who didn`t want to hear about PR for some strange reason, only about what Labour was going to do. I hadn’t the foggiest idea. Still haven’t. So I praised their solidarity in l974, and my friend Arthur Scargill. That may account for the fact that Neil Kinnock never asked me to take the Shadow Energy portfolio.
Wednesday 4 April As the new chairman of the Yorkshire and Humber Seafood Group I do a stately tour of Yorkshire ports to look at how we can help an industry now largely geared to shellfish. We need a marketing campaign for “Yorkshire Seafood: The Great Gobfull”, but in Grimsby they`d choke on that.
Thursday 5 April Repeat the trip, this time by sea, in the Fishery Committee’s inspection vessel with me stood proudly in the prow. No one salutes
Oh to be in Grimsby now that April`s here, and better still to be away from Westminster. I`m losing faith in the Whips, a process which could be as cataclysmic as Newman losing faith in the Church of England. My guru, Tommy MacAvoy, persuaded me that Offender Management would be his last attempt to persuade me to save the government from humiliation. Since then he`s done the same on Trident and Casinos. What next? Government can`t go on producing these unnecessary cliffhangers. Roll on Gordon`s leadership. He`s too serious to prolong government by bunjy-jumping. Besides he`s too heavy. |
