|
Monday 3 May
A glorious sunny day but me glued to the television watching the 1979 election night coverage from start to finish. Marvellous. We all looked younger, hairier, and more serious. The passage of time makes it absolutely clear that people I’d vaguely suspected of being wrong at the time but not dared to say so were in fact raving lunatics. Yet no-one really expected the cataclysmic assault on the unions, the working class and the post-war settlement that Mrs. Thatcher embarked on. I myself got several mentions. The last time I made any impact on politics.
Tuesday 4 May
Out to Sky at Isleworth to do the papers. Sky has grown exponentially since Norman Tebbit used to tutor me there in the art of knee to the groin interviewing. Now it’s run by teenagers, some of them even British. Then it was like Bondi. Yet it’s still a monument to Murdoch’s commitment to news and competition.
Back to the House of Commons for my fire drill training. Judy Scott Thomson cajoled me into it by promising that I could be fire monitor for the fifth floor (the isolation ward of Portcullis House). This could be a major boost to my career.
Sadly, she lied. At the training there was no mention of the job, just a cautionary tale of poor Eddie who set his office on fire by making toast (presumably as a researcher for the MP for Towcester). This spread to papers which he then fanned and spread. It became a conflagration when he used the wrong fire extinguisher (out of a choice of four).
Moral: set off the fire alarm before you do anything. Then leave the building and go to your muster point. Eddie never turned up at his, though he could have been washed away in the water screens which will engulf the Atrium or trapped by the automatically closing doors on the corridors.
The session took 45 minutes and I worry least colleagues without my devotion don’t turn up, and endanger the lives of all of us as a result. Worthwhile? Well I’ll tell you that after my interrogation by the Serjeant at Arms about why I was later found struggling to carry a bale of hay into Judy Scott Thomson’s office.
Wednesday 5 May
To Sanctuary House for a meeting with Alan Johnson about my application for Grimsby to have a university, a theological college and a cathedral. Alan is defensive but bullied into agreeing that we can have a College of Higher Education. But not until Friday.
Adjourn to Portcullis House. Every toilet is out of order. Signs ask us to go across the road to the Treasury Building (now owned by Bovis Lend-Lease) and ask to use their toilets. Cross my legs and wait for 2.00, the announced re-opening.
6pm... Toilets still not re-opened. Armed police are patrolling Portcullis to stop MPs peeing in the water feature. There’d be no problem with putting out fires today. Not the best day for diarrhoea but John Prescott has given me it by attacking me for not living in a council house, unlike him, and for urging the council tenants of North East Lincolnshire to vote against privatisation.
I lost. Hardly surprising since the council has spent £800,000 on consultancies, propaganda and videos to tell its tenants that it’s crap at council housing, won’t do repairs and wants to give the stock away to a housing association which doesn’t exist, has no business plan, no CEO, no management and no money. Government calls this `choice`. It looks more like blackmail to me.
7pm... To the Speaker’s house to use his toilet and attend the reunion of the Class of `79. All in a long toilet queue because they suffer from prostrate and bladder problems associated with age. Much relieved we struggle upstairs with our Zimmer frames. A wonderful evening for the lost generation. Much praise of Neil Kinnock and John Smith. Not a mention of Tony Blair.
Thursday 6 May
Toilets still not working. Posters now amended to say “promise re-opening by six o’clock tonight”.
Thursday 27 May
Canvassing is marvellous. Like a walking focus group as people discuss their problems, Iraq, their views on the government, and Grimsby.
The election is a nicer l983. Then it was “We’ve always been Labour but….”. Now the “but” is silent. Unlike the word “Blair”. It`s a grumbling not a grateful nation, fed up about crime, cops, local government services, and asylum seekers who`re apparently driving round in free taxis while eating swans.
Locally Labour`s on mission impossible. Liberals and Conservatives have withdrawn candidates against each other in coalition with the ODPM claiming that he`s told them to cut spending that helps the poor, and to maintain political stability.
John Prescott isn’t coming to Grimsby to campaign for them though Keith Hill has written to my local paper to say I`m a liar, and that wasting millions to give away billions in council housing is sound commercial sense. Even though it would be illegal to float a crooked company on the prospectus put out.
Final Thoughts...
Tony needs a manager. He’s a man of impulses but not all of them are Labour, and he still thinks he can persuade anyone to anything. So he listens to courtiers and sycophants and they don’t put alternatives or say “hang on a minute”, while the Cabinet lacks the giants of yesteryear.
Come back Alistair. Our Leader needs you. Alistair’s gone into show biz. According to Alan Watkins he’s a latter-day Rector of Stiffky who was defrocked and became a lion tamer only to be eaten by the lion. Let Tony charm the lion, Alistair. You come back and run the show. |
