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The triumphal election which gave us a mandate to build a new heaven and a new earth is as remote as 1945. Tony is transformed into a saviour of the World before he`s even saved Grimsby. The Third Way runs via Kabul. The rights and liberties we promised to enlarge are to be taken away, though only from Moslems. Was it for this I whipped Grimsby into a frenzy just five short months ago?
Friday 26 October
Decide to escape the rigours of a nation at part-time war by going to New Zealand. With permission from Tommy MacAvoy to whom I have promised good behaviour for a whole fortnight, alienating my friends in the process.
Monday 29 October
The great debate I`ve been brought out for is supposed to introduce NZ to Westminster style debating. In fact it`s Westminster`s introduction to New Zealand debating: a combination of tag wrestling and stand-up comedy. I`m thoroughly clobbered and humiliated by a team of thespians and TV personalities. The Speaker, who chaired the debate, comforts me. "Never mind. The two women on your team were very good". New Zealand`s political vocabulary is more robust than ours. It`s legitimate to describe politicians (mainly me tonight) as "dog tucker" "half wits" and "tossers". The colonial cringe has completely gone. Which leaves me floundering as Poms do when no-one defers to them.
Tuesday 30 October
To the University of Otago, my Alma Mater now swollen from the 2000 students it had when I taught there, to 17,000 students. They complain about being burdened with debt, warning they`ll go overseas as soon as they graduate. Clearly student loans mean massive student migrations swapping countries to avoid debt. We`ll have to bring in international bounty hunters to bring ours home and treat those from elsewhere who come to Britain as asylum seekers.
As for the staff, the geriatric few who were there with me all complain that universities are run like businesses with the Vice-Chancellor and his deputies as Chief Executives all spending so much time overseas that their noses burst if they come below 30,000 feet to visit their university.
Thursday 1 November
On to Invercargill, once a staid Tory town dying quietly, now transformed into a dynamic growth. The Mayor, a former student radical, who knows how to wrong-foot opponents, has cleverly got round the per capita grant system by creating more people. Southland Polytechnic has abolished fees, thus bringing in hundreds of new students and millions of government money per capita. Next they`re making public transport free to boost the subsidy on passengers. Brilliant.
Saturday 3 November
I`ve attended more civic functions in NZ than Grimsby in the last month. Today`s is the opening of a 53 kilometre track in Tuatapere, sausage capital of the South Island. NZ`s functions are far more ethnic with Ukrainian choirs, Maori rituals, South Sea Island dancing, and Scottish pipers. They`re also far longer. Everyone speaks: Mayor, MP, Path Builders, Conservation Department, Maori welcomers, plus several others, building up to the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, who devotes her weekends to this kind of thing. Tomorrow she is doing the walk.
We`re going home. New Zealand is now moving happily back to Social Democracy after the excesses of free market liberalism when privatised utilities were looted by big investors who took their money overseas. New managements were often incompetent. Air New Zealand is a world class airline in that it`s bankrupt like the rest. So it`s been re-nationalised. The railway company threatened to close down its passenger services. So the state subsidised some and took back the suburban services. It`s nice to be in a socialist country but will war fatigue have overtaken Britain? To placate Tommy, I`ve brought back a "thank you" gift of a pet Kiwi which is a blind, nocturnal creature like his backbenchers. It eats roots shoots and leaves. Just like us.
Monday 5 November
Tired. Jet-lagged. Not a brain cell stirring. I`m the perfect backbencher, a candidate for the MacAvoy prize for loyalty above and beyond the call of Tommy. It`s the only way to get on in today`s politics.
Tuesday 6 November
Jet-lag and deep loyalty continue. At the Agriculture Committee it is clear that while Tony now bestrides the globe, Elliot Morley bestrides the land. Whenever things go wrong, it`s Super Elliot to the rescue. Today he is brilliant at explaining why the government is bringing in a Bill to kill anything that moves and several tortoises which don`t, even before it has the reports of the Foot and Mouth enquiries it`s not making.
If only I`d taken that job as Elliot`s PPS I`d now be a power in the land as his apprentice prophet, parting waters, exalting valleys, killing kine, sacrificing lambs, and speaking in parables. Tony`d take some notice of me then. Prophets are his kind of guy.
Wednesday 7 November
Another Agriculture Committee with scientists who are better politicians than Nick Brown. A scientifically motivated body of men convinced Tony Blair in mid March that Foot and Mouth was out of control and would get worse unless he instituted a super-kill. They wrested control from hapless MAFF, then forecast that new cases would hit zero in early June, a prediction which, in April, convinced me the election would be in June.
Lunch with the Speaker of the Icelandic Althing, a dignified gentleman who is astonished when I explain that it is only now, a quarter of a century later, that the British fishermen who lost their jobs when we were thrown out of Iceland in the Cod War are getting their compensation. "It could never happen in Iceland", he agrees. Mostly he remains silent while Michael Fabricant tells us all about Iceland, a country he seems to know better than its two MPs who sit there, stunned at his brilliance.
Evening to CIMA to lecture on Regulation of Accountancy. I had hoped to report that Labour had given us effective regulation but such is the power of the Big Five accountancy houses who give jobs to Labour spokesmen (coming in and going) second their staff to us and organise conferences, donations and receptions for us, that we have done everything they want, channelled all sorts of business to them and let them write their own regulations. They`ve bought us, though we`re so anxious not to incur their displeasure they didn`t need to. I`m hoping that Price Coopers and Ernst & Young will affiliate to the Grimsby Labour Party if I stop abusing them.
Friday 9 November
To Durham to speak at the Union society, an amateur version of Oxbridge, on a motion that a Lib Dem vote is wasted. Opposite me the serried liberal ranks of Lembit Opik, their spokesman on hang-gliding, and Paul Holmes, their spokesman on the 1832 Reform Bill: more Liberals in one place saying the same things than ever happens at Westminster.
Liberals have more fun than grown up politicians. They can say anything and never have to either face the consequences or say "sorry". They`ve taken over the opposition role and made the Labour Left redundant. So why do they all look so miserable? Except Lembit: immune because he`s crazy. Which means he appeals to an audience of young, naïve, impressionable, idealistic, idiots and wins hands down. Drive back to Grimsby in high dudgeon, as I`ve nicknamed my new Volvo. Should I join the Liberals while I`m still young and naïve enough? It might be fun and there`s precious little of that in the Labour Party.
Sunday 11 November
Remembrance Sunday. The great unifying ceremony of Britishness and of local communities. It`s also crucial to MPs. Look how Stonehouse went and rehearsed his suicide, decided he couldn`t miss the Cenotaph, went back for it, then returned to Florida to commit suicide again.
To Cleethorpes and a walk in the crowded sea front in lovely weather, with the sea in on its annual visit and people in it. Finally to the Salvation Army Citadel for their Remembrance Service which, as usual, is less formal and more fun.
Monday 12 November
Watch Tony`s Mansion House speech. On my knees, of course. It`s always dangerous for Labour Prime Ministers to pose before the enemy and grovel for their plaudits, but now Tony is going as messianic as his picture in Portcullis House. He`s embarked on that upwards and outwards pilgrimage by which Labour leaders try to become world statesmen and lose touch with reality. The speech is a rousing chorus of "I`d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony". Inspirational but a bit beyond our means even if we let Gordon run the home front and second Tony full time to Better World Building.
Sadly, we attend to the problems of our people or we die. They`re not particularly interested in saving Africa, settling the Middle East, disciplining rogue states, and knocking turbans off the Taliban. The labours of Sisyphus cut no ice in Grimsby where a job is more important. Will Tony come back to earth or have we said goodbye to him forever? Ground control to Major Tom.
Tuesday 13 November
Lunch with our Mental Health Authority which covers Doncaster as well as South Humber as part of that endless process of redefinition of areas, obfuscation of authorities and constant re-shuffling which is the everyday story of National Health folk. "When things are going badly reorganise" is the slogan and Britain has done nothing else since 1979. Now we`re continuing the process with the most massive restructuring so far. At this rate we will end up with the best administered, under-funded Health Service in the World.
Wednesday 14 November
The PLP debates the insane proposal to give each minister a team of "sponsors" who`ll chant "Doop,doop, di do" behind them but have no role. We`re all PPS`s now. Grown up parties give backbenchers a real influence. In Australia and New Zealand policy must be agreed by caucus and its committees before it`s introduced. Here ministers don`t want to share power with anyone else and Tony has taken most of it from them anyway. So now we have this daft idea of sheep and super sheep with the latter coveted as a path to promotion. What we should be doing is involving the troops in policy. Instead, tthey`re treating us like idiots.
So far so good war-wise, as General Polly Toynbee might say. But that`s the easy bit. I don`t begrudge Tony his hour on the world stage and he`s done it brilliantly. But please come back to earth quickly. There`s a lot of visions unfulfilled here, too. The economy is on a downward slide and unemployment will go up. Come home lad.
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