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It’s odd to come back to the madhouse after two months of sanity (forgetting the silly mess of the September session). Political addicts have been glued to Hutton. He`s showered out more information about what creeps civil servants and intelligence agencies are and about how the politicians lie and pass the buck; the kind of stuff we’ve always suspected but never had proved. Yet it`s really a Whodunnit, remote from the main issue of why we went to war. So it`s a waste of time to get obsessed by it.
September to October. I always enjoy the Labour Conference, a combination of outward bound survival course and OAP reunion. This year it`s sad. The Party should have told Tony he’s on probation. Instead they were so keen to comfort him for his recent battering the speech got an organised acclamation which turned it into intransigent self-justification. He`s going to listen to the people on everything but the Euro Constitution but he`s not going to change policy. I didn’t bother to join the standing ovations: a mistake having been seated among the Sedgefield delegation. Ted Bishop`s daughter told me off for having taken the place of a delegate who would have applauded and betraying the role of MPs which she sees as a Nuremberg bit part. Defend myself as sitting next to Bob Marshall-Andrews who has only one leg and a weak heart and is unable to stand. She is unconvinced.
Speak at six fringe meetings, all brilliant of course, but the rest of the fringe is a disaster. It`s all sponsored by organisations who always want a Minister. So what should be ideas bubbling up is platitudes handed down, making Conference a dull affair. Though not as bad as:-
7-10 October The Tory Party Conference. I feel so sorry for the Tory Party. They`re awful to IDS but no one dare move against him, and even if they did with the leadership elections handed to the lunatics, they’d only elect another. So IDS is secure in his miserable insecurity. Poor lad.
10 October To New York to celebrate my sister in law`s sixtieth birthday. It`s cheaper than London and more enjoyable. We flew from Manchester. Always a treat compared to Heathrow. I`ve come in at London’s aviation slum several times this year and it`s always a misery. A grey, litter-strewn shed where the lavatories smell and are usually flooded, the travelators haven`t worked for months, the walls are dull, grey and miserable like a prison, the lights dim and the staff surly. All calculated to prepare folk for Britain outside.
Manchester is bright, cheerful, cheeky, but BA is useless at cheap flights. The staff act as if they`re slumming and the service is pathetic. Come back with a huge cargo of books, mostly about lies: Lies and the Lying Liars, Damned Lies, Rush Limbaugh is a Fat Slob (and an addict too) Bushwhacked. American debate is all so much more crude and open than our anal politesse. Particularly in California where Arnie`s election as Gropernator is exciting, though the pompous British media condemn California as crazy. Far from it. We should have recall here too. Or three year terms. Politicians have a short shelf life today and should be disposable. Except in Grimsby, of course.
Buy a book for Alistair Campbell: English as a Second ****ing Language. That should help him with the diaries.
Sunday l2 October Autumn has arrived with brown leaves, early evenings, and most of our huge Yorkshire stone paving stones stolen. The police are no help: “Happens all the time”. The building society says they have three claims a week. Local stone merchants say they’ve probably all gone to London to build palaces. Buy an edge cutter from B&Q and write my post code in huge letters on the few remaining slabs. “That’s no use” says the insurance assessor, “they’ll just turn them over”.
Linda is indignant in defence of poor Betsy Duncan Smith. Many spouses work for their partners and always have to keep the money within the family. Only the employer, Iain, can say whether they do the job satisfactorily. I`ve never employed any of my family (they’re such a lot of layabouts) but Linda says there should be a spouse`s allowance. Without spice we couldn’t do the job, though in fact Linda alienates constituents by picking unnecessary fights with everyone, particularly the local schools my kids went to. Other spouses act more decorously. But at least they make it unnecessary for us to hire housekeepers, child minders, prostitutes and chauffeurs.
Tuesday l4 October. It`s awful being back, particularly since there’s nothing much to do. Today`s Bill collapses. Today`s meetings are boring. It`s going to take time to revive my appetite for politics.
Tuesday l5 October The government`s nasty neighbours Conference at QEII. I hoped it might be a new policy towards France but it turns out to be the launch of a Yob approach to Yobbery. This involves a crack down on late return of library books, seven Pathcleaner schemes for the issue of pooper snoopers on council estates, and stray dogs forcibly fitted with catheters.
Blunkett is brilliant as usual, but the Prime Minister is now less convincing. Tony’s gone through three phases in a premiership now bearing comparison with Walpole`s. First the young Lochinvar phase of eagerness, an Aw Shucks Tony, launching initiatives all over the place. Then True Tony, lecturing the world and bombing bits of it like a nuclear-armed Gladstone. Now it`s Post-Tone, a sharp, bossier figure who lectures rather than listens. The speech gestures and hesitations, once endearing, now look phoney. He looks like a management consultant, there to tell us what we can`t do, rather than what we can. It’s a sad transformation.
Wednesday l5 October Daily Mail publishes the name of my son, Jonathan, as unpaid computer fixer in its investigation into family jobs at Westminster. Sadly they’ve taken the easy way out by looking only at passholders with the same name, not at employed spouses and other relations who turn a seat into a nice little business. Clearly, though, wives should be paid. So I tell Linda her duties now include organising Gilbert and Sullivan concert parties, opening fetes and acting as my dresser, in addition to her general responsibility for being bonaire and buxom in bed and at board.
Briefing for the DEFRA committee on why Cancun failed. Government says “Don’t blame the Frogs”. I do. The French always doggedly pursue their national interest. They don`t want CAP reform so it won`t happen.
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The Dog Star Rages in these “waiting for Hutton” days. An unrepentant Tony ploughs on in his Popemobile with only a forward gear, no steering wheel, two burst tyres, and running low on petrol.
Charles appears to have gone to sleep. The Tories are up a well known creek. I can`t see what a Conservative Party stands for now. Not conservatism because we`re better at that and they`re obsessed with being radical. Not paternalism because they believe in the market. Not law and order or economic competence because we’ve grabbed both. So they focus on the logical impossibility of cutting taxes while improving public services which no one believes.
As for us, we sit in the middle of the road like a great blancmange which either smothers other parties or forces them to get round by extremist policies no one wants. Assuming Tony goes next year and we don’t screw it up, we’ve discovered the secret of eternal power. |
