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Happy Days are here again. The Pioneer Corps of socialism re-assembles on the Westminster Parade Ground. Tony triangulates the line of march. The Party Conference retriangulates it back again. No-one’s sure where we’re going, the Tories are all over the place and the Lib Dems apparently asleep.
Yet it could be very exciting if this turns out to be the all change year of the three leaders. At the moment, though, all that’s on offer are warmed up dog’s dinners: ID Cards, "choice" and more private involvement in Health, Education, nurseries, prisons, probation and probably mortuaries. You never know what’s coming next when Prime Ministers move into legacy mode.
Wednesday 28 September
Inaugural meeting of the Melrose Group to train and rear stalking donkeys. Take the opportunity to consult my legal adviser, Marshall-Andrews, about my prospects for damages against the policeman who deleted my images of the chaos in the Late Registration Centre. Wrongful detention for 10 minutes £600. Destruction of great photographs £2.50.
Thursday 29 September
Conference again defeats John Prescott on privatisation of council houses and demands the Fourth Option. If Prezza hasn’t done anything by next year we should have three strikes and he’s out. I’m not called to speak because I know something about it but last year when we defeated him John made me famous by writing to every council in the land inviting me to perform certain anatomically difficult feats. Hopefully this year he’ll really explode and make me a megastar. This has been the most boring and worst attended Conference in years, but the most rebellious. To stop that they’re now talking of reducing the power of the Unions. They know that when change comes in the Labour Party it won’t come from a supine PLP but from the Unions.
Monday 3 October
A week in Grimsby rather than Blackpool. "To be old in politics is to be dead" Tony once told me, but I remember the last Tory Conference as exciting as this in 1963. Hailsham ranted, like the People’s Ken, Butler gave a dull and sad speech, like David D. and Sir Alec snook in and grabbed the prize just like David Cameron. It was all the prelude to a Labour victory.
Wednesday 12 October
Off to Coventry to speak to the Photo Marketing Association like a drug addict going to meet his dealer. I can’t resist buying cameras and photography has become enormously exciting with digital but making life tougher for the industry as prices crash, the switch from film goes faster than anyone thought, and new models and techniques pour out so rapidly that the thief who stole my £400 digital brought it back to complain that it was now out of date and worthless. So I’m keeping the industry going with my addiction. They are enormously relieved when I pledge to commit members of the All Party Parliamentary Photography Group to five more photos a week and two new cameras a year.
Thursday 13 October
Back down to London at Tommy MacAvoy’s insistence to vote for the Terror amendment so I have to miss Clare Short speaking at the Literary Lunch in Cleethorpes. She went down a bomb. Instead I go to the New Statesman lunch for the Editor of The Nation, and arrive back at the House in time for the vote, to find everyone going home. No vote. Tommy’s diddled me again. Will Linda complain to him?
Friday 14 October
Arrive back in Grimsby to find the government has been buggering everything up in my holidays. You can’t take your eyes off things for a moment with this restless fiddling drive to pull everything up by the roots every year.
The police are to be merged with any other Yorkshire Force, a choice of being run by thugs from Sheffield or toffs from North Yorkshire, or even submergence in a Yorkshire Force. Our Force is a reasonable size and has established good community relations. Now it’s to be tagged onto somewhere with no interest in us, making Grimsby a periphery of a periphery. Sheffield on Sea.
The Primary Care Trust which has done well is also to be forcibly merged with North Lincolnshire which hasn’t. No-one locally wants that, particularly not the Council, and we MPs aren’t even consulted. We spend our lives fighting futile rearguard actions against changes which will be re-changed when the next fashion (smallness) comes along.
Saturday 15 October
Shona and I present the Child Carer of the Year Awards at a glamorous dinner in Cleethorpes. She gives all the top prizes and I’m left to present Best Potty Trainer and Lowest Nappy Dirtying Rate. We have the consolation of presenting prizes to places the Council was trying to close down until we produced statistics showing that the procreation rate is up in North East Lincolnshire under New Labour. There’s a slogan there somewhere.
Monday 17 October
Up early to go to Nottingham to speak at the Association of Retaining Authorities to defend council housing. Leave at 6.30. Thanks to hold ups on the M1 (nothing seems to work in this country) reach Nottingham at 9.45. There my computer print out of directions which reads "go down Snurple St for 0.8 miles. Turn left into Durple St etc etc" is useless because Nottingham has either omitted to name any of its streets or taken the names down and cut them up to provide alphabet sets for schools. As usual the only people in the streets are asylum seekers or people visiting for the first time. Arrive belatedly to find the defiant authorities in session with Housing Officers keen to privatise to boost their salaries, Councillors worried about sanctions, the whole assembly as puzzled as I am about what Prezza is going to do next because he’s embarked on a huge game of bluff and can’t relax the pressure because any concessions will make all want to keep their housing stock.
Belt off without taking questions (a politician’s delight) to get to London for an appointment with Gerry Sutcliffe about the DTI’s enthusiasm for showering ever more privileges on the Big Four accountancy houses. Instead of creating a powerful independent regulator like the SEC or requiring that directors accept responsibility for their own accounts or go to jail, like Sarbones Oxley, the DTI has become a front organisation for the Big Four. It gives them limited liability partnerships, proportionate liability (which is like having to sue the farmer, the bun-maker the cow, the cooker and the wrapping paper if your hamburger poisons you), indeed anything they want, including a disciplinary authority they dominate. The result will be more scandals and abuses and consumers and investors with no redress. Gerry’s advisers paint a heart breaking picture of vulnerable auditors who’ll sulk and give up auditing altogether unless the DTI gives them everything they want. Exit sobbing.
Tuesday 18 October
Frantic day begins with our House Magazine meeting followed by a meeting with Andrew Adonis who doesn’t accept my argument that for Academy Schools to be successful they need to attract middle-class kids, but to fulfil their educational mission they should attract kids from deprived backgrounds. They can’t do both.
Then on to the Metropolitan Police to get their views on why photographers are being stopped taking photos of kids. They show me horrifying portfolios. I warn of the danger of stigmatising all photographers as paedophiles. Deadlock.
Then to the Public Accounts Commission which I’m still on because the Whips, who’ve purged me from every other Select Committee can’t turn out Commissioners. Being busy stops me responding to the flood of phone calls demanding that I see Tommy MacAvoy for a dose of strict discipline. I think the ID Cards Bill is a barmy waste of money but I weakly decide to abstain and go home to bed determined to be more courageous and better informed when the Lords reject it. As they must if they’re any use at all.
Wednesday 19 October
Denounced all morning by my wife for being so weak and wavering on ID Cards. Try and persuade her that she should speak to Tommy MacAvoy instead. Why can’t the two banes of my political life get together and get off my back?
Afternoon
Yet another reorganisation. At the Yorkshire Assembly reception I’m told the government is going to get rid of the Regions now they’ve settled in and set up City Regions.
Which takes us back to Derek Senior’s report in the 1960s but would leave Grimsby, as usual, in the Merde du Nord, coupled with Hull and John Prescott as a system of government. That will give Grimsby three local government reorganisations since I became an MP and into and out of two counties like the honkey-cokey, five health service reorganisations, four for the ambulance service and two for the police. If only the cost of all this went into local government we could have a marvellous system.
Evening
To Islington to preach the Fourth Option which gets a lot of interest in the Party but none from the people running the country, the media, because it’s about the poor and the badly housed, not home improvement and location location location.
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I’m conservative on these matters (which is why I joined the Labour Party) but I’m just beginning to realise that our restless obsession with change is a stroke of genius. Whitehall Boy Wonders have lots to do devising unnecessary changes, MPs bog down in fighting endless rearguard actions and can’t make trouble, no threats build up because every structure is periodically and randomly destabilised. All grievances can be met with "we’re re-organising" and Tony doesn’t need a reverse gear because everything ends up where it started. It may, however, be expensive. Particularly if Gordon reorganises it all back when he comes in. |
