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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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24 October 2003 |
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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. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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17 July 2003 |
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That was the year that wasn’t. Our New Labour conditioning began to fray, the permanent smile began to crack and recidivist impulses to tax, spend and public service began to emerge. Tony’s regular, restless reshuffles have created a critical mass of malcontents, plotting revenge, on the back benches just as the Party begins to realise that our leaders didn’t have a new philosophy to replace social democracy. Just a series of half baked impulses to privatisation. Mostly now exhausted, impractical or insane. Godot’s arrival has been postponed. So we’re milling round waiting for someone else to turn up. Gordon? David? Peter? Perhaps Arnold Scwazznegger if he doesn’t make it in California. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 July 2003 |
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People no longer believe politicians because we always say what we don`t mean. The smaller the justification for war or the evidence about WMD, the louder it`s trumpeted. The more Gordon hates the Euro or Tony gets fed up with the EU, the more they proclaim their enthusiasm. The more lost the government is, the more frantic its proclamations of purpose. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 May 2003 |
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Friday 11th April
Budget week. Budgets, Baghdad Buggeration and the Bodily Assumption of Blair.
Budget Bombed – Gordan’s rules are all so elastic he can get away with anything but though the Tories tried to paint them as drunk on borrowing, this didn’t do much. Should have borrowed more to boost the economy. Benefits and tax credits redistribute even though they’re finicky but he can’t stop tinkering. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 April 2003 |
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WAR DIARY - PVT AUSTIN MITCHELL (GRIMSBY SAPPERS)
Welcome to my War Diary, written at a secret location behind the lines and officially approved under war emergency powers. Jokes censored by Geoff Hoon along with references to army boots and the SA80 rifle. Peter Mandelson took time off from editing the Hartlepool Sycophant to rewrite my comments on Tony Blair. Alistair Campbell has exorcised all references to Government/American policy, while Tommy MacAvoy refuses to allow me to reveal how I would have voted had he not stopped me from voting at all. This diary is published on a "need to know" basis only to those who voted the Bush/Blair ticket.
NOTE: THIS TEXT NOT YET CLEARED BY PENTAGON. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 January 2003 |
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2002 was the year The Project turned into Animal Farm. Except that instead of pigs turning into humans, our Super-leaders turned into ordinary, harried, hapless humans just like us. Now we’re just like any other government: shambolic, error prone, drifting from blunder to cock-up, missing every target we’ve set instead of driving forward purposefully to the two basic ones: full employment by 2004, Universal Happiness by 2005. The press has turned nasty and decided to be Ham’s opposition on the grounds that the Tories aren’t capable of doing the job. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 June 2002 |
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Another Post Socialist Year of triumphs for the Third Way as the onward march of the people moves on to Tony knows where. The rest of us will eventually be told. On a need to know basis. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 May 2002 |
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I decided to get away from the constant public adulation of the government "Oh you’re a supporter of Mr Blair. How wonderful. I think he’s doing such a marvellous job" etc by staying in New Zealand after the EFRA Committee left. We’ve been here enquiring into what happens when all subsidies are taken away from farming. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 February 2002 |
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Monday 7 January
Arrive back in cold, damp, dreary Britain, suntanned, fit and re-energised after a summer visit to New Zealand to assess how much New Zealand has changed in the thirty years since my book, the Half Gallon Quarter Acre Pavlova Paradise.
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 January 2002 |
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That was the year that was. It was to have been the year Labour came good, abandoning the handcuffs it had donned to show it was safe, pure and wholesome, and beginning to build the better society based on redistribution, growth and public spending "You know Labour Government works. Now let’s build on that base". |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 December 2001 |
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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? |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 August 2001 |
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Who’d have believed that our triumphant second term could be such a mess? Tony hit the ground stumbling, ministers bumbling, the PLP grumbling, which would be serious if the Tory Party hadn’t decided to go into pantomime early. Having given up my month long vigil by the telephone waiting for the call, I’ve decided to take some of Roy Hattersley’s Viagra and ’Rise Up’. Unfortunately, he hasn’t told me what to do next, the unions are milling round not quite believing what they’re being told, the Left is out of practice, and the New Chums stunned. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 April 2001 |
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Hail and Farewell, Fantasy Parliament. Here we are, pretending to be MPs, running round in small circles, migrating from meeting to meeting, passing incomprehensible legislation which won’t be implemented, desperately ignoring the fact that the election is forty-five days away, all clinging to the Parliamentary raft as it slowly sinks. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 February 2001 |
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Suddenly my little world as a footsoldier in Tony’s Triumphal Army is transformed. Once a hardworking MP dutifully tramping the Third Way, praising Tony and serving grateful constituents. Now, overnight, an embattled candidate pleading pathetically for votes and filling in time before the "off" with play-way legislation. Which won’t get through before the House is dissolved on 3 April. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 January 2001 |
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CHRONICLES OF THE ANCIENT HERMIT OF GRIMSBY
(Or a year in Parliament through the eyes of Austin)
"The trouble with being old", as Lord Longford said to me "is that you've seen it all before". This is my 94th year as MP for Grimsby (is it still there? Has it been washed away by melting ice caps?) So I agree with his Lordship. I've seen new dawns before: 1945, the wonder of 1964. I've seen PR before. "You Know Labour Government Works" (and no questions about "For Who" then). I've seen admirable leadership (my heroes Hugh Gaitskell and Jim Callaghan). And I've seen it all turn to dross, as spray-on glitter usually does. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 August 2000 |
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Having got used to walking on water the sudden turn around is a huge shock. Yet it’s just that normal politics have resumed and sadly those who rule by the spin die by it once people begin to disbelieve the figures and realise that endless initiatives don’t mean improvement. They voted for things to get better and they haven’t as quickly as they hoped for. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 June 2000 |
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TS Eliot was wrong. May’s the cruelest month. Not April.
Bloody weather. Boring business. Disastrous elections. Collapsing morale and falling membership.
William Hague casting clouts and only little Leo on the other scale.
Yet what did we expect? Labour councils are our front line. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 May 2000 |
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Spring at last. Renewal and regeneration. A new start. But not this year. The weather is awful, the government in trouble. Our style is bossy and with the project formulated and run by a small number of power-motivated men (no women at the top). So Cabinet Members and backbenchers alike become spectators relaying messages we don’t quite believe to people who don’t listen. The chosen ones listen only to focus groups, cutting out the traditional middlemen of the party because it’s like using carrier pigeons in an age of email. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 April 2000 |
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I came back from New Zealand fit, tanned and raring to go. Now I’m ’flu-ridden, flabby (again) and things are turning sour. Mid-term grumbles, slightly late, but nonetheless indicating some annoying shifts. We told them at the last election we weren’t promising anything, and wouldn’t do much so as to prove ourselves safe, conservative and orthodox. We’ve followed that agenda exactly. Yet now they’re grumbling that we’ve done nothing for them. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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01 February 2000 |
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Returning from New Zealand to Pomerania is depressing. From a young country to an old one, a clean country to a dirty one, a country run for people, to one run for the elite.
I don’t want to be back but should never have gone. Alistair Campbell has let things disintegrate. After two and a half years of herd-like sycophancy the press has reversed polarity and started biting the hand that’s fed them so well. It doesn’t matter. It’s all trivia of no concern to the people. Yet suddenly we’re portrayed as a party at the end of its tether, doomed to defeat, divided and deceitful and incapable of fulfilling our promises. |
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