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Hilary Armstrong, Labour`s Chief Whip, has managed to avoid the usual rows over her Select Committee appointments because the Parliamentary Committee stepped in to stop some of the lunacies the Whips were inclined to in their desire to use Select Committee appointments as a form of patronage and discipline. Gwyneth Dunwoody stays in place as a powerful critic on Transport. Some attempts to give former ministers a nice little retirement niche as committee chairs are cancelled and a few rebels, like Andrew McInley, given places.
The committee couldn`t change everything so real anomalies remain like the failure to appoint me to any committee at all, despite my desperate pleas to have something interesting to do to keep me out of trouble. Select Committees are the solace of the backbencher and the one field in which we can actually assert an influence. We can play Perry Mason and inform ourselves because the committees are served by some of the best brains in their particular field and act like a rolling E.S.N. Seminar.
The real failure is the low level of the lists. I`m not sure whether it`s done to blunt the Select Committees criticisms of government or because Whips naturally prefer people with the same room temperature IQ as themselves, but some chairs and several members are far from the best and the brightest. Instead of adding luster to the committees and matching Tory appointments in sharpness, we`ve got some lunk-headed lame-brains.
Select Committees should train MPs for promotion to ministerial and shadow jobs. We seem to be using them as a dumping ground. Rather like the Whips` Office.
I was surprised to discover an amazing statistic. We`ve been in power ever since our great election victory of 1997. So guess which three people – only three – have held the same job continuously since that date?
The Prime Minister is an easy guess. So is Gordon Brown as the eternal Chancellor, still working hard to become Prime Minister. But there`s one other and no-one to whom I`ve put the question has guessed his name.
So I`d tell you. It`s Tommy MacAvoy, the endearing but incomprehensible bully, who spent all those years as pairing Whip.
I went to see him just a while back for my annual telling off over naughty voting. There on his wall is a picture of Calvi, the former Papal banker, and another of Blackfriar`s Bridge under which Calvi was found hanging, probably murdered by the Mafia. “Why those pictures?” I asked, puzzled. “Because that`s where I`ll be hanging if the government is defeated” was his terse reply. I had to reassure him. He`s certainly not going to become a victim of the Mafia. He heads it.
There`s nothing I can add to the shock and horror mobilized to condemn the murderous explosions in London which have so appalled us all. Yet in all the rhetoric about the “war on international terrorism” and sinister forces dedicated to the crushing of freedom and our way of life, we should concentrate on the reality of what happened. This was murder done by three loser lads from Leeds led by a lunatic and pushed by fanatics. Without the gullible naiveté of young fools no terror organization would have been unable to do anything. Whoever enrolled them and then pissed off out of the way would have been impotent to do anything at all.
The lads were exploited just as surely as if they`d been conned into launching a hopeless pop group, sold forged money, enrolled as male prostitutes, pyramid selling, or a gang of bank robbers, by promises of fame, wealth and celebrity. Ruthless exploiters exist in every way of life and the only difference between others and terrorist recruiters is that the alternatives wouldn`t have brought shame to their families, ruin to their businesses, danger to their mates, hostility to their community, or death to their victims, all the things they never seem to have thought of.
The terror was local and British made. That heightens fear, but it also means that it was low-tech and unskilled. No great intelligence is involved in making explosives or deciding a soft target. Even the timing, while the security services are concentrating on the G8 in Scotland, is obvious even to low-IQ lads. All they contribute is service as deluded mules.
Which doesn`t mean it won`t happen again. Many soft targets are easily available but we seem to be gearing up to protect more difficult targets, such as Parliament, Party Conferences, Ministers and MPs. All are well beyond the reach of deluded fools who believe that the quickest way to Glory and a personal welcome from Allah is to blow their own heads off.
I tried to get tickets for “Who`s the Daddy?”, the comedy play about David Blunkett`s infatuation with Kimberly Fortier, and the goings on at the Spectator which made it look like the home life of our own dear Football Association. “Sorry” was the terse reply. “We`re sold out. It`s all these bloody MPs trying to see it before they all go off on holiday”. |
