The election campaign in Grimsby has been postponed. I hope to resume it before 2011, but at the moment the Labour candidate is detained by whips at the Commons to do the washing-up.
This is an enormous disappointment to him, because he was looking forward to getting back to the real world and talking about the real problems of real people rather than exchanging party abuse like everyone else. Sadly he was seen sneaking home by an enraged Tommy McAvoy and ordered back into the kitchen. So this is a non-campaign diary.
Tuesday, March 30
Last supper of Old Testament Prophets. Twenty assembled prophets, only four are trying to stay on. Sad speech by Bob Marshall-Andrews, our Moses, who promises to carry the fight for socialism into the law courts. Others follow suit, with moving speeches about their devotion to the cause. My own speech, offering to take over the leadership of the group if I’m re-elected by a grateful Grimsby, is ignored in the clamour and tears.
I distribute several hundred copies of my CV (which is now a very long one at my age) but find that most people inadvertently leave their copies behind.
Wednesday, March 31
The end of Parliament is like the end of the school year at Dotheboys Hall. Much blubbing, particularly by me. Loud cries of “When shall we 600 meet again. In thunder, lightning, or jail?” The leavers are silently worrying about what on earth they are going to do when their political career of running around in small circles comes to an end.
Some smugly contemplate the House of Lords, which is going to be as crowded as Britain’s prisons if all wishes are fulfilled. The Blairites, who’ve used the party as useful career advancement to get a nice period in office, mostly don’t have the guts to give something back to the party by fighting their seats in a tough election. The Tories are smugly silent eying up our offices and committee chairs, while a flock of hard-faced young candidates wanders around sizing the place up and measuring the parking spaces to see if they’re big enough for Chelsea tractors.
Private wealth is going to become a career necessity for would-be MPs if the expenses become as mean and inadequate as Kennedy wants. He hasn’t required us to pay to join, as so many young people are now forced to do to get work experience. Instead MPs will just be required to have a house in London and an independent income.
This Parliament has been more interesting, but more depressing than any I’ve ever been in, in a career that goes back to Gladstone’s victory in 1892. I’ve never known as much public hostility, so much grovelling for jobs, so much fiddling of expenses, and so miserable a time.
When I attempt to say ‘cheer up’ in a early-day motion, lots of MPs come up to whisper that they’d love to sign it but don’t dare. Then the Grimsby Telegraph headlines it as ‘Mitchell Demands More Money’, which I was at pains not to say. At once abuse begins to flow in and all the old bitterness is revived. You can’t win in today’s climate.
Saturday, April 3
First day of tramping the streets delivering my campaign literature, which gets all soggy and messy in the rain. I look so miserable that a constituent invites me in for a cup of tea, saying “You look so sad and bedraggled. Are you sure you should be doing this at your age?”
I spend lunchtime at a party stall, giving away literature which is mainly a year old because Labour hasn’t bothered to send anything new. Meanwhile every marginal seat in the country is placarded with posters of Gordon Brown saying, “I’ll kill all firstborn children. Vote for me,” or alternatively: “I’ve let in millions of foreign rapists. Vote for me.”
One man comes up to me and cheerfully advises me to go into a hospice. Another says Gordon has been caught out lying on immigration, and that immigrants are taking over the town, though he can’t see any at the moment.
Afternoon canvassing is more cheerful as the sun emerges. People are beginning to look me in the eye again. That’s always a good sign. Several offer the usual crop of insoluble problems and demand that I solve them straight way if I’m to get their vote. I promise I will if I’m re-elected. Things are getting better, yet there are no cries of “glad to see you again.” Perhaps they’re not.
Tuesday, April 6
Gordon goes to the Palace without asking me. The campaign begins. Gordon kicks off in front of a glum cabinet. Cameron is surrounded by eager young Tories who happen to have turned up in their hundreds; Clegg has a group of cleaners and tea ladies who’ve been locked in his office to listen to him.
I’d been looking forward to going home immediately but am grasped warmly by the throat by Tommy McAvoy. He suggests that just as Tony Blair is helping the Labour campaign by going on safari in Africa, I could best help it in Grimsby by staying in Westminster. Marginal seat candidates can go, he says, but I’m past redemption. As a bed-blocker I must stay in case I require medical attention.
I reluctantly comply. It gives me the opportunity to attack the Digital Economy Bill. It really is crazy to try and rush this complex piece of legislation through in the last hours of a dying Parliament. I’m deluged with emails from angry young people who fear they’ll be locked up, their internet connections taken away, their computers confiscated and their families deprived of all access by the bill.
I’d blithely assured them that no government in its right mind would rush something like that through without consideration. It turns out that we are. So I oppose it, and am immediately greeted as a hero on Twitter by people who don’t live in Grimsby.
Wednesday, April 7
Ian Cawsey manages to get Gordon to agree, in answer to a question in PMQs, that he will do something about the ratings revaluation disaster at UK ports.
At last, after two years of writing long letters, putting questions and pleading with ministers and an incompetent valuation agency to stop the huge retrospective rate demands which are going to damage our ports, increase already high port costs, lose jobs and investment and make companies insolvent, we’ve got an admission that something is wrong.
Something will be done. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me very happy. I dash off another 100 letters to ministers, telling them what they should do.
Evening – Since I’m forcibly detained, I might as well have some fun. So I vote against the Digital Economy Bill. Twenty Labour rebels. Not bad.
Thursday, April 8
Watch the first press conferences as the parties kick off their campaigns. This is going to be awful. Dave has stood Tory party policy on its head by abandoning “massive cuts” and guaranteeing every form of expenditure. All three parties are ignoring the looming disaster of an economy without visible means of support.
It’s been kept going by North Sea oil, a huge borrowing bubble and government spending creating jobs. Now the oil is running out, the bubble has burst and everyone is promising to cut public spending. So how do we rebalance the economy towards manufacturing and against finance? That’s going to be tough at the best of times. Now horribly so. But none of the parties will discuss it.
Instead they’re all saying the same things on borrowing, cuts, immigrants, crime and anything else that they think will please the electorate, plus a lot of things that don’t, such as the war in Afghanistan and university fees. The choice between parties is going to be like that between Asda’s, Sainsbury’s or Morrison’s, and just as meaningless. As for the campaign, it’s going to be about minor differences, such as a penny on national insurance – that or simple negative abuse, which the Tories are much better at. No more Mr Nice Guy Dave!
Me? I’m off back to Grimsby to trundle round in my wheelchair. There I’ll fight my own campaign on my own issues and my own manifesto. That will be for higher taxes on the rich, tax and punishment on the banks, lifting the level at which tax has to be paid, and spend! Spend! Spend! To build houses and stimulate the economy. That’s a winning platform. Even if I am the only one advocating it.
Wish me luck.
