HOUSE DIARY

AUSTIN MITCHELL

Happy New Year. Though it won`t be. It’ll launch my new record “Things can only get worse” (on the Legg Label - all proceeds to the Fees Office) but it already has. Linda’s got breast cancer. I’ve had a begging letter from Legg, Shakedowns Inc. Gordon’s getting missives from suicide emailers. And there is no health in us. Not in me at any rate. Bad cold. All it needs now is for Gordon to produce a new plan for halving the deficit in 12 weeks and we’re finished.

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Saturday l9 December  To Hull to complete the filming of our living in a tower block programme. Letters to the newspaper in Grimsby recommend that I should go to Hull and stay there. Hull opinion is that I should get the hell out because envy will cloud my vision. 

I like Orchard Park, its people even more so. They are part of Britain’s submerged fifth, the ones society dumps on. But Love Productions have thoughtfully primed all my interlocutors with questions like “Tim Loughton, the Tory MP (who went into a Birmingham tower block) got lower rents/re-decoration/scholarships to Oxford/seats in the Shadow Cabinet for people in his tower block. Why haven’t you done anything for us?” 

Friday 25 December       Lonely Christmas. Lindaa’s not well enough to cater for my eight vandal grandchildren. So we cook a sparrow instead of a turkey and eat alone, Linda ploughing through a pile of books on breast cancer, me reading books on depression (psychological and economic). Both getting ever more miserable.

Friday l January                New Year’s day. Scheduled launch of my triumphant election campaign  but in face of cries of “You’re not standing again are you?” can`t think of anything to say. Decide to postpone the launch until I can think of some policies.

Monday 4 January           Snow is ever deeper. It’s a toss up whether we can get the car out or make it to the snowbound station. It takes twice as long as usual to get to London but my government needs me.

Tuesday 5 January           Not sure what for.   Today`s daft Bill pledges, “scout’s honour”, to halve the deficit in four years. Should I speak to point out that it’s barmy or shut up? It moves us onto Tory ground of cuts, freezes and stringency, a battle we can`t win and which inures the public to cuts. We should boost stimulus spending until we`ve ended the recession.

No use presenting our cuts as kind, Tory cuts as cruel. A cut is a cut is a cut as well as a  job loss and a diminution of service even when it`s called an efficiency saving. 

Labour always loses on this when we do what we`re told is our duty. Look what Roy Jenkins` 1969 Budget did for us in 1970. We should boost spending. The deficit will take care of itself when we get growth and we need an industrial strategy to boost manufacturing and stuff money into that, not the ungrateful greedy banks.

I could move sarcastic Amendments halving the deficit before 6 May but the miserable Scots, now in charge of economic policy, wouldn`t understand. So I write to Tommy saying I can`t support the Bill because the balance of my mind is disturbed.

Wednesday 6 January    Attend hospital with Linda to be told that she’ll have to have chemotherapy and then radiotherapy throughout the election campaign. Her hair will fall out and she’ll be plunged into total lassitude. This is awful. She’s my only activist. So I ask if I could borrow a wheelchair and push her round Grimsby to get the sympathy vote. Three pairs of medical eyes, which had been focussed on her with looks of concern, turn to me with loathing and contempt thinking “bloody politicians”. I giggle nervously.

Back at the Fun Factory the dropped Haitches rebellion is in full swing and I`m copied into a storm of angry emails inviting them to do all sorts of anatomically difficult things. Meanwhile Tony Blair has arranged to affiliate New Labour to Louis Vuitton, so when Blairite MPs lose their seats they can get jobs selling handbags door to door.

Thursday 7 January         Still falls the snow. Trains north are disrupted. Both the A1 and the M1 are messy. So I decide to stay in London and give the world the benefit of my views in the PBR debate.  In recession deficits and borrowing are the solution not the problem, but the Tories are obsessed with “confidence”. In their view this can only be restored by a Tory government. So the best way of rebuilding confidence is to destroy it by claiming the country is on the brink of financial disaster verging on credit de-rating and default. Such a depressing picture, I ask my assistant to ring New Zealand House and investigate the possibility of emigration. “Sorry .New Zealand is closed”.

Friday Saturday Sunday 10-12 January    We`ve both gone down with colds and getting North is so difficult we stay in London.  I`ve never done this before because I hate London but it`s a pleasant opportunity to go round bookshops, read voraciously, see grandchildren who’ve grown into teenagers and found the ability to talk since I last saw them. Angry emails from Grimsby indicate some annoyance that my election launch has been postponed yet again. 

Monday 11 January         Marvellous start to the week. Instead of battling down crowded motorways or fighting for places on trains full of slowly sobering Scots, I can lounge elegantly and read the newspapers. This is upsetting. The Mail, the Express, the Sun and the Telegraph are full of Tory hysteria about deficits and borrowing and hysterically attacking everything Gordon does, then denouncing him for not doing anything. They’d do this if he was the Archangel Gabriel but, being Gordon, he offers them more ammunition. It’s upsetting that no-one from the Labour Party is defending the lad. He should just say “If I`m grumpy it`s because I care”.

Evening                Gordon’s long awaited speech at the PLP is good. He tells a coherent story and keeps it brief. His mistake is always to go off into rolling rants like last year`s Conference speech: a brilliant first 4 minutes but rubbish for the next 54 minutes. Just like me at sex.

The pundittieri have been telling us about rolling rows and delegations demanding less Balls and more collective leadership, and Alistair insisting on more cuts. It could be true. It could be rubbish. Columnists are adept at making summat owt of nowt by piecing together rumours, gossip, quotes from “friends” of people who have no friends and pretending it`s history when it`s really fiction. There is a crucial debate about how long and on what scale we should continue stimulus spending and when we should start to cut it back and the PLP should conduct it, but it`s been hijacked by pundits. We should take it back, require Ministers and Gordon to tell us what they really want and then decide democratically. It`s our fate that’s being decided so the decision shouldn`t be abdicated to public school educated stirrers, most of whom don’t like Labour, telling fairy stories.

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Four months to go to the death of dreams. We’ve wasted our great opportunity to build the fair society and create a consensus for caring, and instead of preparing to build the next stage of the altruistic society we’re opting to fight on Tory ground of kinder cuts versus brutal Thatcherism, while Cabinet weaklings disassociate themselves from Gordon, dumped Blairites prattle about public service reform (a polite way of dumping on the poor) the PLP loses the will to live and the electorate lapses into gloomy apathy. No wonder so many MPs are getting out of the sinking ship. They’ve had enough and don’t want to be around for Custer’s last stand. So why not take the money and run, as the more beloved Leader did?