HOUSE DIARY

I had a really good election. Happy on my own. Totally disconnected from our tatty national campaign. So it`s sad to come back to a diet of warmed up dog`s dinner. From Master of the Local Universe to one of Tommy`s Troops is a difficult transition. I`d rather be back communing with the people but I don`t think Tony would. He said he`s been listening, then but immediately belts off to solve the world`s problems. Perhaps he misheard, though “off” was certainly part of the message. My guess is that he`s fated to be let down by Europe just as he was by the electorate.

Monday 6 June
After a week of playing Edith Paif and Charles Trenet records, Jack Straw`s statement doesn`t quite live up to his own advance billing. He comes to the House to praise the Constitution not to bury it, and Dennis Skinner steals what was to be my joke about the dead parrot. Jack thinks it`s on a life support mechanism so the EU will have to hold séances with it to discern its intentions and see whether anything can be saved. The beak perhaps? Or the plumage? But not, surely, the dying bird.

Tuesday 7 June
Amateur Photographer warns me of a national effort to persecute photographers taking pictures of children. Ken Livingstone wants to put up warnings against digital photography as a crime. In Cleethorpes a councillor is stopped from photographing the Kite Festival on the beach because children are involved. Another victim of PC harassment announces that he was asked to wear a yellow jacket, presumably marked “Paedophile”, to photograph the beach. Cleethorpes is campaigning to go upmarket. First they close the toilets. Now they`re persecuting photographers. It even happened to me just before the election. Two “Beach Guards” looking nothing like Pamela Anderson raced after me to accuse me of taking photos of naked children on the beach. I hadn`t, though I was an obvious suspect because laden down with cameras like a Mexican with maracas. I wasn`t quick witted enough to ask why they didn`t tell the kids to put their clothes on rather than chasing me. Or was it a form of entrapment? Our own Michael Jackson case?

Wednesday 8 June
European debate. I unveil my thesis that it was the euro wot dun it to an incomprehending Chamber. We Euro-sceptics have been deprived of a year`s fun while Tony, who`s as happy as we are at the outcome, but can`t show it, has been provided with a whole new career putting Euro-Humpty back together again. It won`t work. His prescription of warmed up Thatcherism “reform” is exactly what France voted against. Yet embarking on the Sysiphean labours of putting Europe to rights, then Africa, then the world, will be good reasons for not stepping down for four years. Or forty for that matter. Who knows? Absence may make the hearts grow fonder.

Thursday 9 June
Labour`s little contingent of Destiny Dodgers (those who`re not two thousand percent behind the programme) are being called in one by one for a “conversation” with Tommy MacAvoy. Mine is today. The part of the lecture I understood (after translation) filled me with deep gloom. We are to be tied to the wheels of the juggernaut. No grandmother`s funerals – I`ve had my allocation of eight. Two years advance notice of abstentions. No more irresponsible EDMs, particularly mine, against ID Cards. No sudden deaths until 2010. Anyone feeling twinges of rigor mortis will be embalmed. Just like the Euro-Parrot. There`s clearly an exciting time ahead. Perhaps they`ll issue the Destiny Dodgers with embroidery kits to give us something interesting to do. Would they dare to issue them to women DDs too?

Friday 10 June
The Lib-Con coalition which runs North East Lincolnshire, having closed libraries, lavatories, youth clubs, advice centres, and homes for young mums, has now embarked on the final phase of its scorched Grimsby policy by announcing (bang in the middle of the election) a massive programme of primary school closures.

Shona and I objected to the suddenness and abruptness of the consultation. The Council refused to extend it but were kind enough to change its name, announcing that it wasn`t a consultation at all but a pre-consultation consultation, to listen to the views of the people in much the same way as Hitler listened to Poland. We agreed to put our case to the Council`s first experiment on using a Scrutiny Committee as a Select Committee. Our case was essentially moderate, arguing only that they`d got the statistics wrong, they`re closing schools the wrong way round, with improving ones first, several of the schools to be closed are over-subscribed, so many schools and surplus places are to go there`s the risk of having to build new schools by 2009 because of the way the birth rate is rising under New Labour. All moderate stuff, though Shona delivered it with a ferocity which had the Liberal councillors (and me) quaking in terror. It was even tougher than the lectures Shona gives me on the need to be loyal to New Labour. She ended with the ringing challenge to “go back to your wards and prepare for procreation”. We all went out shaking.

Saturday 11 June
Surgery. The increase in problems caused by the grumbling contentment of the election has plateaued to be replaced by an increase in asylum and immigration cases. They can`t get legal advice in Grimsby because it doesn`t pay the lawyers and the nearest legal advice is an hour`s session a week in Hull. So they come to MPs` surgeries. This is a Home Office plot. MP advice isn`t as good as tricky lawyers, so asylum seekers get thrown out quicker and MPs are so overworked by it they`ve no time to argue about ID Cards. After surgery I`m taken on a tour of burnt out houses which the police won`t protect, the owners can`t sell, and where the council won`t collect the rubbish fly-tipped all over them. Can I get John Prescott to use this for brown field new build?

Monday 13 June
Stay in Grimsby as a judge of the National Colleges Seafood Cooking Competition. This is a wonderful opportunity to judge (and eat) the brilliant cooking of eight college teams from all over the country. The top chef in charge rudely asks why I have to eat so much more than all the other judges? I explain that Yorkshire children are all brought up to leave plates absolutely clean. Satisfied, replete, and happy, catch the train to London, and am walking happily down Victoria Street when my mobile phone goes mad. Tommy. I`ve missed a vote. Failed the new test at the first hurdle. This is followed by a tirade so incomprehensible that he could have been reading the complete works of Burns. I do recognise the F word for the first time ever in our Socratic dialogues. People passing are shocked as I stand rooted to the spot, pale, a tears coursing down my cheeks. The happy times are over. Terror begins here.

Tuesday, 14 June
Travel down to somewhere in the deepest South to interview Denis Healey about his war-time experiences. Denis and Edna are in good form. They enjoy magnificent scenery, almost as good as Yorkshire but it`s not the real world. Denis guiltily assures me that it`s two degrees warmer than Heckmondwike. Give Denis permission to take two photos of me in return for taking 206 of him. It`ll help him improve his photography.

War has broken out in the EU and it`s so bitter they`re considering calling Dennis MacShane back to the colours. He can`t come because he`s busier writing and speaking about the EU now than he ever was as a Minister. Media life is going to be dawn to dusk MacShane. Everything has fallen apart since government became MacShaneless.

Europe has replaced physical fighting by media confrontations in which the more they hate each other the more they smile. Tony is fixed grinning all over his face at Chirac so things are really bad. My guess is that after months of wrestling with custard and trading incompatible (and incomprehensible) concepts of Europe they`ll be driven back to where they started: Constitution lite. There`s neither time nor the will to cobble together any alternative to staggering on, though even that won`t be acceptable to electorates until they end the depression by massively boosting demand and getting the euro and interest rates down, to become competitive again.

Wednesday 15 June
Launch of the Council Housing Group`s indictment of Prezza`s Great Council House Con: his attempt to bribe, bully and bamboozle councils into giving away their council house stock. Gi`up. Gerroff. Gi`ower is my advice to John, but it`s moving into its final frenzy with a July deadline. Given the developing housing crisis it`s like changing the ownership of deckchairs on the Titanic but with a typically British class difference. The possessing classes get huge house price gains and when their mortgage provider privatises and de-mutualises they`re showered in bonus money. When the renting classes get privatised all they get is an increase in rents and charges, less security, and an end to their democratic power to vote the owners out. This folly helps distract attention from the fact that our building rate for social housing is so disastrously low.


I`m not looking forward to Euro-summer. Endless sermons about “saving Europe” or rebuilding it, neither of which people particularly want. Endless Euro-waffle about the Constitution. Endless battles which everybody wins. The CAP, the CFP, British overpayments, monetary union and all the other follies still stagger on and Tony`s helpful efforts to offer a moral fibre building dose of Thatcherism will be thrown back in his face.

Hopefully we`ll end up either with a smorgasbord Europe or total disintegration. More likely we`ll all be battered and resigned into accepting the same old mess for a bit of peace and quiet. The only consolations are that it will keep a lot of Euro-loons off the streets, give Tony a new lease of life and keep him, and them, out of British politics.

THE ART OF PARROT EMBALMING: EU VERSION

The poor old European Constitution has become John Cleas`s parrot – dead, deceased, stiff, passed on, no longer with us. The campaign for it in Britain was slated to be Tony Blair`s finest hour, but with that cancelled Tony must devote his swan song, six months as EU President to trundling an increasingly smelly parrot round Europe in the ever present hope of resurrection, trying to arrange some cybernetic deep freeze or persuading reluctant EU leaders to agree to a state funeral. Doubtless any port mortem will be proclaimed as a second coming while the argument over whether EU voters saying “No” really mean “may be” will provide much merriment, but don`t let the fun of parrot embalming conceal the fact that this particular parrot suffers from its slight rigor mortis because of an overdose of felo de se. You can`t build a common currency and a constitution at the same time. Electors put out of work by the first take revenge on the second. So the EU`s greedy desire for a Superstate double whammy has cooked its own parrot.

Thirty years ago last week, Britain voted by 67% to 33% to stay in the Common Market Ted Heath dragged us into. We thought we were entering an economic arrangement which would hitch Britain to their fast rates of growth. Wrong on both counts. The remorseless drive to `ever closer union` produced a sustained effort to build a European Superstate on the Commercial cowshed we entered and Euro growth stopped. An obsession with monetary union as a way to build a European nation by the backdoor without the consent of electorates. It was intended to bring convergence and one EU economy with central institutions to manage it by taking crucial tools of economic management away from the nation states to use them as political instruments for building unity. That distortion had damaging economic consequences.

Superstate building caused most problems and agonies in Britain. Monetary union made its biggest impact on the others doing enough economic damage to make the constitutional changes unacceptable, to end the fast growth we had hoped to share, and to turn the EU into the slow growth, high unemployment blackspot of the advanced world.

Germany had long combined low inflation with high growth by keeping the DMark as low as possible, running big surpluses and institutionalising close co-operation between unions and business. Before currency union France and Italy, both more inflation-prone, could keep up with Germany and maintain competitiveness by periodic devaluations, boosting growth, exports and production. After it, this opportunity was restricted then closed. So the only way they could get down to German levels of inflation and still maintain competitiveness was domestic deflation: cutting costs and holding wages. This in turn damaged Germany`s markets, bringing the performance of Europe as a whole down.

Britain had only a brief dose of this when John Major bullied that poor, wilting woman, Margaret Thatcher, into joining the ERM. This took us into the same trap, kept interest rates high to keep the pound within its bands and deepened recession. Fortunately we failed, left, and were thus inoculated against the euro by learning, as the others hadn`t, that a nation must be able to manage its own interest and exchange rates to suit the needs of its own economy, not subject that economy to an externally determined exchange rate. The others marched joyously into the Euro, deepening the EU hole and adding the Growth and Stability Pact to restrict deficits and government borrowing, thus compounding the recession. At least until the Pact began to threaten Germany and France.

Thus monetary union led to deflation, monetarism, high unemployment and low growth, which in turn made electorates restive, mistrustful of the EU, and ready to throw out its prescriptions when the opportunity arose. As it did in what was a constitution too far. That provided a comprehensive dustbin for every complaint. States compensated by EU largesse supported it. Those paying out didn`t. It was the Euro wot dun it.

Few in the EU seem to understand this Euro effect. Even if they did, they can`t do much about it. No-one can interfere, or argue, with the independent European Central Bank (ECB). This Banker`s Bank is rigidly monetarist and focussed uniquely on an inflation target, not the range of economic objectives: full employment, growth and the health of the economy the Federal Reserve takes into account. This impotent inability to do anything about the real cause of its problems means that the only available proposals for ending the EU`s economic misery are Thatcherite prescriptions of the type so assiduously urged by Tony Blair, espoused by the new Leader of the CDU in Germany and proclaimed by the Commission. Indeed Margaret Thatcher looks set to become the patron saint of the new Europe. Sadly no one, least of all Tony Blair, understands that her statue has feet of clay. Thatcherism didn`t even work in Britain. In Europe it will merely compound the problems.

This `liberalisation` prescription is the old one of rolling back the state, privatisation, tax, benefit and spending cuts and breaking the power of labour and unions (known as “freeing up labour markets”) by increasing unemployment. Yet the improvement this right wing mish-mash is supposed to have brought about in Britain was largely illusory. It did deep damage (and is still doing it) to the manufacturing industry we lived by. It boosted unemployment and, therefore, welfare spending and deficits and improvement came only from the fall in the pound in the later eighties, not Maggie`s counter revolution. That was repeated in the nineties when more deflation and discipline administered via the ERM brought even deeper misery, which Britain escaped only by another devaluation as we were forced out of the ERM. That in turn produced the long boom from which our Labour government has benefited so much, even though we allowed the Monetary Policy Committee to keep our interest rates and the pound too high. This damped the higher growth we could have had, but recovery was so strong their caution didn`t kill it.

The lessons are clear. Exchange and interest rates are crucial. No centrally determined rate suits each individual economy. Nations must be free to manage their own for their own purposes. There devaluation works. Thatcherism doesn`t. Tony Blair doesn`t see this. Few in the EU understand it. Yet the only way the EU can now boost competitiveness and break out of the long, painful wind-down of deflation is by lower exchange and interest rates. The deeper the problem the greater the necessary falls. Which is the EU`s central dilemma. With Maastricht`s deflationary mandate and this Central Bank working under this kind of rubric, there is no way to achieve either. Particularly in a period when, long term, the dollar must come down because of their huge deficit, producing money flows which will go into the euro, pushing it up to heighten EU problems.

That`s already been happening but is momentarily on hold because the only way the EU can bring down its currency is by constitutional cataclysm. The half death of the Growth and Stability Pact undermined confidence about the euro and brought it down. The collapse of the Constitution means more of the same. Yet these are temporary effects. The dollar still has way to fall and the euro way to rise in consequence. That may not be what they wanted when they promised a world currency capable of challenging and defeating dollar dominance. But it`s what they`ve got. Without tackling this issue they`re stuck with it.

After the storm

Friday 6 May.
Anti-climax day. My speech at the count which should have been a culmination- the battle for socialism goes on. It was flat. The campaign which was supposed to be brilliant exercise has ended in me putting on weight, to sixteen stone, loosing only votes in my majority. The Liberals did worse than anywhere else, which is their own fault given the illiberal policies they’ve imposed on us. The Tories only added slightly more. Most of our losses went to the BNP which tends to get people who don’t vote and UKIP which Id hoped would lost more to the Tories. Swing the biggest in the area but less than Hull. The whole campaign, so much enjoyed, has availed nothing. The division of the vote is exactly what the polls predicted right at the start.

Linda snatches us away to go to Scotland ancestor tracing with Janet and we do actually find a Grandma, Hendry boron on the Isle of Mull in l873. A marvelous break but a health disaster. Returned with awful cold hacking, wracking cough, running nose and deep misery. Just in time to go back to Grimsby to clear up all the little things left over. Much like rerunning the election. I could go on forever like this. But eventually we have to go back to the fun party. Sunday evening by train. “Are you the father of the House” asks the trolly lady. Or to trains next day someone at the entrance asks me if I’m Bob Marshall Andrews. And no longer wants my autograph when he finds I’m not.

Monday l6 May
Take the oath. No one else around but l70 still to sign. The new chums came last week Oldies with any sense have stayed away as I used to. My eight oaths. It should be fun but if it isn’t what a disaster. All that effort for Tommy McAvoy and Blair’s warmed up dinner of a Queens Speech.

Back to Reality

Sunday 8 May
Apart from a general feeling of exhaustion and a crazy body clock, it`s as if the election had never been. But now, with the benefit of three days papers, I`m allowed to understand it. Tony has shifted from arrogance to “I, We, the Government” are listening to the people (lying bastard, he`s been nowhere near them), and now to “I`m staying. Screw you”. Newspaper analysis has moved from black eye for Labour, through not bad for a third term, to Tony will be chucked out by lefty loons.

As for the Tories, they`re triumphant on a diet of not very much. They`ve even won a seat in Scotland which since all Scottish seats hve three names, looks better than it actually is. Then Howard`s bombshell: “I`ve got better things to do with my life than you no hopers. I`m going to retire and suck blood banks dry”.

Blair has flogged himself to death and is clearly exhausted – the tired, inadequate reshuffle indicates that. He`s disappointed in us. We`ve lost 5% of the vote and 57 seats. That`ll teach us that invading small countries is not a sensible policy. The Tories have gained 1% and 31 seats which shows you can frighten all of the people some of the time. The Liberals have added 4% and 10 seats, perhaps because of middle-class desertions over Iraq. They`re still a bucket to spit into rather than a real party. They`ve even given up their hope of replacing the Tory party in order to replace us, particularly in the big cities. They`d even have done well in Grimsby if they hadn`t been so busy closing lavatories, libraries, youth clubs and schools and everything that real liberalism is about. Charles had an easy-going campaign. One battle bus voyager said he never met many people, just did four TV appearances a day in the regions. For the rest of the time he sat in the back of the bus, not reading or talking to anyone, just listening to his I.Pod in a trance.

The result is one we could hve predicted from the start had I not been so nervous. Not a fair verdict – we could only get that with PR which, thank heaven, is coming back to the fore. It`s been an exercise in getting back in touch with the people who don`t really tell us what they want. Just what`s top of the mind at the moment. Candidates ane parties must attempt the impossible by trying to impose our blandised weltanschauung on an amorphous mass who don`t really share it. These days the people don`t have any ideology and their old conditioning is fading. So they`re impossible to rally and we poor candidates get disappointed when we find that we can`t convince them. Most people are too busy struggling to exist.

We have an ideology. The people don`t fit it. We go round lecturing folk who say “Never vote”, get hurt by those who say “You`re all in it for yourselves”, and explain to those who say “We never see you” that we`re omnipresent. We`re regurgitating half-understood policies to people who don`t want them. That should make us instant populists but we`re held back from that by the party.

We`re out of touch with reality and the people most of the time so this occasional total immersion is beneficial. If humbling. Leaders get it through market research. We get it through physical contact. It leaves me reluctant to go back to the self-obsessed Westminster chatter game. I`m still feeling I should rush out and shake people by the hand.

Wednesday 11 May

Meeting of the PLP today. Why bother going? So I`m not. Lots of loose talk about a left wing push against Tony by the malcontents. That would be crazy. Who needs a battle to get Tony out at this stage of the game. He has to decide his moment. Just let it be soon.

BLOGGING INTO THE FUTURE
Time now to do four things:

1. Think about policy for the third term. Less about choice, more about equality. Less about stability, more about economic growth. Less about low taxes, more about redistribution. Less about advantaging the middle-classes, more about positive discrimination for the poor, the disadvantaged areas and the less well off.
2. Dismantle the presidential system with ideas, policy, and decisions handed down from the top. Spread power around. The PLP needs its own forum for debate on policy, its own groups working with ministers. Who shouldn`t we have three recognised factions in the PLP: left, right and centre, each with its own Whips, its own representation, and each consulted on appointments and policy? The select committees need strengthening. MPs need the information to decide, not party pap to defend a line handed down to them.
3. Change to Proportional Representation to bridge the gap between politics and people.
4. Democratise the parties by returning to a low subscription mass membership to involve people, inform them by post, and make the local coteries which run parties accountable to a wider membership.
   
   Got that? OK, let`s get going.

Home Stretch

Friday 29 April
Booze intake moving negative. Polls ditto because there aren`t any. Daily Mail moving into hysteria. Every other article announces that if Labour is elected debt will rocket, interest rates go up, bubonic plague spread south, homosexuality become rampant, regulations pour out and Blair`s smirk will be botoxed in permanently.

We, for our part, look about as rattled. Blair’s public sector reform policy was useless. Struck no chords, because daft. He then moved to the economy and brought Gordon in, which isn`t exciting. Now he`s forced onto the defensive on Iraq with the Liberals making a bigger song and dance of an Iraqi folkfest than anyone.

School. Then desultory leafleting in an empty Freeman St from which I`m rescued by an angry phone call from Megan. “You Great Nerd. You’ve blocked my car in”. Should agents be allowed to bully candidates like that? I`ll complain to Standards.

Canvassing Duncombe Gardens. Electors all puzzled by empty envelopes marked “Election Communication”. Turns out they should have contained the Tory householder. Emptiness is better than the pamphlets.
Afternoon Our first leafleting at ASDA which has not only given permission – they refused last time - but where staff come out to pose for pictures with me. It works well. Nice atmosphere though a few people from Barnsley, Cleethorpes and Edward Leigh’s constituency, whatever its called.

Evening Joy and I go out to do undone streets (there are thousands of undone streets in the undone city). Tonight’s obsession is “close the gate”. She gets told off. I`ve shut but not snecked one and wander back to talk to a neighbour when the householder comes out bashes the gate to. When I call “Sorry” he gives me an angry V sign. “That’s my neighbour” the householder proudly explains. Looks more like a raving lunatic to me. I`m developing an enormous sympathy with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Also with Mormons, though they aren`t mentioned on all the “unwelcome” signs now stuck to every door. We met two at the start of the campaign. They tried to convert us, since no one else would talk to them. Reminded me of the time in NZ when I welcomed them in and called them all Elmer, having misheard “Elder.”

Later Megan holds a briefing session - come - party with booze sandwiches and her style suggestions for the night. They consist of dressing smartly and wearing red roses to show the Liberal rats a bit of class. Alan Burley announces that he won`t come to the Count because he can`t stand to be in the same room as the Rat Lowis because he has this constant desire to bop him. I don’t wonder after the way Lowis used him to do the ward’s work, then ratted to the Libs when he wasn’t re-selected.

Saturday 30 April

Times tracker 40-3l-39. Feels uncertain on the ground. Yet nothing changes in the polls. Neither party is doing well, though the Libs are drifting (rather than thrusting) upwards.

Surgery Once again packed with difficult cases, including one incomprehensible immigration case where I can`t understand a word the man is saying but it appears he divorced his wife, wanted to remarry her now she`s here on a visit, but then changed his mind and sent her to the Women’s Refuge.

Lunchtime Leafleting in Brewery St where the council still won`t allow us a table so we have to put down our handbags and dance round them, like lasses used to do at the Mecca lunch dances. Still the weather is dry, there’s no hostility, the balloons don`t burst and it`s enjoyable. Where are the other candidates?

Soon we find ourselves on our own. Appears everyone else has gone to ASDAs. We went too to find them blowing up balloons. Not one burst while I was there. This is the best leafleting spot in town. People are happy going in (more depressed coming out spent up). When the rain comes we’re dry under the awning. Until we run out of pamphlets. Pack up and go home without visiting Freeman St. Though it`s a bit late. Precinct and Freeman St will be getting drunk soon.

Jonathan Hunt has arrived on his High Commissioner visit to Grimsby. His assessment is that Labour will win by about a hundred. Our slogan should be Things are Good. Keep it that way. As Labour’s will be in New Zealand where the party is 8% ahead in the polls. When I say we’re getting very little help from the party nationally as a supposedly safe seat (though none feel to be that in the uncertainties of the campaign) he says that in NZ’s PR system the safe seats get the most attention and effort. That’s where most of a party’s votes are and the need is to get them out for the party ballot which decides the percentage of seats. Brilliant. That’s the final nail in the coffin of this bloody awful electoral system of ours. Perhaps if the Tories are cataclysmically defeated, as they will be and deserve to be, they’ll convert to it. Every vote gets equal attention.

Evening Elliot Morley and Ian Cawsey and wives come round to meet Jonathan. The wives and Linda are adamant that the golden days for we poor candidates end next Friday. Up to then they’ll work for us. Then its payback time and they’re not going to do a bloody thing. Ian is optimistic, thank heavens. But both are working and canvassing Sunday and Monday where Megan has told me to pack it in. Makes me feel guilty.

A GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE

Sunday l May

Poll of polls 38-32-22 so it must be true. Telegraph 39-30-23 YouGov 36 33 32 Populus 40-30. The papers all assume we`re home and hosed, though the Liberals will gain. Tony’s looking more rattled. His tank bogged down in Iraqi sands. I feel angry about the Liberals, about whom I`m usually benign, “some of my best friends etc”. They’re such a sneaky lot: naïve idealists or protesting drifters led by rats who’ll say anything, do anything, in the most opportunistic fashion. They’re devoting all the money on ID cards and Child Trusts to spending now, though it won`t be paid out for 5 and l8 years. That`s like their penny on income tax last time, the extra tax on people over £100,000 has been spent 20 times, and they will bang on about Iraq when their only policy now is scuttle and let them kill each other.

Draw up yet another pamphlet explaining to people they’ll be insane to vote Liberal. Alec Bovill says “Don’t bother. You’ll only draw attention to them”. At this stage in an election campaign you feel like a university teacher with a class which obstinately fails to understand what you’re saying. It may be democracy but it`s deeply annoying. They`ll never pass the exam if they don`t listen.

Take Jonathan to Lincoln (Cathedral is better than York, he says), Louth and Cleethorpes where there’s a Continental Market. And my Michael Jackson moment. Camera round my neck I was taking photos (too many but with digital you can always delete them)of traitors buying sauerkraut, bratvurst and French soap and bread (always eat them together) and the beach. Which was busier than usual. Lost Linda and Jonathan. Looked in the Beach Café but didn’t see them. Went down to take a picture of the pier when two blue-pullovered beach patrol guys (not a patch on Pamela Anderson but still two tits) dashed up. “What was I doing?” “Looking for my wife”. “But what was I doing with that camera?” “Taking pictures”. “Well we`ve just had a complaint that a strange man was taking photos of naked children on the beach and we followed you”. Baffled. I wasn`t. I should have offered to show them the backplay but why waste batteries on idiots? So I say “I`m not Michael Jackson. This is daft”. At which point, of course, Linda comes up and turns up the gas regulo. “Idiotic” “stupid” and other less mild accusations. This moves them onto the defensive. Then jokes. “Get it into the papers before Thursday”. “Is this your wife (or a passing lunatic)?” At which point I think it`s time to make a graceful exit as they mutter about “got to be careful” etc. Not more than my jobs worth. Suggest they give the naked kids their pullovers and keep everyone happy. We go to a two hour wait for service for icecream. As we arrive home Andrew`s car passes us full of stakes and posters which he`s delivering.

Evening The Churches Together candidates` debate with all six candidates - UKIP turning up at the last minute. I was too nervous to make a useful contribution, though I warmed up gradually. Questions on Iraq from people complaining that I`d said it isn`t an issue. Well what can they usefully do to protest? Vote Tory for a party that would have gone in whatever the evidence? Or vote Liberal so no-one would know whether they’re protesting about council tax, failure to close more lavatories and libraries, or Charles Kennedy’s use of birth control to time his reproduction cycle for the election? De Freitas is heckled by the UKIP agent about his parking ticket (his Iraq) and explodes saying it`s all the fault of the Labour Party. “Did they park the car?” I shout. Not the most dignified of moments. A mad lady in the front row accuses the Government of closing all our schools and the Tory candidate commits himself against closing any while De Freitas blames it all on the Government – as he does all his other cuts. Fairly scruffy evening all told. I feel I`ve not shone. When I nervously ask how was I, they all make polite excuses and talk about the weather. Or say “strong finish”.

Monday 2 May
Times 42-29-20. But remember the last two elections when the polls exaggerated our lead by 10 points. The only consolation is we’d still win on a tied vote. Order extra pamphlets from Frances (Megan being away) because we’re running out, as I predicted we would. Umer arrives in the afternoon and is immediately dragged out delivering our diminishing supply with Joy and I. This is much the fastest way of working because it`s no use canvassing people if you`re not going to use the information you get because you don’t have every polling booth monitored and no master lists of who’s voted. Nor can you keep the info. for future reference because this is a General Election and people don’t feel the same about the party or the candidates at council elections.

So my aim has reduced to delivering as many pamphlets to as many people as possible. Which Megan says is daft because they’re deluged with pamphlets this week. Still, it gives me something to do. It keeps me on the streets. It makes me feel useful and happy which is what election campaign should be all about. Meet a Liberal pillock canvassing who says I should join the Liberals because I`m really one. He greets Umer as “brother”, shakes him by the hand and ignores Joy. When I obligingly offer to deliver a couple of his pamphlets with mine, he hands me one of mine which he`s obviously taken from someone else`s letter box.

A TRIP ABOROAD. (OR AT LEAST TO YORKSHIRE)

Tuesday 3 May
MORI 39-29-22. But 36% may change their minds.

Back to the old routine with a school in the morning but with this exception. I`d lain awake, probably because of Vasos`s rich food but also because when you`ve got to be up early you do, and worked out that I should do a pamphlet against school closures now Shona is making such an issue of it. Composed one in my head, got up at 5-45, wrote it and dropped it off at Cartergate for typing when I collected Joy to go to the Fish dock for the ritual opportunity to shout at the MP. Very good landing, 8000 kit, and friendly discussions, though ignored by the roaring scrum of bidders which moves from box to box while I take photographs. Then bacon bun for breakfast, the boardroom being used by a delegation of Kenyan Rotarians.

Then back to the office to an angry phone call from Megan. Come and see the headmistress immediately. She exploded over the fact that I`d ordered more pamphlets without asking her. Fair point, but not when she said I wouldn’t have done it if she`d been a man. She thought they were different pamphlets. Alex had dropped them off there that very morning so she arrives back to mutiny.

At first she won`t countenance the School Closure leaflet. Then she came round and improved it by saving me from myself. So it goes to press and we’ll distribute to the four schools threatened with closure tomorrow. Phew. Agent and candidate are like a marriage but I`ve been too much the errant husband. Though I haven`t lusted after any other parties. By now I hate them all. But particularly the Liberals who`ve also got Labour nationally rattled so we’re getting Daily Briefs saying Libs soft on crime and drugs, Local income tax will cost every householder millions, Charles Kennedy’s hair is dyed. We no longer feel threatened by the Tories stuck at 30% and reduced to showing their own terror by nasty leaflets saying “How would you feel if your daughter was attacked by a bloke on remand?” “Sympathetic to him” says Megan. “My daughter’s a karate instructor”. The threat now is the Liberals. Weapons of Mini Destruction.

Then off to Selby where Joy has promised my services in a mass GMB lobby. Which actually materialises because there are Nick Brown, Dobbo, Henderson and other leading luminaries
of the cause. Usually these mass lobbies are a waste of time because they send highly trained, expensive manpower like MPs, off chasing outs and doubtfuls who usually remain both at the end of the day. This is better with the local agent taking round their record sheets (dealing with 200l council elections) down some old people`s accommodation. “Oh it`s you - what are you doing here?” and an idyllic stretch of council housing fronting fields. In the middle was Mike Hurley’s place - The Grange. I think Mike won`t be red hot socilalist.. Then back for a Selby school gate. Fairly quiet - at least on the part of parents and kids - the mob of MPs and students were rather more intimidating.

The people of Selby are being told they`re “One in a Million” because of the way the campaign concentrates on the marginal seats. They are being deluged with pamphlets while we’re totally starved. Looks to me as if pamphlet fatigue is setting in. The party office was flooded with great bales of them (and sandwiches for us) which they’ll never be able to use, and every householder has a “not another” expression on when you hand them one. Anther argument for PR. John himself seems subdued. I think I would be in similar circumstances. He’s a good MP and has had the good luck of his Liberal opponent last time deserting them to vote for him. But how many people know who`s a good MP and who’s a disaster? Then home to pick up all the last minute “I’m considering how to vote and won`t vote for you unless you deal with the issue of: dog shit, abortions, violent crime, nose picking in public, fish and chip papers thrown in my garden, yobs, thugs or the neighbours. Etc”. Plus some questionnaires which won`t get back in time, plus a pamphlet scrawled with insults in which the scrawlee has filled in her name and address.

Final canvas of the day. Umer exhausted. Joy driving us on down several undone streets in the dying sun. Home knackered. At home there’s a power cut. The kids next door are furious - in the middle of the football. We get out the night lights and soldier on.

NOTHING MUCH WE CAN DO NOW DAY

Wednesday 4 May
Last day. No polls. More Labour panic about marginal seats. Book keepers predicting 80 majority. I predict 70, but that’s what I predicted last time. If only we hadn`t thrown away this second Parliament on Iraq we’d be in a much stronger position. But we have. Tony’s interviews are now dominated by it to the exclusion of everything else. He must be rattled. Last night at a rally in Huddersfield (to which Region asked me to go but I wouldn`t, and the only MPs there looked to be Blunkett and Stray Euro MPs) the dozy bugger even agreed not to increase National Insurance Contributions again. No need to give that away. There’ll have to be some tax increases after the election or some breaking of the golden rule. Why strangle ourselves in this way? Gulliver didn’t tie himself down. We’ve done so to show how safe we are. The main result of this election is the strange death of Tony Blair. So bad I`m actually defending him. Locally it feels like Tories won`t do well and aren`t getting through, Liberals will do better (certainly than they should) and BNP and UKIP? Well it`s in the lap of the sods.

Blair is the battered ornament of the campaign. Much battered. Constantly on the defensive. Less ornamental. Tory pundits constantly peculating about what makeup he’s wearing. Theose bastards reduce leadership to botox, politics to a grievance parade. All this results from the Tory conviction that they’re born to rule. If for some reason they aren`t ruling it means they’ve been cheated. That gives them the God given right to abuse any alternative. The result is to focus everything on the minutiae of politics. It`s like looking at a thoroughbred horse and ignoring everything but the droppings and the manure.

Last night of Campaign Holiday. Too late now to do any of all the things left undone. Though we still managed five streets with leaflets which will be useless tomorrow. To bed early to recharge my batteries for tomorrow. Geriatrics can`t flag.

THE END OF THE AFFAIR

Thursday 5 May
NOP Lab 36-33-23 Tel YouGov 37-32-24.
In other words the electorate is recurring. To a decimal point. This election has changed nowt.

I`m reduced to a zombie on automatic pilot. One, moreover, with nothing to do. No school to go to. Clear up a few unanswered letters - mostly “I`m weighing my vote and it will depend on your answers to the following question” type. They’ll now get an answer. Just in time for their next vote. No one to send birthday cards to because the only lad coming of age today is in Scartho in what looks to be a Tory street. The peremptory challenges from someone who rang last night to say he wanted a Labour figure to ring him at precisely 6-30 to answer several questions has been missed. I`m buggered if I will.

Eric has been bitterly hurt because after he emailed me about his desire to contribute and how hurt he was at not being used, someone ( I suspect Linda) emailed back “grow up and stop being a cry baby”. That produced an angry response. Yesterday I`d told him I`d be round. Today comes an email saying he`s in bed, not well enough to come out. Which is as well since Megan is insistent that I shouldn`t go round with him. Pretty callous. I was gong to defy it. Now there’s no point. So we went round to collect his loudspeaker kit. A waste of time because he couldn’t get out of bed, and in fact hadn`t got it. It`s at home. Walk down Freeman St handing out “For God’s Sake Vote” cards to people who mostly said “I`ve already voted”. So I snatched them back.

Megan hasn’t much or anything for me to do. She claims different Branches don’t want me loudspeakering. So go home. There Susan has arrived with Jonathan, Maisie and Sykes. Fix on the loudspeaker after fish and chips. Then go round, Jonathan driving, Sykes blowing up balloons in the back. Much better arrangement than me driving and shouting at the same time as I`ve always done in the past. Though I keep forgetting to switch the mike on. Or when chatting about what an awful area this is, to switch it off.

Everywhere got one spray of the standard routine “Polling Day Polling Day. Don`t forget to vote and to vote Labour.” “This is Austin Mitchell your Labour candidate reminding you to vote for continuing the improvements in the heath service and education. “ “If you value it vote for it”. “Lets keep moving forward”. “Don’t go back to the Tory years”….etc etc.

Go to all the wards that don’t want me while Sykes squeezes balloons through the window and kids run after us rather dangerously. Not quite as dangerous as the drunk who ambled into our path stopping us. Then sat on the engine. “Go forward” I told Jonathan. He was smarter than that. He suddenly accelerated backwards. The drunk fell into the road. Then tried chasing us. But couldn’t quite make it while we loudspeakered on.

Did that until around seven. Normally I`d have gone on all night or until they dragged me from the wheel for disturbing kids and shift workers. Today I`m too weary to go on. So home for a nap and then at nine to Vasos’s. A big party with Red crawling all over the restaurant. In march the Tories. Obviously gourmets just like us.

10.45 to the Count taking the entire zoo with us. Very subdued, low key atmosphere reinforced by the lighting. No cameras, the Chief Exec says. I take mine in anyway and snap away. It`s odd. All candidates are exhausted. Personally I`m on automatic pilot. I`m seeing things through a kind of daze. The culmination of all that effort, the apathy, the hostility, the thousand different points which obsess different people, the daftnesses: “I`m not voting Labour because the NHS is crap. They haven`t cured my epilepsy”. “I never vote” “You`re all the same. “ “What’re you going to do for us?” ”I’ll think about it” (when you know damn well they won`t because they’re Tories). Now all that is poured out of the boxes on bits of paper, and counted, to produce a result which is exactly the same as the polls predicted it would be a whole month back. All that effort for no change. Unbelievable.

But there is. Red pegs piling up on Grimsby tables and running neck and neck with the Tories in Cleethorpes. There opinion from those who`ve been watching is that Shona has saved herself by bashing the school issue in key wards.

Eventually a result. Me 47% down 11% Tory 24% up l% Lin l9% up o.3% BNP got l338 votes which may well have come from us as lumpen prole UKIP and the two septic parties were vying. The highest aim of each was to beat the other l238 and Green 66l. All sizeable. I met a student later who said they’d rung Megan and offered to come in with an anti-fascist squad and leaflet against the BNP. She’s said “No”. No use complaining. The BNP represents a grievance which is there plus a lack of education about how to remove it. You don’t deal with bad housing and low wages by attacking immigrants. But we certainly need to undertake a big education effort. Shona, after an evening of suspense (Peter her husband told me earlier he wasn’t sure they’d win and certainly thought there`d be a recount) finally came good with l8,889 votes. Lowis (who never spoke to me all night - unlike Steve Beasant Beasant) added 2.5%. Billy Hardie did well for UKIP at 20l6, but Shona`s end result was only a 3.6% swing to Tory. Mine was 5.8%, amplified presumably by the fourth party problem.

After a series of interviews we went home. Dealing on the way with a David Frost interview for LBC in a dark car park with no lights, while I staggered around trying to find the car - eventually falling in a hole as I shouted down the phone.

Several of our party were at home watching the results and getting gloomier as the death toll went on. I wasn’t, because in fact it was a good majority by any standards, except those of Tony Blair finds it difficult to understand why people don’t rally to him immediately. His assumption is that the majority will be maintained because it`s him. By that standard it’s a disappointing result. By any sensible standard it’s a good one. The main outcome has been the pulling down of the bronze statue of Tony Blair. Watch the results until four a.m. coming to the conclusion that Yorkshire and Humberside have been remarkably loyal and conservative. None of our marginals have gone. Ian has kept his seat. So has John Grogan. Ed Balls appears on Telly talking rubbish. Yvette stands next to him looking miserable. We`ve kept Halifax, Calder Vale, Pudsey, but lost only Leeds NW. Go to bed happy but buggered at 4-00.

Friday 6 May
Journey`s end. No polls, merely results. No booze. Would fall asleep. No weight loss. No party, everyone`s gone to the moon.

Up at 7.00 am to go to Hull for their regional round up. It`s very good except that the youth contingent have all voted, most of them Liberal. Then back to do Radio Humberside. They only want to ask about Blair’s future now and even he hasn’t got anything to say about that.

Was it for this we’ve laboured so hard and so excitingly for four whole weeks of light outdoor work, glowing health and mental decline? Probably. But I do wish it could go on longer. Perhaps anther year. Sadly, as I stepped down from the dais and my acceptance speech, I was handed a sealed HMS envelope. “To all persons selected Members of Parliament”. Go to the Westminster jail. Move directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect £100. Oaths next week starting Wednesday. State Opening the week after. For all except poor Sir Patrick.

Blogging in the Rain

Wednesday 27 April
Booze 2 Units (very slowly). Gloom because of rain. Very weather-tied these days. Times Tracker L 4l Con 3l Lib 2l. Needle stuck in a groove. Parties stuck in their shares. Electorate stuck with a boring campaign.

Wybers Wood School leafleting. I`m trying to do a refusal count though not many do. It seems to depend on the weather. I hope it`s nothing to do with BO. Some just don’t want to be bothered, some are stoney-faced Tories (or ulcer sufferers), a few obvious Liberals (judging by sandels and beads and the fact that they apologise for not wanting to hear the truth). My mantra is “Can I give you a pamphlet?” Joy and Ken just tersely hand them out. Can`t help wondering if the Tories and Libs are doing this. Indeed are the Tories actually fighting this seat? Haven`t seen any anywhere. Do they sit at home and telephone each other?

Chatteris House to meet the residents - and in the lounge too. Give my speil. Call for questions. “Why is your stomach so fat?” “You used to be such a slim young thing”. Two more questions follow on the same lines. “Is it rich living?” “Are you getting enough exercise?” Explain that I`ll lose two stone by Polling Day. Another election promise broken. Then the questions on pensions - not unhappy – and on the old grievance of council tax. Finally security. One lady’s bed room was burgled by someone climbing through the window and all her money taken out of her handbag. No visit to Berrett House this year. There are only three residents left.

Then Noreen Turgoose`s Cottage Meeting. Not had many of these this year. Can`t see why. I didn’t throw up on anyone’s carpet last time. It`s enjoyable talking to the converted. We need them to vote too.

Then out canvassing the Willows, taking the great loop of Cromwell, and then going off into the inner streets and service streets. Like going into a labyrinth. Could be that there are visiting Labour MPs still wandering and driving round here from the 1977 by-election, though no one has missed them. Matt, Hull student last year, turns up escaping from his exams. He says everything is similarly quiet in Hull. Back for lunch, all three of us, despite Linda’s grumbles. Then to Bovill House to meet residents - again in the lounge. Again with a nice atmosphere.

Three o`clock to Littlecoates School where we arrive thirty five minutes early. No mums. No kids. Silent school. Ken reminisces about when he started at the school and was hit with a canvas strap which led to his mother dragging him back and bopping the teacher. When the parents turn up they’re mostly worried stiff about the closure threat. It’s a tragedy for this kind of school. It`s in the heart of a deprived area and the poorer areas need their school as a focus for community activity and extended schools. Yet because they are poorer areas the parents are less equipped with the middle-class skills of lobbying, protesting and organising. “Can we protest at the Town Hall?” “Who do we write to?” “What do we say?” There are also lots of suspicions of dark plots: for instance driving a road through the allotments from Cromwell Rd or selling it off for expensive flats.

Finally to Yarborough Ward, Richmond Road, where there`s a vandalism problem with kids in the back field vandalising the empty house (now boarded up), plus cars. Surprising area because I`ve never been to the end of this street and the field there. There are three smashing William Morris houses – dated 1909 – which I`ve never seen before. You live and learn. Even geriatrics.

Thursday 28 April Blog on Forever. Guardian ICM L40 C33 Lib20.Guardian says that could be a majority of 130 plus. It won`t be because our people are less likely to turn out. Daily Brief tells us is all about business. Newspapers and Media know its all about Attorney General`s advice and “Liar” charge over getting into war. Custard pie country without legal aid.

Who leaked the advice? Probably not Goldsmith but it brings every legal eagle, some of them dead, into the media to earn fat fees for saying Goldsmith was wrong. The Tories hype it up still more by starting a “Blair Liar” campaign which is appalling and tasteless and, I hope, counter-productive. Even I, who’ve been so critical, think it`s monstrous, while the row of the legality of the war is now largely irrelevant. Those who voted for war would still have supported it even had they had the A.G.`s full advice. They were really voting for knocking off Saddam and they’d have done the same if the Archbishop had told them they’d rot in hell. Blair didn’t lie. He over-egged the pudding. He exaggerates. He puts a clever lawyer`s case. But I don’t see any lies.

New approach from O`Farrell. Vote Labour or the hamster gets it! So does Blair. Today`s brief arrives at end of day. Useless.

One week to go. Small wonder I`m settled into a routine Get out of bed, peep out. Is it raining. Adjust smile and morale accordingly and out leafleting and canvassing. In fact the places are so familiar from last time and the time before I`m beginning to think I`ve done nothing else. At each street I wonder what election this is: 1992? 1997? 200l? The process, the places, the faces, are all exactly the same. Only the spiels and the pamphlets are different. Much more frit making much more interesting and much more useful than trudging through lobbies. May it go on forever (with occasional blog breaks). One difference produced by age: A desire to go to the toilet more frequently. Canvassers can`t do a Paula Radcliffe.

Yarborough School in the rain while two cars and a dustcart collide, drivers fight it out and kids prance across the road directing traffic and making baboon noises while we wait for mums. Good school this. The Head and Deputy believe in sending kids out into industry to learn what mending cars or manufacturing caravans is all about, and though I`ve had polite replies from various Ministers of Education, government’s shown no real interest.

Helen Hooton`s Cottage Meeting. Because Helen has organised it, it`s marvellous. Really interesting discussion. One of the oldies tells me that Butlin`s wanted to come to Cleethorpes in the late thirties and the council turned them down. So they went to Skegness with all their money. Needing the toilet at the end, Helen got me the key to let me in. Instead of pulling the chain I pulled the alarm, bringing the warden, bleeper blaring, to find out what had happened to me. No I`m alright. I hit the toilet bowl thank you.

Then St Andrew`s Lunch Club where eventually I was persuaded to have fish and chips, Linda being away because squirrels have eaten through the water pipe in Halifax and flooded the house which, in turn, keeps setting the alarm off. So it’s a find your own lunch day, and having been looked after so well I`ve forgotten how to do that.

Workers` Memorial Day Service at 1.00. Nobby Styles has worked hard for years at this and has the best attendance ever, with Andrew (parked on a double yellow line - Ken takes a photo), the Mayor, even a TGWU wreath for me to lay. It turns out deaths are going up and - something I didn’t know -transport drivers killed at work aren`t recorded as industrial deaths but as Road Traffic Accidents. So the real figures are even higher. Then home. Where Linda has arrived and prepared a second lunch. Keep quiet and eat it. So they’ll now be asking “why is your stomach even fatter?”

Afternoon to Old Clee School, scene now of an even bigger traffic jam as cars park and house owners returning from work fume and can`t get into their gates. Then private housing lane. Very big, very posh, but very helpful. Even a couple of voters to be taken to the polls.

Then Nelson House. It`s difficult now to get into the tower blocks because some wardens won`t let you in, and where they don’t you have to know someone with a flat inside to let you in. If they`re out or you don’t know anyone, you’re fucked. The man at Nelson House - the best of them – is friendly, so we go up to the top and come down canvassing floor by floor. The stair case smells of pee. Don`t know why because it`s very clean and each floor has a little garden at the end. Where they`re stuck out we remove Liberal leaflets accusing the MP of doing nothing in 28 years. Liberals are an odd lot. Idealistic rank and file, naïve to the point of wasting their votes but leaders with the cunning of rattle snakes, exploiting anything they can dig up against the other parties and then parading their non-partisan virtue. Muddied ideals and a resignation from the two party system are their trademark. Their problem is their protest produces nothing except a virtuous glow which turns into whittering impotence in days. We should have Proportional Representation (though it`s interesting that Labour has done more to advance PR in Scotland, Wales, London and the European elections than the liberals ever could). You don’t get it though by relegating millions of votes to impotence praying for a cargo cult that never comes.

At this rate: four of us taking one and a half hours to canvass a fifteen story block of flats, it will take over a year to canvas Grimsby. Then we’d have to start over again because there’d been so many changes. I`d like to carry on forever now I`m in my stride because it`s a conditioning process developing commitment to the constituency by total immersion. Trouble is, it impresses their concerns, needs and desires so deeply that it will be impossible to fulfil them all. I wish I could. Our parties only want us elected to add another seat to their lists and blandise and dilute the quite specific demands I`m being impressed with. It’s a brilliant preparation for a life of schizophrenia if you take the constituency seriously, as we should. Triennial parliaments would force us to get it in proportion and give it continuous care. You can never live up to your constituency. But more of us should try. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp else what’s a constituency for? Not fattening stomachs. Feel guilty again.

Megan says no Cavalcade. We`ve had one every election playing Truly Fair loudly all round the town. Lil Bontoft (sadly now dead) organised it. Her daughter, Pat Vessey, carried it on but isn`t well enough to do so. It was chaos. We usually get separated and charged round town looking for each other. In 1997 I was ranting away when we passed an ambulance and a body being stretchered out. My God! The body raised a hand and waved. Megan says we can`t do it this year. And no campaigning this Sunday. For idleness rather than God I reckon.

Linda has finished her survey for Make Votes Count. Interviewed 230 at ASDA (Gy) and Tesco (Cleethorpes) so it`s a middle-class bias. Eliminated 30 as too daft, inarticulate, stupid or incomprehensible. Leaves 200, most of whom think their votes don`t count – sadly 6% more in Grimsby as a safer seat than Cleethorpes. Several of them are Liberals who seem resigned to impotence. Which may be a character – even English – flaw. Want to protest but not too loudly and daren`t fart in the polling booth.

Another week in the addiction of a Blogoholic

Monday 25 April Almost the home straight. Now enjoying it. Originally I thought that a good TV company should do a Supercandidate programme sending Super Woman round constituencies to teach us the job. I still think they need a Super Leader. But they should leave us alone. We’re doing Ok on our own.

Last full week. But still time to remedy some of the mistakes we’ve made so far. All of them might take another month. Areas canvassed are on the map in red. They look very few.
YouGov L37 C33 Lib 24. Amazingly we have a 5% vantage on “has the NHS improved?” All the complaints I get are that it hasn’t. But a l3% deficit on education which teachers and parents all say is much better. Perverse.

At last the Daily Brief begins to arrive. Only two days late. Megan and Pat have finally tracked it down and arranged for me to get it so I withdraw all the criticisms. Except that it`s useless. Mainly quotes from Blair, such as “if you value it vote for it” which may not include troops for Iraq. One attacks Tory views on immigration, but where is the old Excalibur rebuttle unit which used to answer lies before they`d even been told? Tories and Libs are trying to shift debate onto Iraq. The last refuge of the scoundrel: something to attack us on when they’ve now to say. Beats me why we bother to reply, but Jack Straw floundered pathetically through his defence. Greater love hath no minister than he lay down his reputation for Tony. In fact Straw raised honest doubts from the start but now he’s manufacturing pork pies which won`t sell to his Moselems in Blackburn. Daft bugger. It all shows the gap between the central campaign and reality. Very few people have raised Iraq with me. There my record is feeble but good. Two elections are going on in this country and I`m in the real one.

Start at Fairfield School after having gone to Scartho which I thought it was. Fortunately, ever efficient Ken is waiting and ready at the right one. There there’s a rush of friendly parents. No abuse. Few refusals.

It must be Spring. Not only is there cherry blossom all over Grimsby - it looks marvellous. But posters are appearing too. In fact it`s already escalated enormously to at least three. Two Tory, one Liberal. No Labour. Except mine.

1 o`clock to Matthew Quinn House where we’re allowed to use the lounge. Quite a few questions, most of them from the warden who must have kids at university judging by them. There’s no great hostility on pensions but the old grievance of why are people in sheltered accommodation in the same council tax band as three bedroom houses rears its head. We sent in a petition on the issue five years ago and Prezza gave it his usual attention. Fuck-all.

Poor Prezza has been lumbered with all the messy briefs - local government, council tax, transport, council housing, housing never given enough money to do any of what`s necessary. Yet he`s so pathetically grateful to have a job that he doesn`t ever do what he could and always tries to bluster. Mostly by attacking everything he would have stood for in the past. He`s bartered his credibility for a pat on the head from Tony and a stroke on the bum from Mandy.

Canvassing on Carnforth with Norma. Then Scartho Junior school where I went this morning. More mixed parents here, both class-wise and race-wise because it draws from both Scartho (Grimsby’s version of Harrogate) and the council estate. Slightly more refusals and a lot more argument, though most of from one parent who tells me the hospital is crap. His wife works there. They`re reliant on agency staff who have no qualifications and just stand around. Why don’t I do something about it? Why don’t I go on to the operating suite and see what a mass they’re making? Why have they cancelled all operations this week? Why are they transferring easy ops to St Hughes? We’ve put far more money in, there are lots more doctors and nurses. What else can we do? Then his litany resumes. All thee nurses are leaving - we can`t keep them in Grimsby, they`re fed up. “Well, what do you want us to do? There’ve always been problems attracting staff to Grimsby”. Back to the start. Why don’t you get rid of all the agency people? “How can we if we can`t get staff?” “You can`t get staff because it`s run by idiots - which brings us back to why don’t you go and see in the operating theatres?” My God, what can you say. Another says he can`t get a dentist for his five year old girl. “Ring NHS direct”. “Why should I? I should be able to get a dentist”. “You can. We`re bringing in more dentists”. “No I cant”. No matter how much we spend on the NHS it`s not going to bring us gratitude.

Meanwhile back at the office Megan has been offered an Aston Martin – typical Tory car - by the Guardian for me to drive round for a day while Boris Johnson gets to drive a Ford Clitoris. Typical Labour car. I`m wildly enthusiastic.

http://http://www.austinmitchell.org/modules.php?set_albumName=album07&id=CNV00031&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php
I could roar down Crosby with the boy racers, leave it standing around on the Grange, park it in Pelham Avenue and have it vandalised. Marvellous. Megan is very nervous. Then decides no. She`d have to put down a notional rental on the accounts and that would be £700 a day, but perhaps £40 for Boris. This is the kind of thing they warned us against at Agents School. You mean the Guardian is to get me disqualified? No. Well probably not. But we just couldn’t do it. Damn

Evening First to do Barry Ave on my own. A nice street which I`ve always liked, but Tattersdale territory. A lovely comfortable world where most people are retired, some asleep, others sat having a quiet evening in the sun. All seem to be watching because several come out to complain about vandalism from the field behind.

Then to Weelsby Road with Jeremy and a small canvas party doing “real canvas”. Jeremy wants to do it with the full litany - who did you vote for last time? Who do you incline to etc etc. I prefer the cruder, “You going to vote for me or not?” Most not apparently because they’re not going to vote at all.

Amazing, but they’re unpersuadable in the face of all my arguments, which are all really middle-class - like no vote no say. “Well I don’t want one”. “I`m alright”. Get home at seven to find a report that Blair is going to put Burt in the Cabinet to do for public services what he did for the BBC. My God is that what I`m fighting for. We’re not going to put up with that.

Fall asleep on the sofa musing about whether this is a wholly new electorate and a new ball game. It can`t be. The old conditioning is still there for most people (particularly in Grimsby, less so elsewhere). Get them to the polls and they’ll probably vote for us, but they’re less interested in politics, more easily distracted. Friendly but sceptical. I`m beginning to be driven by the candidate`s desperate wish. If only I could get to speak to them all, if only they read my pamphlets. I`ve got to reach them to persuade them.

Tuesday 29April Xday minus 9 according to the Times but ll if you’re working them all. Times Tracker L4l Con33 Lib 24 NOP Lab40 Con 30 Lib 2l. Which isn`t how it feels on the ground where the Liberals feel to be doing better and the Tories worse, but our people not particularly bothered. The election is really stuck in a ditch, Charles missing his opportunity for one more heave because he’s too lazy, the Tories need one more scare -better get Bella Lugosi. They’re not moving. We’re relying on one more mantra and feeling aggrieved because we’ve got such a brilliant case and such fine policies, but on one seems to realise it and the other parties keep questioning them. Tony must find the world very ungrateful. Why doesn’t it live up to him? Tony’s developing a Christ crucified approach while Prezza is in a terrible temper and might blow up.

What an inconsiderate lot the electorate are. Abstention isn`t quantified. It’ll be up. But this candidate’s revenge is that there’s now less of me to vote for.

My worry now is imitative behaviour. Those who watch the TV campaign, a minority but a politically interested one, are being told that Labour people are angry about Iraq. (I keep calling it Vietnam which shows my age) and likely to swing to Liberals. Or that Liberals are on the up. This then encourages them to behave the same.

Sensation of the day is Brian (Euro-daft) Sedgemore joining the slightly less Euro-daft Liberals. Big, daft, lovable, bitter Brian. This is barmy, though it betrays all his mates and particularly we other prophets. He’s let us all down. Labour isn`t just Blair. Blair is hardly gracious in saying he doesn’t know who he is - though probably accurate because he doesn’t know any of us. We’re just tools to be used.

Prescott does know who he is. ”Not a significant guy”. Unlike John. Still Brian’s assessments of ministers seem pretty sharply observed to me. He always had a gift for vituperation and because it`s been so little heeded lately he`s very angry. Blair breeds bitterness. It`s his legacy.

The “Daily” announces that its about education but manages to throw in Lib Dems soft on crime (not now homosexuality) and Tories have no credibility on MRSA, which they may even have caused. I met one bloke last night who got it in Grimsby Hospital, though they seem to have rubbed their hands of him. His partner was hysterical but she blamed slovenly cleaning. As did anther who approached me to claim that the hospital was littered up and no one cared. But Daily Brief is no use at all. No theme. No new argumenets.

Advert from the Liberals shows in yellow the seats they`re about to win. Doesn’t include Grimsby or Cleethorpes. Andrew’ll be upset. Hopefully.

Macaulay School with Ken - the busiest yet - quite a rush of parents, in fact, the men surlier, the women friendlier, the kids sleepier, and a huge traffic jam as some drive in and try to get out but can`t.

Due to go out with Chris Dixon and Alec but calling early on Chris, she focuses my mind on school closures and the need to say something. The Lib Cons are rushing the consultation through, with Andrew announcing that it`s not a political issue. It damn well is and it`s their issue. Shona has promised her support to all opponents. I`ve just sent them sage advice. Time to say “hang on, don’t give us the bum’s rush (a phrase Megan cuts out), which I do in a statement the press almost certainly won`t print, though drawing it up evades the canvas, but I do manage half a street –Elsenham - before lunch, doing what I like which is leafleting rather than canvassing because it`s so much quicker.

Afternoon To the Meadows, a small home where the staff are very friendly, but one angry visitor (who’s mother is 93) wants to play Paxperson. She has a whole series of aggressive questions on why is her mother excluded from every benefit, what am I going to do about her, why should residents be charged £25 a week extra because of the minimum wage, do I really think oldies in bigger houses should sell them? She must have stored all that up. No one else utters a peep. Her mother looks apologetic throughout, though the daughter says she`s so deaf she can`t hear any of it. Shuffle out a broken man. To Franklin House. No common room so we can only distribute leaflets before leafleting parents at the school. Mostly very friendly, apart from one bloke who says “I don’t want anything to do with you lot”. To which I should have said “that must be why you parked your car illegally” but you never think of rejoinders quickly enough. Bet all the historical ones are invented afterwards.

In any case, when people refuse my lovely pamphlets telling them how much we’re going to give them and how immeasurably life will improve if they re-elect me it`s best to say nothing rather than shout ”you ignorant bugger” or “how can you be that stupid” after them. A candidate`s lot is to smile and say nowt. You’d much rather use a lasso, pull them back and shout at them. Or cry for sympathy.

That’s it. Back to the office in another attempt to persuade Megan to print 2000 introductory pamphlets. She won`t. But she’ll do some more of the pamphlet we first started with and a “get out and vote” card. Though not one with me pointing like Kitchener. “Your government needs you.”

http://www.austinmitchell.org/modules.php?set_albumName=album06&id=CNV00004&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

Linda rings. She’s stuck putting together a table from MFI. If I go back and help she’ll come out canvassing. Bonzer. I go put the thing together with some difficulty but by then it`s come on to rain. Heavily. Still drag her out down Elsenham Road which has been badly let down by the council - rubbish uncollected graffiti, all over houses void. And pouring rain. We go round like two drowned rats, Linda shouting “He’s mad” “only a lunatic would come out in this weather”. “Don’t vote for him he’s crazy”. Of course I didn’t want to stop. Another four streets - well may be three. Onward with yet more wet pamphlets. Until finally, and not quite graciously enough, I agree to go home after a wet hour. I don’t think she’ll come out again. Linda’s now worried that I’ll get a cold and maybe die. (No I’m not).

The Householder pamphlets have arrived - though not yet mine. After all that effort I never thought it would arrive anywhere. The Tory is the best. Full of more cops and more Lincolnshire. Andrew’s is more critical of me for voting for University Fees. BNP does the lot of us in and has the perfect answer on immigration. Keep `em all out, even the Europeans. No Green yet - probably not got the paper recycled.

Yet another appeal for money from Matt Carter. If you don`t give us thousands we can`t advertise the relevant Tory lies this weekend. It`s so well written that it`s moved Linda to send him some. Daft lass. Your contribution, my dear, is to support, chaperone, cook for, and comfort me. You deserve a Long Service Medal for that. Not that you’ll get one. Or anything else for that matter. Except Birt in Cabinet and Tony smirking.