AustinforGrimsby

HOUSE DIARY

2005-06-21T12:00:00.000Z

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

2005-06-08T12:54:00.000Z

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

2005-05-17T16:10:00.000Z

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

2005-05-11T15:22:00.000Z

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:

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.
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.
Change to Proportional Representation to bridge the gap between politics and people.
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

2005-05-04T15:02:00.000Z

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

2005-04-29T13:52:00.000Z

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

2005-04-27T14:31:00.000Z

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.”

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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.

The grave of the unknown canvasser

2005-04-26T09:14:00.000Z

Thursday 21 April No polls. Exactly to weeks to go. Weather good. Tail up. Enjoyment factor up to 8.5. So high I want it to go on. How about launching straight into the European Constitution campaign by seamless transition. Fighting an election campaign is a privilege and a great experience (everyone will eventually fight half an election: Warhol). It’s a moment of freedom in which backbenchers become generals and masters of their own universe. No one to tell them what to do or say. They can strut their own stage, commune with their own people without being abused by Tommy McAvoy using Denis McShane as an intermediary. No orders. No party briefs to read out. No lines to tread. No corsets, ideological policy or party) to wear. We can even say what we think if we do happen to think. Quite a luxury in politics.

So I give my own manifesto policies and my criticisms of our actual one. That`s a particular bonus in Grimsby because it never gets reported. Much the same as writing a blog site and as secret as speaking in the Chamber. Megan won`t let me hold any public meetings because she won`t pay for halls for no-one to come to. So why not just issue a series of press releases? “Speaking to a meeting last night Labour candidate, Austin Mitchell, called for a total removal of all controls on immigration…”. No need to say no-one actually attended or that the meeting never took place it brings.

In the good old days in Grimsby the Tory candidate and members of the Conservative Association like Mrs Nickerson used to come to my meetings, shout “rubbish” from the back row or ask questions about the corporate state. Those were the days. Now no-one comes at all. From the candidate’s view. We are the masters now. It`s politician`s play time

Newspapers are developing the settled assumption that we’ll win with a majority as high a l60. That`s disastrous. Blair will be unbearable. The Tories are stuck at 30% and can`t raise their game, however much they frighten people. Howard`s not yet sucking blood. The Lib Dems are stuck at a fifth with Charles too lethargic (and too nice) to break through. No one’s got any impetus. So the settled assumption congeals. A four year Blairvista arises out of the uncertainty. Oppositions don’t win, and it`s not made enough impact to come anywhere near. Governments lose . This hasn’t done so though it`s not done enough to enthuse its own supporters or enough to alienate and drive people to the Tories. So we’re drifting to a result: the most boring election producing the most boring result.

Not the same on the ground. Nothing settled. No certainties. Nervous candidates who don`t believe the polls or hope that the persuaded vote will be big enough to cancel them out. In their case just a lack of interest from sphinx-like ladies who smile and greet but don’t say. If they talk they’re too busy asking questions. They’re not prejudiced enough to be hostile but not enthusiastic enough to like us. They don’t lie the national campaign. It`s overkill, boring, not for us. Nor are they enthusiastic about any political leaders. They don’t really like Howard, Blair has lost trust, and Charles is asleep. All damaged goods. Can`t see what’s to interest young people in all this or get them to vote.

It’s a chance to commune with the electorate, though, even if they don’t say much. But it`s also a testing experience which sitting members in safe seats never get between elections. The Telegraph has published my voting record and Shona`s. She`s much more assiduous in voting, less so in asking questions. It reads like I`m never there giving the others the chance to say lazy bastard. They criticise me for not revolting enough but merely abstaining, and Shona for never abstaining or revolting at all. This is lese majeste. I will stop reading the Telegraph and confine myself to the morning papers telling us we’re going to win, not the evening one questioning my justifications for doing so.

Candidates are subjected to the same testing by battering as policies but it should go on all the time, not just a concentrated burst of arguments on black holes, missing millions, innumerable asylum seeker hordes. This is not like the testing by battering of policy in the Commons. There a few people understand it and have the opportunity to question the distortions. Here no one has either.

Start at School. Big welcome committee (its fine so it brings them out) for not many parents at Strand. Then to College for Channel 7 discussion programme. This turns out not to have an audience but to be based on incomprehensible questions from people in the street. No NF candidate. He’s either poorly or not invited. I never found out which. No Conservative for three quarters of an hour. Then he breezes in apologetic. Before that it`s confession time. Andrew admits he rises at 6-30 and goes out leafleting. Or today to the printers which was closed. The Green candidate, a man who looks like a Green candidate without sandals, says he breakfasts on a glass of water (not fizzy, of course). The UKIP candidate is an ex-fisherman now docker. He really means it.

Discussion a bit stilted but professionally done in an amateurish way. It`s a pity no-one will see it – even though it will probably be rejected 300 times.

After lunch I`m supposed to canvass with Muriel Barker but a letter arrives from the Immigration Minister rejecting all my passionate pleas for allowing the Bokhari family to stay. Brilliant timing given the fact that the newspaper is running strong on it.

So I devote the afternoon to dealing with it. His solicitor hasn’t got her material in yet. Decide to tell the paper but ask them not to use it yet. Eventually decide to tell him too. Then, after consulting a barrister in London, decide that the best approach is to keep putting in new pleas and keeping things in play because he says they won`t expel them as long as it`s in process. No more appeals possible. He`s been rejected in all so far - unless he can appeal on human right grounds, and for that we need a skilled immigration barrister. For that we need money. So I`ll have to go on producing new reasons to be considered before he can be pushed out. Minister doesn’t seem to care what the stink will be in Grimsby, though most of my mail has been favourable, only a couple of letters – anonymous - asking how much they`re costing in social security. So write a brilliant letter saying do nothing until we`ve met and I`ll be providing material to question the adjudicator`s verdict.

Then to a Telegraph stunt photo outside Asda. They`ve brought out three party label versions of the same beer (though the bottle says ours is red tinged with blue. It is in fact brown). Not bad beer but I`m not a beer drinker. So drink half a glass, feel queasy, and give the rest to the Telegraph reporter telling him to share it out among all the lads. I dont have Aids or anything. Tory not there so the blue bottle remains unopened.

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Canvassing with Linda at night. Best way to do it. Sunny. People come out and chat. mostly against Labour, including a soldier who’d fought in the Gulf and is flatly opposed to the Iraq war and the lies. I pointed out that the Tories had been as enthusiastic as we were. Linda and I take a side (of the road - not the war) each, which makes it fast. Far faster than with a canvas team, limping around, getting lost, setting out to find each other, missing rendezvous. You name it, we’ve done it. Thought usually on a bigger scale than this election.

Friday 22 April No new polls but a much better day. That does more to boost confidence and canvassing than a 20% lead. In fact, come to think of it, that would depress both disastrously. Edward sShool with a full canvas team, including Alan Burley who’s much better at knowing what’s going on in the ward than I am. This is the first school where most kids walk in, some to the Sure Start opposite, and the first too which isn`t scared stiff that it`s about to be shut down with the kids dispersed to other schools miles away. It`s always a comfort to come to Edward. The staff are friendly and feel Labour’s done a good job for education. One parent, just returned from Sunderland where she tells me they’re more proud of their community, gives me a harangue about school meals and Jamie Oliver. With which I strongly agree. Though however strenuously I point this out she doesn’t seem to get it, but goes on longer about what we need to do, before moving on to denouncing Grimbarians as a piggy lot who just chuck their litter in the street.

Then to old people`s home, where the residents are all sat in the lounge, to put questions.
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I`m a bit apologetic about pensions. We haven`t done as well for them as we should. There are also two long standing complaints we’ve largely ignored. First is why should those who`ve saved for their retirement and are just above the Minimum Income Guarantee have to pay taxes. Also should people in sheltered accommodation who’re in the bottom band for council tax (which everyone still calls poll tax) pay the same as people with three bedroom terrace houses? They shouldn’t of course but all the letters I`ve written to Prezza’s Department about the need to reform the tax and widen the bands have been ignored. Can`t tell John anything. Except that he’s wonderful.

Pamphlet distribution in top town and outside Freeman St Market, as well as inside the council’s market where we’re allowed, unlike the new shopping centre where pamphleteering is the crime equivalent to child molesting. Fish and chips at the Pea Bung. Linda has gone to collect the mail in Yorkshire.

Then Cornwell Close for a good meeting of residents. Quite lively, though their problems are with the police (never see Community Constable) and the council (won`t repair the fences) rather than the government.

Sod`s Law of electioneering: A happy period is a prelude to problems .Back at the House in Halifax Linda has found two rooms flooded with a water burst. They can`t be coped with until a plumber can come next week. It sets the burglar alarm off twice as soon as she’s left. Pray it hasn’t gone onto my papers and all the photographs. The last time we had a threat to them was two years ago when mice ate them to chew up a nest for little mice. A negative beginning.

Second disaster is that some jumped-up jobsworth in Shoreline has told off the warden of Stratford House sheltered accommodation for inviting me in. It got even worse when she discovered I’d taken a photograph. Photography is proving as big a crime as asylum seekers. Mustn`t be published on any account. Barmy and wrong. So I persuade Megan it`s her responsibility to put Shoreline right. They’re presumably acting on instructions from the council, despite the fact that the council has spent millions giving the housing away to a nominally independent housing association. The rubric is that wardens can`t invite us and we can`t use the lounge or other facilities but tenants can invite us and we can meet in their rooms, or perhaps the lavatory, presumably to smoke pot and do cocaine.

4.00 to Tesco in Cleethorpes for a joint canvas with Shona who travels everywhere mob-handed. They take away the fun. There are so many hands thrusting so many pamphlets at the poor folk that they’re quite baffled. Particularly since what’s being thrust looks like a women’s magazine not a political pamphlet. It even has a picture of Tony, the first I’ve seen, probably with a knitting pattern for his cardy. Does that account for the fact that more people refuse them than in Grimsby? I devote my time chatting to people, including one lunatic from Rotherham who wants to go on about the Working Time Directive. Sidetrack him onto the Euro MP, Richard Corbett. These bastards may as well work for their living. It`s better than ours. He talks for half an hour leaving me free to deal with less garrulous lunatics. I`m amazed Tesco let us leaflet there. Asda won`t and we do look like a sales promotion for heavy footwear. Shona`s on a high.
Candidate’s job is to answer questions they don’t understand using information they don’t have by parroting half remembered phrases from ministerial broadcasts designed to say nothing. Still it`s an opportunity to give our views on policy, even to make up a policy a sensible government would pursue. There’s no one to whip us into line, to contradict us “what Mr Mitchell means is that we won`t re-nationalise the railways”. If we win this election the candidate did it, not Tony (damaged) Blair or Gordon (dour) Brown.

Saturday 23 April No school visits. Just a compulsion to go. I’ll be turning up at school gates out of force of habit long after the election is over and probably arrested as a result.

Surgery. Busier than it`s ever been. I don’t know why. It must be that seeing candidates running round with rosettes and a vacuous smile reminds people that it`s their opportunity, they’ve got problems and grievances and they might as well get the bastards while they’re vulnerable. After all they may not see them again for four years. I`ve noticed it in town where people raise the most amazing problems, heavy lorries stop to block the traffic and ask the way to businesses I`ve never heard of, or how to use the one way system (“if your lorry`s that big just drive down it the wrong way”). It’s mad but, boy, does it fill the surgery. We can`t do the usual trick of storing people upstairs until I`m free to deal with them because upstairs two of Shona’s staff are sleeping.

11-30 To town pamphleteering with Shona, again mob-handed. No sign of any opposition doing this. I have to leave after three quarters of an hour to go to the local Derby game with Scunthorpe. Shona and Ian have both declined to come with me, which is as well because I couldn`t get tickets for them. I`m taking two grandchildren who know more about football than I do and can explain what’s happening to me. In return I give them information about the ships on the river which doesn’t interest them. Good game and a big gate - 7,900. I get my name flashed up as ball sponsor and announced as Austin Mitchell MP. Which is illegal.

Back home the neighbours have lived up to their threat and erected a large De Freitas banner on their balcony so we have to retaliate with a Labour sign. Perhaps they’ll bring Tory signs on the other houses - because prive these are they must be Tories to live there. They’ve also got signs in their windows but fortunately, being Liberals, their windows are so dirty they can`t be seen as well as ours. Always marry a New Zealander for clean windows. They’re anal neurotics. Andrew has also got a big sign further up the road near the Tory Club (which has repainted its decrepit old sign erected probably when Bonar Law was leader. No Labour people want posters – afraid their windows will get smashed, so if I want any more up I’ll have to buy more houses. This is the first posterless election until Andrew went and spoiled it. The problem here is that real Liberals are simple souls who want to proclaim their virtue and non-political idealism to the world. So they let it shine out of their eyes and supplement it by shining out of their windows too. Fortunately they don’t clean them (or their glasses) because they`re too busy thinking noble thoughts about impossible policies which they’ll never have to implement.

Nice letter “From the Office of Charles Clarke”. This turns out to be at l6 Old Queen St, not the Home Office). It tells me he`s going to control our borders. He`ll make the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep”. Thank God the trouble makers are Moslem not Jewish, given what Moses was able to do to part the waters, or Christian with the ability to walk across them. Looks to me like the letter may have been written by a refugee the English is so bad. It’s author is described as “Labour’s Home Secretary”. Howard must have got us really scared on the immigration issue.

Sunday 24 April Booze no units - dehydration is the curse of candidates so why compound it.? Mood benign but spending more time blogging than blabbing. Polls too good to be true. You Gov 37-33 Mori 39-32 Populus 40-33 IOS40-35 NOP 37 32 ICM 39 33 Av 39(+1) to 33(-1). What on earth can we do to get them down? Settled assumption turns concrete with Campbell proclaiming we’re home and hosed. Just right to get people to stay at home. Here are the Liberals proclaiming that they can win when they won`t and can`t and us proclaiming we won`t when we will.

Sunday is summation day. The pundits and the media sum up the week. On the major issue of the Grimsby week the candidate’s weight is down by two pounds, his tan up, though not to Blairite levels with artificial additives, but by dint of going out so much, some of it without my zimmer frame.

Blair is considering his legacy and how to ensure that Gordon inherits the earth (and a large chunk of South Yorkshire) while Tony sets his own legacy in concrete. Sadly he can`t. He doesn’t have one except being friends with murky businessmen invading Iraq and shoving the private sector into every available bit of space. Triangulation doesn’t leave traces let alone monuments. It doesn’t even leave lines in the sand. Tony hasn’t even coupled it with the phallic achievements of a Clinton His legacy is winning elections, not what he did with power. Having won he’d no idea what to do with power except tinker. We`re still living in Thatcher world as a result.

Morning A quick visit to Cleethorpes en fete. Or almost.Linda goes to Tesco. There the Liberals are leafleting, Andrew having been thrown out of the main shop. He hopes to come second and beat the Tories but can`t understand what made me stand again! Must be annoying because otherwise he’d have hoped for the big breakthrough. This may be his last chance. Must get the word back that I’m going to go on and on and on and thoroughly depress him. And probably everyone else except hair dye manufacturers.

Afternoon The Fabians. The faithful gather at Muriel`s instead of canvassing. Interesting preference emerges for some form of national service for young people to work on social service. Not sure they’d fancy a period in old people`s homes (or the homes them for that matter). Everyone still wants to take it out on the kids. If they don’t vote we want to fine them. If they’re noisy they’re yobs. If they want to go to university we impose fees rather than helping them. Still it`s nice sitting round in the sun discussing politics instead of having to pound the streets and practice them.

Mixed reception

2005-04-22T08:44:00.000Z

Wednesday 20 April. Halfway point. But to what? Times Tracker L 39 C33 Lib 2l. Mood set by weather: Down.

South Parade school pamphleteering in the rain. Theme of the party day is school gate mums. Here they`re wet and dripping. Most kids here come on foot largely because the street jams with cars getting in and out. Much revering. No rage and us too busy handing out soggy leaflets.

10.00 Church View Home, Aylesby. Cool to frigid reception - disinfect your hands please, sign the book with disinfected hands, not a smile in the place. The Warden is hostile. “I`ve had to invite the Conservatives and the Liberals as well”, she said. The old people are much friendlier. Warden has collected the questions and reads them out. They had to make huge efforts to get one bloke in because the council wanted him to stay in his own home to reach their target. He couldn’t cope. Kept going to hospital and couldn`t look after himself. He clamoured support. But there are lots who don’t want to go into a home. Tell them to be sure to get postal votes. Warden hasn’t made arrangements for any.

2-30 Next home College View. Made the mistake of walking, I arrive l5 minutes late. The poor, vulnerable oldies have to be brought into the lounge. One lady remembers me from Sunday School, another as a Deputy Headmaster. Mitchell means nothing to them.

4-00 To the Institute for Any Questions. Only three of the six candidates and a pathetic audience. First questions on Europe which bores the rest of the audience. I`m in the odd position of agreeing on some questions (local income tax and immigration) with Andrew, and on others (Europe) with Giles. At the end the bleached lady, who I`d taken to be Giles’s mother, turns out to be his Agent, tells me off for taking photos without asking permission - since I`d taken pictures of the audience. This seems a bit daft.

Discover Andrew`s secret. He`s been everywhere ahead of me because he has to walk a lot for health reasons so he sets out at seven and distributes leaflets. Then goes and does his council work. “You should be the Liberal candidate with me as your agent .If only you didn’t have your views on Europe” says he.

I was to go to a parents` meeting at Springfield School. Invited by a lady who rang yesterday furious that Cllr Vickers (candidate for Cleethorpes) had taken Giles (candidate for Grimsby ) along with him to Sunday`s parents` meeting. Headteacher rings up to say Cllr De Freitas had told him that if I went all the candidates would have to go. Provided it`s made clear why I`ve not come, I`ll stay away. He seems pathetically grateful. Probably that’s a normal reaction. Relief at the prospect of my not speaking. Which leaves me free to wait at home for an interview with World at One. Nick Clark`s arrival, originally 6-30, keeps getting put back and back. Finally it`s 8-l5. Why is he coming? Is it for a long, in-depth interview about my wise and amusing observations on the loneliness of the long distance candidate? Or perhaps it`s about my late run for the job of Fisheries Minister?

As it turns out he wants to talk about Europe. Boring. Blair almost certainly hopes the French will get him out of the mess. But if they don’t, and who can trust the Frogs?, then he’ll lead the campaign for the Constitution next June and lose, partly because the people want rid of him. He`ll be forced to go. That’s my cunning plot. At least until I watched him interviewed by Paxman - the first political television I`ve seen. Blair was brilliant on Iraq, more evasive on policy. But the electorate won`t be impressed. “Clever bugger. Can convince anyone of owt”. They just don`t believe him any more.

Back to school

2005-04-20T13:41:00.000Z

Tuesday 19th April

Booze 1 Unit. NOP L37 C32 ( Brown trust double Blair`s), Populus L40 C31. I`m beginning to enjoy this.

Nunsthorpe distributing my Intro. Card at the three gates of the Community School. Norma Lincoln in charge. She`s a brilliant, touchy-feely, know everyone by their Christian names, American-style councilor. The Queen of Nunsthorpe. The welcome is warm and friendly, though, for her as much as me. "Nice to see you, Norma". "What about me?" Then to the two parades of shops, some closed up, most deserted, except for the new co-op in the old Viking Rooms where Grimsby Co-op was until bankrupted by shoplifting. New Co-op is clean and gleaming and busy – but a bit dear, Ken Townsend says. It now incorporates the post office where once it was dead easy to meet people because of the huge queue outside Nunsthorpe post office waiting to collect pensions and benefits. Undignified. I wrote lots of letters to the post office trying to get it enlarged so people could wait inside, but it was marvelously convenient for pamphlet pushing politicos. Walk back to my car. The wheelie bins have now been pushed out for collection. Most of them have copies of my pamphlet sticking out at the top. Joy canvassed an oldie: "Will you be voting for Austin Mitchell?" "I`m not voting for that bugger. I`m voting for Shona McIsaac".

10.15 to Town Hall to hand in Nomination Papers. Wait outside with Alec Bovill, remembering all the gimmicks of the past – like bags full of coins, big cheques, big parties. Megan pops out. "I`ve done it. You didn`t need to be be here". She had been waiting for a chque from the Regional Labour Party but of course it never came. So she`d gone to her bank and drawn £500 out of her own account. The party had sent the cheque but to the Treasurer, who`d told P.C. Jeremy that it had come but he`d not told anyone else. Megan wants a cheque from me because otherwise she`s no money in her account. What a mess. Though at least we got it all in on time and before the 4 o`clock closure. Regional Office wanted us to hand it all in last Thursday, and goodie-two-shoes Shona, who I wanted to present hers with ours, probably got it in last week. Meanwhile the photographer from the Telegraph never turned up. Until 2.30. Then we had to repeat it.

Back at the office, Eric Clements has arrived, despite all our efforts to persuade him not to. Eric is indefatigable. Too ill now to go on the knocker because if he stands up for too long he faints, he`s desperate for us to put him in a loudspeaker car and drive him round town so that he can denounce the European Union. He`s done a suggested script which begins with Tories will kill you, because Europe insists on privatization and privatizing hospital cleaning has made wards filthy. "Get `em terrified" he advises. I plead weakly that we`ve no cars. Megan won`t authorize it, the party will go mad if I let him, and I haven`t time to drive him round. He wants a bath because his boiler has been broken for three weeks and he can`t get the washers for it. "I stink to high heaven". Take him to the shopping precinct to get his mobile phone repaired. He has to be taken home with a huge, heavy, purpose wheelie-bin suitcase. "What`s that for?" "In case I collapse when I`m out. It`s everything I`ll need in hospital". He was going to put it all in a rucksack (more manly) but decided that if he fell forward he would be protected by the suitcase. Take him home where he won`t let Joy in. "It`s such a mess" he says.

11.30 to Franklin Sixth Form College for question session. The kids are bright but a bit unresponsive, probably because they`re uncertain how to treat politicians. Hostility on fees where I fumble it, but do get one supporter and one insane question comparing Bush with Hitler. I always need a bit of praise after a speech. "Was that alright?" is the most asked question. Joy hasn`t yet learned how to handle political egos and launches straight into a critique. Answers were too long. Kids were glazing over. Too much on tax – they don`t pay it and aren`t interested. Unfortunately she`s right.

In the afternoon Ken and I walk up Freeman Street to hand out leaflets. No-one to hand them to. Freeman Street is dying. Empty shops – the only clean one is a sex shop boasting "friendly, courteous" staff – offices dirty. Even the Market, once Grimsby`s pride and joy, is deserted. Must have handed out all of 12 of our fast vanishing supply of Intros.

Evening Mass canvas (ie 5 of us) in Nunsthorpe – Crosby Road. All the complaints this morning were about housing transfers. Tonight about hot rodding in stolen cars, doing wheelies, racing along the long straight road, then burning the car. What do they want to deal with it? Road bumps? No, they smash our cars up. They want grass spaces bollarded off because kids drive over them, plus CCTV cameras so police can come quickly. As it is, cops come with cars which won`t chase and helicopters which can`t spot the joy-riders and two hours late.

Ken Townsend canvasses at high speed like a rat up a drain pipe. He`d probably do the estate in a morning on his own. I lag behind talking to people and watching one teenage lass in bra and pants talking to a crowd at the gate. Should have taken a photo. It`s freezing, and halfway round Linda rings. They`ve elected Pope Ratzinga. 78. There`s hope for septuagenarians yet. But not all that much for the Church with another crusty conservative. Habemus Pappam. But not yet MP.

Political Heavyweight

2005-04-19T13:34:00.000Z

Published by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, On behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate, Grimsby

Monday 18th April

Disaster day. Not because it`s pouring down outside and Linda and Janet have vanished, leaving a bowl of porridge in the microwave for me, which boils over and coats everything in porridge. But because I had proudly announced my successful weight loss, read stood on the new scales. Today Linda read the dial, which I hadn`t been able to see from my great height, but which looked like l4st 5 lbs from on high. When she inspected it it turned out to be 16st 5lbs. A weight gain. Cast me down. All that streetwalking for nowt. Compounded further by the Guardian announcing with all the confidence of creeps who don’t know that Blair won`t hold a referendum on the EU if the French reject the treaty. Damn. The only way of getting him out is when he loses the referendum on the Constitution next year and resigns to punish us for rejecting history, him, and the EU. If he isn`t going to have a referendum he can stay forever or until the Ides of Murdoch.

To Willows primary. It`s raining and a small group of parents are locked out. No interest in my leaflets because they’re all signing a petition against the closure of the school. The council has announced a full primary re-organisation with closure of surplus schools and places. The consultation is to close on 31 May. Bloody idiots. Or perhaps devious clever clogs. It takes the heat out of both processes. Andrew has announced that it will be non-political (ie it will benefit the Tories) and the Town Clerk has written to councillors to tell them not to campaign or defend the interests of the schools in their area or they won`t be allowed to vote. This is bollocks of the same spherical quantity as the decision four years ago to disqualify anyone with a season ticket for Grimsby Town from voting on the proposed new stadium. Yet it terrified Jane King who feels she can`t sign the petition. Mums are clearly upset. You can tell this is a Labour area by the higher proportion of mums and kids walking to school rather than driving in. And by the dismay. The middle class will be agitating already. Our people ask "What can we do?" The sense of resignation - no way of resisting it - and the feeling that whatever they do they’ll lose. Middle class schools will be organising lobbying and screaming their heads off because the odds are always loaded to them, and whatever happens their kids will arrive dry and comfy, while the rest come in bedraggled ,wet, cold and teeth chattering. More loudly because they’ve come a greater distance.

To the Willows shopping plaza to distribute pamphlets. Bit difficult because there aren`t any people. After a couple of problems raised with me I can`t read the notes because the page has gone soggy. Back to the office to complete my answer to problems raised by Telegraph readers, like why are pensioners so much worse treated then asylum seekers? Because they’re too old to work. Can’t say that. See austinmitchell.org

Then to the Salvation Army to speak to the pensioners` lunch - though we’re all locked out because the kiddywinkies are still using it. When we get in talk to the pensioners about inconsequentials and suddenly realise that we’re all geriatrics and Oldie Mitchell is talking to other Oldies somewhat younger than he is about things none of us know anything about. The Salvation Army people are lovely. One asks what we can do to revive faith and church attendance? I`m baffled. Cite Tony Blair as a good religious leader but this cuts no ice. Turn down the Salvation Army lunch.. "I’m slimming" Go home to fattening frankfurters.

Then back to the Willows to canvas – cold, though the rain has stopped. Noreen Turgoose has us splendidly organised – "No don’t go over there, that’s on the next schedule" – "down there and don’t listen to number 10". I never do.
Formulate laws of letter boxes as I go. It may be the nanny state but it would save my back
l) Letterboxes at the bottom of the door to be charged double first class rate for stamps
2) Letterboxs with doormat interiors be required to clean off the blood and skin at regular intervals
3)Letter boxes which won`t open required to have an outside box
4)letter boxes which cut or maim be sprayed to prevent MRSA
5) Fingers cut off by letter boxes to be returned to owner
6)Houses with dogs which hurl themselves against letterboxes required to have specially strengthened panels
Linda bought me a pair of gloves to stop the cuts and scratches which cover pamphlets in blood. We tried out a pair of tongs to shove letters in but they wouldn’t open to let the letter drop. Should have spoken to a postman to learn the tricks of the trade first.

Afternoon To Megan’s office. I`d rung earlier on the number provided but it turned out to have been detoured to Hull where a GMB secretary answered. "Can you put me though to the Labour Party?" "No this is the GMB". "But aren`t they downstairs?" . "Downstairs? No there’s no one downstairs".

Megan has just arrived back to find a committee of three blokes has drawn up the plans without her. She’s busily getting ready for the nomination tomorrow. No cheque has arrived for the deposit. Some of the forms aren`t signed by Nan Sloan, Yorkshire Organiser, but if we ain`t there by 4-00 we’ve had it. Nan says they should have gone in last Thursday.
Then canvassing with Joy and Linda. People know I`m there and it does serve the purpose of being seen. What worries me is that no-one comes out to talk any more. Except Steve Beasant-Beasant who`s deserted to the Liberals-Liberals.
We’ve been badly let down by the national campaign. We candidates are like 646 Rover dealers with empty showrooms, no sales brochures, no cars, and no TV ads to stimulate sales, all trying to drum up interest on our failing product while the parent company goes bust. Not the Labour Party (not only) but the campaign. In London the politicians are fighting a campaign for the benefit of each other. The Westminster media corps - the muttering herd – runs behind them. But they’ve nothing new to say and exclude everyone else from their game.

This is the first campaign I`ve known which has been so tightly controlled and managed that it can`t breath and is slowly and embarrassingly dying. Who’s capable of giving it the kiss of life? Isn`t it appropriate that it should be in its death throes on the day Labour tries to switch attention to the NHS? Where is the defibrillator? Who’s to resuscitate this shambling amoeba? The national parties have failed all the candidates so badly we’d all be justified in doing a Sinn Fein and staying in our constituencies after the election to rule there untrammelled by the failed centre. In an election which they’re all trying to claim is about choice, that’s the ultimate and increasingly necessary one. Rebel and allow people to choose candidates from other constituencies.

No sign yet of other candidates. Andrew clearly works at night like a vampire, but Giles hasn’t been sighted - his Adoption Meeting is on Wednesday. The others may be dead. Is anyone else standing? I’m feeling tired, and with tiredness comes bad judgement, Kennedy problems and a deep gloom. Perhaps an improvement in the weather will lift things. It comes at 4.00 at last. Grimsby evenings are wonderful, bright light, dazzling sun, blue skies. Here on the east coast it’s the most wonderful part of the day and today lives up to that. Oh, to be in Grimsby now that April’s there. And I am. Lucky me.

Polls apart

2005-04-18T13:26:00.000Z

Published by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby on behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate, Grimsby

Sunday 17th April

Booze 2 units. Weight l4st 4lbs (can`t believe it. I`ve lost weight - elections are good for you). Mood cheerful. Polls YouGov 36-35, Mori 39-35, Populus 37-35, NOP 38-32, ICM40-30, Average 38-34. Both good and bad. Good because we’re going to win, though the S Times is still going on about closing gaps, bad because it`s going to lead to over-confidence which is what the Telegraph probably wants with "third landslide". All this at total variance with what it feels like here - a huge yawn and no clear indication of which way they’re going to jump. Though it could be they’ve all already made their minds up.

8-00 To communion with ten other people in the parish church. Don’t realise the system now is pre-pray-pay, so I don’t, and don’t recognise a lot of the service either - which means that I`m mumbling through a different litany to everyone else. This will look like Blair’s relationship with God - closer as elections come. I enjoyed it. As well as the note in the weekly Parish News: "Somerfield has an amazing offer this week. Almena, a 1998 Reserve Rioja, is reduced from £8-99 to £4-49. Buy six and the cost is reduced to £4-26." A staggering price. Get there before the Rector pays a second visit.

Sunday papers getting critical of the election and beginning to wonder whether they’ve devoted too much space to such a pathetic event. How to describe the national campaign? Dreary, dreadful , defensive depressing. Or tetchy, querulous, irrelevant and out of touch with real people because they`d rather punch each other. We’ve known it was coming for months but no one bothered to think it through to provide a useful theme and to plan the daily themes. Everyone must have waited for Tony to give them the message but he`s been too busy to get it ready. So he`s thrown out a few thoughts and Alistair`s been brought back too late to get a grip on it. Result: they’ve staggered into it, relegated Milburn, brought Gordon back. So Blair`s last campaign will be like Blair’s brain - a messy collection of impulses.

We desperately need something to bring the election alight and capture the attention of real people. Its universal arse hole covering with no fun, no initiatives, and all so politically correct that it`s boring. If only they’d cut Prezza loose or Reid would bite someone, or Michael Howard pull the head off an asylum seeker. Even if he announced "no more Mr Nasty Guy" and embraced Ann Widdecombe it would add some interest there. Wake up, Charles, your country needs you. A few jokes. A bit of fun. Where are you now Edwina?

All leaves 646 campaigns - mine among them. None of it engages with the national campaign at all. There there’s nothing nationally to grip and interest the folk. So we’re like missionaries from a strange cargo cult whose rituals are far away. They’ve seen something of it on TV but aren`t really interested. We then arrive at the door asking "What do you think then?" "Of what?"
Labour used to try and tie the local campaign in with the national. In 1979 a letter would come each day bashing the theme the national campaign was to hit so I could tie in with it. In 1983 this became a fax. I remember one hitting rising prices and suggesting we go out and buy a shopping list comparing prices in 1979 and four years later. I duly did it. Posed with the basket. Next day another fax. Correction. The prices were wrong. Now nothing. Apart from emails from John O`Farrell asking for money which I don’t get, in any case, because I can`t work my email, having forgotten the password, so I have to read Linda`s.

My good intentions to go out and leaflet new areas fade away. We go to Cleethorpes where it`s bitter cold and full of Yorkshire folk all saying "Na then". After another £20 on the grab machines Janet finally gets a small cuddly toy and Linda a Paddington Bear which she decides to give to Kirsty’s baby. Which it will probably choke on it.

Invasive surgery

2005-04-17T13:19:00.000Z

Published by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby, on behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate, Grimsby

Saturday 16th April

Cheerful, well slept and hungry because Linda isn`t here but driving up from London. No newspapers, polls or anything else to depress me. Over for non-surgery surgery. I`m no longer an MP and not supposed to have them, but lots more people than usual flood in all with impossible problems involving law and order (or rather the lack of both) on the Yarborough Estate, school closures, wrongful arrest. In an ideal world MPs would be provided with seconded civil servants - a social worker, a benefits officer, a Probation Officer, and a Legal adviser might be enough. As it is, I sit there thinking "My God. What am I going to do about this? Why can`t I have an MP to put the questions to?" while the queue gets longer and we have to shove people upstairs, where Joy is still abed, outside and standing around in the office. All the polls tell us that people hate politics and politicians but they need MPs more and more..

11-30 Out into the precinct. Megan hasn’t been able to get a table for us. We distribute leaflets - mainly photographs of myself (could there be a more ego maniac activity than that?) to people who don’t particularly want them but mainly say "thank you". Some anti-Blair feeling. "I’ll vote for you if you get rid of that bastard", lots of anti-crime concern. Occasional hostility like the leather-jacketed ape I gave a card to who promptly shoved it in the passing rubbish cart and walked on. Inclination to shout abuse after him must be suppressed. Instead I picked it back out of the rubbish cart, cleaned it down and handed it to someone else. Being a candidate makes you touchy but forces sublimation. Unless you`re John Prescott! I`m almost as much as the Prime Minister.

I go down better with older electors more likely to know who I am. A fading memory, a blur on the collective subconscious of those on zimmer frames. We should all be allowed a top up portion of fame before the election.

Afternoon to Cleethorpes to walk along the front and have a glass of wine. Janet spends about £10 on those grabs which catch - or rather don’t catch - cuddly toys. Tell her of my brave vote to increase the maximum value of the cuddly toys from £5 to £8 in the Gambling Bill as the worker`s revenge for allowing million quid fruit machines. No use since she doesn’t catch any but goes off muttering about complaining to trading standards.

For Sale.......

2005-04-16T13:07:00.000Z

Published by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby, on behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate, Grimsby

Friday 15th April

Round blearily to 15 New Cartergate to collect the pamphlets (not enough). Megan has left. One window stuck up with a "FOR SALE" sign "owing to redundancy—caused by excessive spinning. In yellow Liberal colours. But it could be witty Tories – no, there aren`t any. National Front - not that smart. Don’t know. Took it down and put it in the boot. Should I get a photographer round and appeal for the sympathy vote? No Grimsby`ll just think I`m a pillock.

Off to Grange School where I`m to meet Ken, who, of course, arrives at the other entrance where, he says, most people come in cars. At mine they come on foot complaining about the footpath leading to the school which they`ve complained about each election. Last time I got it paved. Hasn’t stopped the complaints. Most mums don’t say anything much but there’s no hostility. Perhaps we’re something different in the daily grind. Perhaps they don`t care two stuffs. It`s difficult to tell. Linda meanwhile has slipped off to London to do an interview and collect her sister, over from Australia, to spend the weekend with us. She, Janet, last came in 1977 in their camper van with Kirsty a young baby. They stayed on the Fitties, a British shed and bungalow paradise, where the council`s now trying to double the ground rents. The Fittes is the Independent Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire where most of the residents come from. For years the council has tried to get rid of them and even deprived them of the vote. But they’re still holding out.

Canvassing with Joy and Ken on Spring Bank, then Grosvenor (where of course our rendezvous goes wrong - he starting at one end we at the other). That’s the trouble with canvassing with more than one person. Joy is indefatigable where I`m huffing and puffing behind. But getting fitter! Back to Cleethorpe Rd where Megan has been to the meeting with the Electoral Officer of the Council. The National Front candidate is a "poppet" she says. Could we do a drama on a Labour agent falling in love with the National Front Candidate and trying to convert him? He’s 28 but looks l8, has no idea what it`s all about and asks her whether she thinks he needs an agent. Sub-contract Megan. Nothing against it in law and could be a good idea for Schizophrenics.
Joy and I go back to the Willows to do Queensway and find our first Labour poster at Noreen Turgoose`s house. Andrew has been there at 9.00 this morning. The bastard’s been everywhere but you never see him. He gets up early, have an enjoyable four hours delivering the masterpiece, and then back to do his council work from 10.00 o’clock so he can say he didn’t work on council time. Unlike his other two liberal colleagues, Doug Pickett - now selected for Doncaster and telling their paper he’s going to spend all his time in Doncaster - and Geoff Lowis who we de-selected so he promptly stood for the Liberals and is now Liberal candidate in Cleethorpes. What a rag, tag and bobtail lot they are. No wonder they call them the transvestites in Liverpool. Find that politics are now fading from my brain. I`d rather talk to people about their gardens - where did you get those lovely clean pebbles?- how on earth do you get that car with its windcheater sides up a pavement (answer –we don’t we use it as a snowplough). But in fact there’s no one to discuss all these interesting topics because no one comes to the door.

Evening: Take Joy, Joyce and Megan to the Othello, which is becoming our staff canteen, for a celebration meal on having survived the first full week. Even if we haven`t accomplished all that much. Megan seems OK, though, about the website. In fact I suggested she should write an opposition point of view about what a dyslexic, inattentive, flibberty-gibbet the wretched candidate is, and she seems a little -just a little - interested. "And now with the other side of the story….." Wonder if she’ll tell the truth?

The primary school stitch up

2005-04-15T12:57:00.000Z

Promoted by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby, on behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Catergate, Grimsby

Thursday 14th April

No polls. Gloomy Start. Feeling sleepy. Light rain. Just the day to begin the long march to victory.

It starts at Springfield School. Megan drives me there, grimly, saying nothing about the blog site. Meet Ken to distribute leaflets to the mums and a few dads as they bring the kids in. More seem to come by car every election. This time about half the little darlings sweep past and disappear. Some kids run and skip. Others trudge. A few have to be dragged to school. Amazingly none arrive late. So we get through our entire allocation of pamphlets and more. Are we going to run out before the end of the campaign? None of the parents appear particularly interested in the pamphlet but want to talk about the council’s plan, published two days ago, to close the entire school. Odd that. No I won`t sign their petition but I am meeting with parents this weekend. Trust the bloody council to try and rush this through in the election.

Back to office. Two sets of questions have arrived from the Telegraph. One is loaded like "do you regret being so stupid as to advise council tenants to vote against the paradise on earth that Shoreline (which took over on 3l March) is building with décor by Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, gardens by Groundforce and bathrooms by Jaques Cousteau". Or "why were you so inadequate and stupid in not backing the wonderful plan the Liberals and Tories had developed for Building Schools for the Future?" It didn’t quite ask why I’m such a useless turd but that was the tone. Particularly in the "What have you ever done for Grimsby"? question which you get constantly in pubs though always in a more friendly fashion than the Telegraph intended. I answered it in hurt fashion, a bit like Tony when he senses that not everyone finds him quite as wonderful as Cherie does. Answers on www.austinmitchell.org where they’ll be better read than in the Telegraph. There`s also a second set sent in by readers though these are more a club to the head than a knife in the back.

Tony is once again trying to attract attention away from our campaign and draw it to himself by campaigning with Gordon, joined at the hip. A bit of a waste of time, two men doing the same thing and sing each other`s praises but it does at least rescue him and us from the campaign mess up to now.

He should have realised this was inevitable. Our main real achievement is the healthy economy, growth and the fall in unemployment. Lots of other fiddly bits, some quite good, but "You’ve never had it so (pawkily) good" is still our best appeal. All Tony`s frills and furbelloes about choice and competition are useless middle-class medicine compared to that can`t let them eat choice. In fact they don`t want it but deserve quality. The manifesto launch is a bit messy. Like a huge pram for nine infants I saw being pushed round yesterday. It`s all part of the Blair Recessional. As for the manifesto itself, the rumours running round are true. We are going to campaign "wholeheartedly" (but not whole partily) for the Euro Constitution which is apparently wonderful and does all sorts of things, including cleaning round the lavatory bend. This is McShaneless nonsense. But there’s also a nice bit saying we’ll give local authorities the ability to start building homes again which should be a torpedo at Prezza’s policy of castrating them and forcing them to privatise everything. What took that so long?

More leafleting in the afternoon. Not so many queries for my little black book per street because people are out. Fingers bleeding with being caught on letter boxes. Some of the pamphlet have blood on them which wouldn`t have shown up quite as much if they’d been red rather than yellow. Must get some gloves. Then I`d have to take them off to shake hands. Or curtsey.

The Old Candidate Remembers

2005-04-14T12:49:00.000Z

Published by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby, on behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate, Grimsby

Wednesday 13th April

No Polls. Though I forgot yesterday`s NOP in the Independent putting us 4% ahead. Perversely that now begins to worry me because it removes the horse race element, makes people disinclined to vote and will worry Tony because he can`t face the fact that the more he lectures us and the more he looks hurt at the nation’s reluctance to respond to his obvious honour, integrity, intelligence and general rightness, the more they get bored and shuffle away. No weight report. Can`t find the scales. No mood beyond terror of the dentist.

The alarm clock goes off one hour early. The hot water’s off. The milk is sour. Wonderful to be back in London. Always hate it and now more than ever. What a bloody place. Working life continues here unaware of the election. The political leaders and the Westminister circus are migrating round the country like the King’s Court once did. The Commons used to follow the King. Now it`s Press Corps who have, in any case, replaced us. They’re today`s men of power. The real difference between them and us is that now they’re the political elite. They’re smarter than us, better education, they know they’re right. We’re more hesitant. They have the power to implement their ideas.

Their departure and ours leaves London to the tourists and (today) me. Plus of course the young meteors all selected for seats they’re staying away from to run the national campaign. Or at least Brown’s bit of it. Jealously I coin a new slogan. "If you don`t see `em don’t vote for the bastards." The days when anyone wanted me to go down to London for any purpose, PPBs TV interviews Speeches, open the odd massage parlour, consumer test the new drive-in brothels, or make Manifesto suggestions, are long gone. The instruction has gone out not to touch Mitchell with his crazed Euro-views. Even fishing MPs fall mysteriously quiet in case I rave on about the Tories having got it right on the CFP. The Grimsby party want me to stay there. So do the national party. In fact no-one wants me to go anywhere at all. Except to Blazes.

Dentist David is quick and efficient and builds a new tooth round the crumbled ruins of the old but warns that my plate might be difficult to get out. I’ll not bother. However much it stinks. Bill £85. Is it an election expense? Perhaps I should have gone through the campaign, gob closed, but that’s too easy a way to popularity. I long to explain why I’m right and everyone else, including the new twins B&B, are wrong.

Arrive back in Doncaster at midday. Fare £58 (standard) I couldn’t afford to travel by train if I weren`t an MP. If I’m beaten it`s back to hitch-hiking. Do people do that any more? Must win or I’ll be expelled from the cocoon and forced to find out about real life. Something I’ve not lived since 1967. Do people enjoy it? How can they afford it? Sit on the platform fielding calls from Linda who’s lost in Wakefield where she’s gone to pick up the big boards I couldn’t carry and the pamphlets which haven`t arrived. Shouted conversation at both ends. "I`m in Cheapside and I can`t find it anywhere. What number is it?" "25". "No that’s a hairdresser". "Are you at the front or the back?" ".Shut up and listen. I’m in Cheapside". "It`s at the end of the row by a public car park." "No that’s in the middle". "Yes that`s right". "Oh I`m going to leave it". Finally rings to say "It’s 20-22". There’s no-one there. When someone turns up - the same lad that I met - he’s unhelpful, as he was to me, and no pamphlets. He ignores her efforts to search the property. They must have some. What about those huge piles of Prescott Pamphlets? Perhaps we could delete Prescott, write in De Freitas and win.

12-40. Linda sets out to pick me up. Watch the speed cameras. Sound of spluttering at the other end. She still hasn’t recovered from being called "A very foolish woman" two weeks ago on her speeding charge. The Doncaster economy is kept gong by the horse racing and speed camera fines. Without those they’ll all be out of work. Or in prison in the case of councillors. They deserve it.

Back somewhat sleepy but pretty toothed. Linda refuses to take a photo of me grinning like a maniac. Perhaps as well because the Telegraph is out to publish a story about the collapse of NHS dentistry in Grimsby and here am I belting off to London to have a quick tooth reconstruction.

Office. Things are coming into shape and Megan is bettering out a programme and some pamphlets. For schools. Later she rings up in fury. Just delivered pamphlets to 15 New Cartergate and she`s seen the weblog. Furious. It`s disloyal to the party. They’ll hate being caricatured. It`s revealing our plans to the enemy. Its making fun of the process. It must stop. It has to come off. It`s not gong out under her name.
Sink into great gloom. She’s right, but what’s to happen to my life’s ambition to write a novel about an election campaign? The Ulysses of Gy 05/05/05 without pissing and fucking called "The Old Candidate Remembers" and full of wisdom to hand on to the clone generations to come. Who won`t read it. Much torn between arguing to Megan that no one will read it anyway and the excuse that it has to be honest if it`s to capture public attention. Sleep badly worrying about it.

The official candidate

2005-04-13T12:42:00.000Z

published by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby on behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate Grimsby

Tuesday 12th April

Mood: tired for no reason. Booze: zero. Days as ex MP: l. Days to possible re-instatement: 23. Underpants: Blue.
A nothing much morning with no energy and even fewer ideas for my non-adoption speech tonight. The problem with this election is that there hasn’t been a good joke yet. All that’s happening at the centre is an endless bickering about figures and tax cuts, while on the ground nothing’s happening at all. No-one’s much interested and there’s no feedback from the electorate. It`s quite an achievement to have bored everyone to death before its even begun. My speech will probably add to the effect. I just can`t think of anything to spark it. So it will amount to "We’ve not done a right lot. But the Tories would mess it all up" Q.E.D.

After lunch and trekking down to the Town Hall for an electoral roll (which I forget to take to the meeting) I stir myself to go out canvassing. Jeremy doesn’t want to come. So I’m on my own and decide on Yarrow Road. Brian Stanley, former member 14 years retired from Telecom, doing his hedge. He’s left the party – "don’t want anything to do with this lot" - but he’ll still vote for me. Now spends his time doing local history on which he’s a mine of information. After Yarrow - where there’s hardly a soul - go to Elm. Older houses where De Freitas has been before me, judging by his pathetic cyclostyled pamphlet - 284 Reasons for Voting for Andrew - with the headline "Andrew Can Make It". This must be the fourth time we’ve stood against each other starting with the 1977 by-election. Perhaps they should have added "eventually".

Campaign launch in the Town Hall at 7.00 and pretty well attended. Making it an open meeting hasn’t brought anyone from outside the party. Jeremy announces that I`m the adopted candidate and launches me into my speech. Try to deliver it without opening my mouth, and certainly without laughing or smiling, so as not to reveal my dental mess. Peter Wheatley and Margaret come. Good on him because he hasn’t been near since we lost the council elections last time and I really should have gone round to see him to ask him back. No tough questions and the reception seems OK. Linda says I sounded tired. They all seem willing to nominate me and Megan has decided to fill several sheets, even though we only need ten nominees just in case there’s any cock-ups, asylum seekers, disqualified lunatics, or people not on the roll. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. For the eighth time since that first by-election in 1977 for another party in another world.

Here we go, in reality, to London. Linda has booked a tooth reconstruction session at the dentist at nine a.m. tomorrow. Runs me to Doncaster and off. On the much delayed last train. Can’t even travel first-class because I can`t now use my Parliamentary rail warrants. Three quarters of an hour wait on the cold platform at Donny. All waiting rooms and facilities closed. Me with no coat while the train, due at l0-02 shunts backwards to 10-09, l0-l2 and finally l0-l5-16 and 17. At which point it arrives.
To yet another King`s Cross episode. Clutching my pensioner`s pass ("twirly card" Stephen Pound calls it because when he was a bus conductor, pensioners would come rushing up just before 9am and say "Am I too early?") Dash right down the escalators to the underground platform where a posh lady`s voice is announcing "Last train gone. Bugger off". Go back up to find the metal gates to the station now locked by a man who`s just walking away and won`t come back. Back into the station where they explain no more trains and try to stop me. Take street exit and try to get back into the station. Deserted. Walk to the taxi rank. Closed. Out to the street. No taxis. Cross the road in front of St Pancreas and get stuck in the middle while taxis speed past. Finally one screeches to a halt, gets me in, rally drives to Ambrosden Avenue, says "have a good election" and speeds off.

A toothless candidate

2005-04-12T12:27:00.000Z

Published by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby, on behalf of Austin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate, Grimsby

Monday 11th April

Jim Tatt rings to wish me luck. His son is at Cherry Valley and they’re very dependent on immigrant labour - Poles who’re very hard working. He says Labour isn`t making enough of the Working Family Tax Credit. I should keep reminding people how good it is and where it comes from.
Home for lunch listening to Michael Howard on World At One with his sneers at Blair "no more smirking". It’s pretty obnoxious stuff but if this is all he’s got against us we needn’t bother. It’s pathetic. More cops, cleaner hospitals, immigration controlled etc. If people are thinking what I’m thinking it`s why the fuck didn’t you do something about it in eighteen years in power? He’s rocketing down in my estimation. A much smaller man than I thought but gnashing my teeth in anger breaks one off. It’s a crucial one too. The plate is wired to. I look pathetic. Like I`ve just had an argument with Prezza. Or a good National Front candidate, though they’ve gone all smooth recently so they probably wouldn’t have me. Never get a dentist in Gy - and certainly not a National Health one. Now I`ll have to go down to London to get it fixed. A tooth, a tooth, my constituency for a tooth.
Telegraph ring. The National Front are putting a candidate up. That will cause a problem about joint platforms, though I`m not in favour of boycotts. They’ve a perfect right to stand. This is a democracy after all. At least until they get in. Will he froth at the mouth and bite asylum seekers? It’s the New National Front now. With added smile rictus.
Canvas Winchester Ave in Nunsthorpe with Jeremy in the afternoon. Not many people about though Jeremy meets one who’ll never vote Labour again because the NHS messed up his operation. Blair always follows America, he claims. At which Jeremy points out how enthusiastic he is about Europe. He doesn’t want them either. He’s decided to vote for UKIP but wants Britain to go into the euro. My God. I begin to wonder, not for the first time, if most of the swinging voters aren’t clinically insane. Almost as insane as some of the candidates. We’re all that mixed up but most people, and all candidates, hide it better.
Evening Executive Committee meeting to decide who`s going to do what. Grimsby is the best of local parties in the most infuriating of Labour Parties. We`ll never be able to build a mass party as long as we have party meetings because the routine is so boring. We`ve been together now for forty years and I love them all, but still don`t know whether they reciprocate. Sensible parties keep the MP at a distance and the relationship well short of idyllic. I suppose those who don`t like me have left or died. So we grow old together, a little less lithe and vigorous each election. Both of us.
Manage to get into the usual muddles which are the joy of meetings. Should the party wind up first for the election and then adopt the candidate, or vice versa? How can a party which has wound itself up select a candidate? Megan cuts through the crap by saying that these days we don`t need to wind up. She`s right, but instead of deciding the issue we resolve not to wind up but not to meet either. Splendid compromise. After speaking to try and rally the troops I belt off. Thinking we must reform the Labour Party, not in the half-hearted way Blair has by running it from the top down and feeding members on pap, but by a genuine mass membership. Say a fee of £5 with postal voting rights for associates who`ll get as many email briefings as they can eat and full membership £15 for masochistic meeting lovers.
It`s difficult to have mass parties in days of mass leisure. British TV is so good that it stunts everything else and takes over their roles. We could flog a much looser attachment and conciliate the keen by actually giving them real power to decide things, not treating them like messy sheep who`re allowed to mill round you a bit but not to come into the house.
I`ve been lucky to have had the perfect party for so many years. Most haven`t and the nightmare stories of apathy, idiocy and downright death from other MPs mean something`s got to be done. Unfortunately the Poms are too picky to adopt the American system of party registration with primaries for selections. They`ll tell all on the telephone (or this massive telephone voter ID effort would never work). But they`ll never agree to anything being published.
Now I’m no longer an MP. Just a candidate. But not yet formally adopted because we’ve decided it`s not an adoption. Perhaps I’ll just emerge as a smoking white Puff from the front entrance of the Town Hall. Buy some fags.

Blog update...

2005-04-11T13:10:00.000Z

Thursday 7 April
No Polls. No campaigning, probably in honour of Pope, Prince Rainier or the dead dolphin at Chessington Zoo. No weight loss. Booze 2 units. Devotion to Tony Index 2. Days as MP 5 to go.

Parliament is still chuntering on, passing unimportant Bills like it`s had an enema. Paul Flynn says we’ve passed a stupid drugs bill which makes magic mushrooms a dangerous drug. But no-one objected except him.

Finish taking photos of the leavers, most of whom seem to have a confidence that they’ll be back as Baron Snurple while at the same time professing they’re glad to be gone. Watch some saying sad farewells to each other. I said how sad I am that they’re going to two MPs, who aren`t. Parliaments die with a whimper. Rather like a snowman melting before your eyes into puddles and slush with the whips still pretending they`re in control and regular announcements on the pagers that we’re on a Three Line Whip even though there are no votes and no one is receiving the messages. Particularly not me because I’ve lost mine. Again. My umbilical is already cut through. It may send urgent messages during the campaign though, like “Don’t mention Rover”, ”Tony unable visit Grimsby”, “(6 May) Manifesto on its way. Sorry you were omitted from distribution”. All sorts of things I’ll be better off not knowing. Like last time when urgent messages came to ring Margaret McDonagh, who I knew wanted to tell me off for saying Paul Sykes is a friend. Pretended not to have got it. Which is as well because afterwards one MP who did ring her was screamed at for half an hour. My dinner would have gone cold.

Janet arrives for lunch. Kirsty has just had her little boy. After which we pack all the stuff we’ll need into the car. Together with a lot we won`t, pick up lots more from the flat and away. Snoozing North, half looking forward to the outward bound course to come, half not because the world has changed. The normal routine is disappearing. Now we’re all on our own to fight 646 individual campaigns in unknown and uncharted territory where the natives aren`t hostile but do have a lot of individual grievances and the club of the vote to drive them home. This is an ESN learning class in New World Studies.

.Parliament won`t be dissolved until Monday. It won`t meet on Friday, meaning that a long list of Private Member`s baby bills will be slaughtered.

Friday 8 April
Polls You Gov in Telegraph L 36% C 35% Booze units 1. Gloom Quota High (due to weather).

Linda calls in at the shop where we got rosettes last time. Closed. It`s now a tattooist. Rosette makers must go bust quicker than the rest of manufacturing. Every one we’ve ever bought the brilliant yellow and red ones (Grimsby Labour colours) has gone bust. All that’s now available are tatty Labour ones. Or an agent Pat has found. They want £l60 for 25.

Set off to Grimsby via Wakefield and the Labour Party Regional Office - which I last visited in the last election. Every other candidate seems to have large piles of posters and publications. There are leaflets all over for John Prescott with his hair freshly dyed. Ours is a small forlorn heap of nowt, plus two huge posters too big to fit in the car. No, they don’t have any pamphlets. But I can have a small handful of pledge cards - perhaps 200.

Afternoon
Weather bitter cold. It snowed. This removes my already weak desire to go leafleting. Write an article on council finances. An insane topic to raise in an election. Why am I so desperate to vindicate my views on Council Tax? Forget it, Austin. Move on, as Tony says. Plus another on my views on Grimsby (“not too political”) for a Lincolnshire magazine I`ve never heard of. Lincolnshire Larynx or something.

Evening
To open the Grimsby Photographic Society’s Exhibition. They began in 1893. This is their 98th exhibition with some very good stuff from which I`m supposed to pick the funniest. A bit impossible since they’re all deadly serious. “I’ll have you know I’m an FRPS and I very much resent my lithograph being described as funny”. Best photos are by John Leslie who turns out to be an uncle of Chris Leslie and went to the wedding. Reports Charlie Falconer as jiving with Chris’s mum who has evidently recovered from breaking her arm while out canvassing for Chris. Evidently Chris runs the Constitution and she the constituency. Home. The snow is settling. Perhaps we’ll be able to get snowscapes on Cleethorpes beach tomorrow.

Saturday 9 April
No polls. Odd that. Booze 2 units. Confidence returning.
Except that there are bad auguries.

l) Posters on stakes for Chris McCafferty in Sowerby were pulled down and vandalised. This on a Labour council estate.

2) Young suited assistant at BHS tells Linda he’s so delighted to have got a letter from the MP. “But of course I’ll be voting Conservative. Giles is so nice”.

3) At football match. Any incompetence (and being Grimsby Town there was a lot) is greeted with “You’re worse than Tony Blair”.

4) Neighbours, who Linda had asked if they minded us putting up a six foot Labour poster (languishing unseen in Wakefield) blithely reply “No - we’re putting an even bigger one up for Andrew De Freitas. He’s a good friend and always dropping round”. Lying bastards. It’s a clever Andrew plot. No doubt he’s getting one up next door too. Indeed all along the terrace. Posters always vote Liberal. Trees Tory and the people won`t say. Some of our members have said they don`t want posters in case they get their windows broken.

Lunchtime To present prizes in the Hospice Fun Run event, though they’ve invited the Mayor to do the same. Lots of people dressed as animals. I concentrate on charming them. I think I`ve got the rabbit vote sewn up.

Then to Grimsby Town. Cunningly I arranged to sponsor the ball some months back when May 5 seemed the certain election date. Sadly they’ve seen through the ruse. “There must be an election if you’re here”. No he’s called it off. “We never see you between elections”. But I’m always here in spirit. ”Election is there?” No it was an April Fool’s day joke. At least my name appears on the TV screens and the annunciator as Ball Sponsor. That’s better than the last election when I went with Peter Wheatley (where are you now Peter?) who told them they mustn`t call me MP in an election period. “Don’t worry, we won`t”. So instead they took my name out of the programme and off the annunciator altogether. I got no credit at all for my £350. This time I might but the gate is only 3,400.

Ian Cawsey came and said his campaign is going well. No problems with fox hunters - though he hasn’t got a hunt in his constituency. Only Shona has. He’s got enormous supplies of pamphlets and no one to distribute them. He says my idea that neither of them are now key seats is wrong. They both are, but it only means visits from ministers, usually so unimportant that no-ones heard of them. It’s a waste of time calling canvassers in to meet them. “Meet the Junior Under-Secretary for Work and Misery”. “What was your name again?” Match was very boring. I counted the signs that were there when I first went in 1977 – only Young`s. Then the directors box was on the other side. I got a frosty greeting and Linda and Margaret Darley wouldn`t go because they segregated men from women in the Board Room at the interval. But they used to serve huge piles of prawns. Now no prawns, no segregation either.

And no score. Not even any interesting traffic on the river which usually provides an escape from boredom at Town`s matches. No train crashes, no air-sea rescues, no exciting football. Even the crowd began to leave early, wondering if there was anything interesting on television. So the presentation balls were all left behind. I got two. Linda has been much happier watching the Royal Wedding.

Sunday 10 April
Polls You Gov 2pt lead, MORI 7% Populus 2% NOP 3% ICM 4% Com Res 6% Average 4%. Confidence reviving.

The press has devoted so much analysis to the parties, the policies, the polls, that there’s nothing left to say. How on earth are we going to sit the next three weeks out? They are, however, more optimistic about our prospects, thus dropping the only interesting thing they had: a bit of horse race tension. Wider lead in the polls. Even if we were neck and neck we’d still win. Economist says the system is at last loaded to us (after years of being loaded against) because the average Labour constituency has 6000 fewer voters than the average Tory. Liberals not stirring at l9% average. I suppose we’re bound to win. The question is by how much. Yet it never seems like that because the ground disappears beneath a candidate`s feet. We’re congenitally nervous, anxiously interpreting reactions and cast down at the first brush-off.

The leaders are already campaigning, but for we footsoldiers the real campaign begins next week. In my case Tuesday. It’s a very inefficient use of manpower (more woman power these days) sending us tramping round the streets looking for a diminishing supply of electors. Their lives have become more and more privatised so we knock on endless doors of empty houses and turn up at the diminishing number of situations wherever two or three are gathered together. Now it`s mainly schools because in factories they all drive in and out and try to run you over. Post office queues have been abolished along with most post offices.

The purpose is to wake up the electorate, attach a local face to the national campaign ie show we exist, reassert old but weakening loyalties developed by the conditioning process of growing up in labour families, industries, estates. With middle classification and Marks and Spencerisation we’re all middle-class now so the old conditioned reflexes are more difficult to stir. Stronger in Grimsby than the South, they`re weaker everywhere. It`s also to sound out peoples views on the issues, though this is a bit futile. If you’re listening or seeming to, they immediately begin the dredge round for grievances which aren`t really felt but fished up from the festering mass of petty problems which a modern society simmers in. Electors are restless sleepers, waken them and you`ve got trouble. The Tories want to turn up the volume and stir the mess. We want to focus attention away from it. Yet all of us need to know what it all is so we can either do something about it or palliate it. There’s also the continuing process of remixing the jigsaw. Understanding a constituency is like putting a jigsaw together when the pieces keep changing – people die, businesses close, and though it`s time lapse photography you’ve got to fit the new pieces in. Essentially candidates are 2000 amateur sociologists of varying IQs doing a Margaret Mead for Beginners.

A tough job but one that’s got to be done. Indeed it’s the only real interest in this election which nationally looks like an exercise in predestination and boredom. I can`t see what’s going to kick it into life? A suicide bomber hidden in Margaret Beckett`s caravan? John Prescott burns a Hull council house down?

The national campaign is a distraction from 646 local ones, all going on unheralded and unchronicled. We can waste time reading about it or watching it when it`s of no relevance to us. No damage in doing that today because there’s nothing happening, but for the rest of the time it`s a distraction from the real campaign: Grimsby`s.

Get l5 New Cartergate ready to put Joy and Shona`s assistant up. Linda finds 20 old lush rosettes and a lot of old pamphlets, including a list of people who`ll put up posters for 1979. Mostly dead. The rumour is circulating that Megan has nowhere to stay because Maureen, who was going to put her up, has broken her arm and gone south. This begins a game of pass the parcel, with me feeling we should put her up here but dreading the prospect of being nagged every breakfast by Megan and Linda both. It would be like 1983 when Shaun Stewart came to stay, and because of his posh accent we sent him round Scartho, the big houses and Tory territory. Each breakfast he would retail the disastrous reception he’d had and tell me I was going to lose big. Hannah fled in tears. So great was the misery he persuaded me to write in mid campaign to Michael Foot to tell him to resign and make way for Dennis Healey. Put it down to inexperience.

Afternoon Down to the office which Ken Wardle has opened up. He is cleaning the windows. Megan is unpacking (and staying at Maureen`s) and we carry in the computer Linda is lending us, plus the Wakefield posters and balloons, plus some pamphlets delivered to New Cartergate which turn out to be the wrong ones. I`m not allowed to take a poster to New Cartergate because it isn`t a committee room. Megan is going to have an introductory leaflet printed. Phew. She actually agrees to order some Flying Start leaflets as recommended by Ian. Even more Phew. We won`t have either until the end of the week though. Meanwhile I`ll tramp round smiling and waving.

Cleethorpes to walk along the beach. Where’s Shona? Probably mail merging. It`s a lovely day by now.

Monday 11 April
Piss Off Day. Days remaining as MP Nil, Polls You Gov 36-35 Libs 20. The day Parliament ends. The offices close at 5, and there’s no admission until after the election (just the place to leave the bodies of murdered staff. You could write a murder mystery round that – the rising smell from the office of an MP who`s not re-elected and the unwillingness of the Sgt. at Arms to open it up). We cease to be MPs, our dignity dropping away with our clothes, as we change from suits to jeans. Or at least I do. These days we still get paid, so do our staff. In 1979, my second election, pay stopped for me and Anne - then my secretary. It all compounded the election feeling of being chucked out of the plane and falling, falling, falling, hoping the parachute would open up.

1.30
Girl from the BBC rings. (They all say “it`s the BBC here”). Do I officially stop being an MP at 11.48 when Parliament was dissolved (and I felt nothing), at 3.00 when it`s proclaimed in the City (but not here) or at 5.00 when Parliament closes down? How the fuck should I know? Four and a half more hours to use Parliamentary envelopes and letterheads!

Blog

2005-04-07T13:30:00.000Z

Booze intake half a unit. Candidate`s mood: bemused. Days to go as MP: 5. Bump into Fabian Hamilton who`s been demoted from Key Marginal to Stand Alone marginal which cuts down the amount of help. He says the line is around 5000 majority. The cut is because we’re short of money. That would account for Shona’s complaint she’s not getting any support.

We’ll get zero minus in Grimsby but then I like to fight it as an independent republic with my own manifesto. The national one is usually so embarrassing it`s better not to know.

Watched PM’s QT which Howard won. Blair got tetchy. However, Howard’s getting pretty nasty, bursting every boil and a rubbing every septic sore on middle-class bums with a pleasure that looks ghoulish. Then blaming the exuding pus on us. He`s spreading the Daily Mail mentality to the nation creating a climate of paranoia about threatening gypsies, asylum seekers, yobs, hooligans, the violent progeny of the proletariat, other people`s …….., and probably queers too, though he’s got to go easy on them because there are so many behind him. Pretty revolting stuff, ghoulishly doled out. Later at his press conference, Blair normally likes showing off but lost his cool and had to be rescued by Gordon. “If I can come in for minute, Tony, here’s what the adults think.” Howard`s fangs dripped saliva. This is gong to be awful.

Pursued all day by an Iranian Professor in the lobby, plus the Lord Corbett and a couple of MPs to take my name off some EDM warning the Americans not to attack Iran. That’s just the opener because it then goes on to praise Iraq as a vibrant democracy full of faith, loving folks, and kind to women and dogs. I can`t think why I signed it in the first place. But it`s amazing how much is importance is attached to it. Delete name.

Talk to Margaret Hodge who laments that “they don’t like us” and Meg Munn who thinks they love us. Or at least her. Talk to Tam Dalyell who`s glad to be going. “Ruth Kelly wasn`t even born when I was first elected. That`s time to go.” He was elected at the same time as Jeremy Brag??? Callaghan said Sarah Burke thinks highly of you too. But I find Sarah`s swans usually turn out to be geese.

At the Campaign Group, Kelvin Hopkins estimates that the first Labour MPs to be wiped out will be the ultra Blairites who came in with smaller majorities. The tone of the party will change. We should re-launch the campaign not as a frightening faction of malcontents and timid tremblers like me: that would terrify folk, but as a discussion group. A chance to talk about the way ahead rather than have it doled out to us.

None of them liked (but few heard) Blair last night. They’ve just ceased to trust him at all, convinced that he’s wrecking the party because for him it`s just an instrument to keep power with no other use or role.

The National Executive is discussing the manifesto and Dennis Skinner is trying to take out an insane commitment to the EU, saying the Cabinet will lead the fight for the Constitution. Daft because that`s yet another reason for voting against us. It`s the less well off, the regions, and the manual workers - our people - who like Europe least. The main benefit of the referendum is that it separates the election, a verdict on the government from Europe which will be a verdict against the government. Insane then to mix them all back up and weaken ourselves by endorsing what our own people don’t want.

Blair is euro-daft. He should win the election, then go down, and out, with Europe a year later. Instead he`s announced that if others reject the Constitution he’ll still go ahead with our referendum. Tony isn`t running as scared as the rest of the Blairites but it could be his usual confidence that he can get away with anything, anytime. I’m already beginning to retract my admiration of last night.

Divisions are still going on on the Parliamentary production line with a Bill an hour as the House empties, the numbers fall, and MPs drift away. The leaders have fled already, fighting a campaign up and down the country while keeping us here to defend legislation they weren`t bothered enough to pass before the scuttle.

The basic election themes are clear. We’re saying we’ve done well. The Tories will fuck it up. The Tories are saying we’ve increased taxes and fucked everything up ourselves. Endless repetition of that is going to get dead boring. As well as benefiting the Liberals.

Evening

Phone George Jones, who was on the Layfield Committee, to get my head straight on local taxation. He says Layfield went for local income tax which wouldn’t be difficult now with computers, plus the rates, plus business rates. All that would go to the local authority. They considered purchase tax, too, but rejected it. The aim was to spread the load, cut the block grant and not place too much weight on any one part. Council Tax would have to be reformed still, but could be reduced. Property would continue to pay. Contributions would be more closely geared to ability to pay. That’s what we should go for, though an election isn`t the time to be arguing for it. Put it on the website. The electronic equivalent of speaking in the Chamber.

This Parliament isn`t ending so much as falling apart as people go home, leaving the government to get its own mess through. No one will come next week for the final end on Monday. Dead on arrival. Turn the Fun Factory over to the tourists. Rent out the offices. Provide cheap food and souvenirs. Let them sun on the Terrace.

My heart’s back in Grimsby, my heart is not here, Oh to be in Grimsby now that April’s here, and whoever wakes in Grimsby finds some morning, unaware, another bloody pile of pamphlets. Approached by an organisation which wants £75 to audit the carbon emissions from my campaign. Then at the end they’ll add them up and plant enough trees to replace it. Farts not counted.

Blog update

2005-04-06T16:58:00.000Z

Monday 4 April
Was to be E day in the undeclared election. The Pope has turned it into Buggeration Day. Our street is blocked off, no access without proof of residence and identity, and cars towed away from 6-30 am to make way for Vespers. Pray no one else dies - Bush? Chirac? New President of Ukraine (how low can Tony go?). Or we’ll never get this election - nor Charles his wedding – because Tony`d rather attend events. We’ll have to blank off 5 May as an election souvenir as Charles had to change the date on his mugs, plates and souvenir tea cloths.

Parliament burbles on with nothings - Welsh Ombudsman - Welsh Affairs - wasting time which they’ll regret later in the week, if we need an all-night sitting to wash up.

Off to see my latest grandchild – Kiri`s little girl (Francesca). Number eight grandchild and the third to benefit from Gordon’s £250 Trust Fund which has boosted productivity. Is it possible to sell grandchildren but keep the money?

Megan rings horrified. Just got the papers for Agents which Jeremy should have posted to her earlier. We can`t use any of our photographs because they need everyone’s permission. “Balls”. We`ve no way of getting it. She thinks we might get away with the ones on the, not yet completed, Householder. Not the others. Yet another excuse for cancelling my introductory leaflet.

6pm To Tony Benn’s 80th birthday party in the British Library whose archive on politics is probably smaller than his - and certainly lower on video and tape. I ask him if the story of him taking a camera to Harold’s last Cabinet, being told “put it away, Tony” and doing so is true. He can`t remember. Some nice stories like the Loyalist Belfast taxi driver saying “I have to say this for Gerry Adams. He’s stuck to his guns”.

John Sergeant tells me he thinks the tactic of having the public shout at Blair is a good one. It shows he listens and is human. I think not so. The public reaction is “that crafty bugger can talk his way out of anything”. Sergeant`s done the Grimsby Auditorium on his book tour. It was half empty. Normally he says that kind of function “is very good, attracts hundreds and is a nice little earner”. Why did Alistair give it up?

To meet Jonathan Hunt who’s arrived today to be the NZ High Commissioner. Linda has been and tidied the house. Jonathan’s (our son) going to drive him round this week end. “Why don’t we go in my van?” Jonathan asks. The High Commissioner shudders.

Tuesday 5 April
E Day 30 days to go. Six more days as MP. Candidate 15st 11lb (loss of 5 lbs since session started) but after haircut, and before colonic irrigation. Booze intake 2 units yesterday, 4 today. Polls: Guardian 3% lead (down from 8) NOP 3%, Populus Times 2%. But MORI in Financial Times says that among the 55% certain to vote Tories have a 5% lead. Tories on the rise Blair’s standing down, electorate more confused and less committed, the lowest lead we’ve gone into any election with and an unpredictable situation if turn-out is below 55%.

Disastrous start to the day. Find out at 8-30 that the House Mag meeting is 8-45. Put yesterday`s clothes back on and belt in to find Jamie Crathorne and Betty Boothroyd have objected to an article critical of the Chas-Camilla Show. It was put in, without his permission, while Patrick was ill. We discuss the election prospects - 40-80 majority (Gisela) 70 me. “I`m voting for Oaten” gone. “When shall we three met again in thunder lightening or in the Job Centre” and depart. Me back to the bath.

I`ve prepared an advert for a joint campaign launch with Cleethorpes. On my way back from rejuvenation at the hairdresser`s, Peter, Shona’s husband and agent, rings. “Can`t take part in a public meeting because hunting hearties will disrupt it with dogs”. “OK, we’ll not say “open to all”. Then Shona rings Jeremy to say she doesn’t now want a shared meeting. Change advert yet again.

Megan rings to say no pamphlets without her permission which rather messes up the introductory leaflet I was smuggling through. “What do you propose we do this weekend and early next week? People won`t go out without a pamphlet”. “But” she replies “you didn’t tell us you were going to be there then”. Where the fuck did she think I’d be? The South of France? Ward D3 at the hospital? We now have a phone number. Shall she sign off the Householder? No. My signature is rendered so small, like a spider dying in ink, and it will take four days to put right.

Blair goes to the Palace while I`m at the hairdressers. The TV and papers swing into election mode. Nothing new to say but higher in volume.

Three leaders appear: Howard looking nasty with a collection of geiveinces which don`t make a policy – Are you thinking what I`m thinking? – “Why didn`t you deal with all that in 18 years in power?” Charles looks chipper. Has he got acne? Tony is well made up. Like me.

Evening
PLP (postponed from yesterday). Jean Corsten reads a long undergraduate essay lamenting Jim Callaghan. Then Tony speaks. Brilliantly and movingly. So much so I was about to stand and applaud `til I realised no-one else would have taken part in my standing ovation so I`d just look silly.

The message is (i) don’t put stability at risk. (ii) This is Labour’s chance to inaugurate an era of progressive change and bed down a new settlement that lasts. (iii) We can change the mood of nastiness and create a situation in which progressive politics can flourish.

As usual he’s so brilliantly convincing I begin to feel guilty. How could I have been so critical, cynical and mistrusting? He means it. How he means it at the time. He certainly does today. At the end no questions. He dashes off. We all file out to do or die, and never know the reason why. It`s like the end of term with people all over wishing each other good luck. “See you again”, “Sorry you’re going”, “You`ll be Baroness Ballbreaker next time” etc., etc.

Jonathan Hunt comes in for his first official function: small welcome dinner by the CPA. He suggests the slogan should be “Things are Good. Don`t let the Tories ruin it”. Similar to the Blair theme of “We’re doing well. Don`t chuck it away”. The one thing we can`t say is “You never had it so good”. Yet there are so many grumbles, all exploited by the Tories that it distracts attention from Blair’s case of just look around and see how much better things are. Si Monumentum Gordon Requiris. Circumspice. Only 200 schools now do Latin. I`ll bet most of those are grammar schools So that`s no use either.

Wednesday 6 April
29 Days to go – relapse with Boredom already. You Gov (telegraph) level pegging at 36% each. Gawd

legal notice

2005-04-05T13:40:00.000Z

Due to the election 05/05/05, Austin as other MPs will no longer be an MP during the campaign but a parliamentary candidate. The site is hosted by Google, promoted by Megan Warne, 112 Cleethorpe Road, Grimsby, DN31 3HW on behalf of Ausin Mitchell, 15 New Cartergate, Grimsby, DN31 1RB.

Blog update 4th April (with the election announcement looming)

2005-04-04T14:29:00.000Z

Michael Howard hasn’t fired anyone or attacked a new group (odd because there’s truants, scroungers, the work-shy pederasts, trade unions, left wingers and lesbians to go at). Perhaps they’re being kept for one a day specials in the election. Plus no other good April Fool’s Day jokes either. Except Jamie Oliver being Tory candidate for Arundel in the Independent. No announcement of my appointment as Chief Economic Adviser to Gordon Brown or the launch of my agency for buying their homes from senior citizens bankrupted by the Council Tax.

Round to Alec’s where Frances has largely completed the introductory leaflet she and I were expressly forbidden to make. Looks good. Particularly the “Top Secret. Do Not Read” flash across it.

Out canvassing with Jeremy. First Whitby Drive/Beverley Rd area. A lady lugging her shopping home tells me she began work at Smethursts on Ladysmith Rd, making what they then called Fish Sticks - which Bird`s Eye later marketed as Fish Fingers. She thinks they should use the closed sites on Ladysmith for housing.

Reverently pass the home of the wicked Mo Mendal who used to go along to every civic function with a big bag which he packed with sandwiches, sausage rolls etc. More an elephant bag than a doggy bag. In 1983 he smashed the windscreen of our former Party Secretary, Paul Genney`s, loudspeaker van. Genny`d deserted to the SDP. Mo hit the van with his walking stick and claimed it had run him down. “A wicked man” Margaret Darley called him. He tried to get me to go with him to some location in Lincolnshire with a roll of newspaper bits with two tenners on the outside to bribe someone and prove they were corrupt. Sadly, I`ve forgotten who or why, but I was supposed to sit in the car and witness it. We’ll not see his like again either. But then he was a Londoner.

Churchill said that as the fog of battle cleared in 1918 “the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone rose out of the mists”. Now the council housing of Beverley and Redcar comes back into view. Not dreary. Very good. A little haven of peace where the council kept out the rough necks and the tenants were the first to rush for Right to Buy. Particularly Labour Party members. Every street a memory.

Then out to the small council estate in Springfield where I first became aware of the potency of right to buy in 1979 because everyone was saying the usual ”we’ve always been Labour but…” routine, but adding “we want to buy our house”. Now they want to keep them. One furious bloke was terrified because the re-valuation which will go on next year is going to mean a massive council tax bill. He’d rung the Tory Party to find out if he’d get their £500 and found he wouldn’t because his son lived with him. I said we’ll change the system to ability to pay before then. He wasn’t mollified and went off muttering that the poll tax had cost him £1,500 for one year “and I didn’t get any of it back”

All the residents seemed well satisfied with their housing - quiet, no kids - and no grumbles about the 0.2% fall in the living standards of the average £21,000 income. `Cos no-one was making that much. “I’ve voted Labour ever since my first vote and we’ll be doing it again”. Home cheered. And buggered. But at least the weather`s better. And I’ve seen, but not converted, some wonderful gnomes.

10-l5 Megan arrives to stay the night. Brave soul, she’s driven all the way up from Sevenoaks to pull the strings together. It’s quite a sacrifice but thank God she’s doing it. However she arrives with the news that though she’s coming round to the idea of an introductory leaflet but she thinks the one I`ve written and Frances has set out will have to become two pamphlets. My God. Go to bed.

Saturday 2 April
Surgery, which Megan says I’ll have to stop doing once the election is declared, is very busy. Out at 11.15 for a photo protesting at the fact that the Library wont allow an anti European discussion group to meet. There is Jo White with a big sign against the EU Constitution. But there too is Andrew De Freitas, Council Leader, who I thought must have imposed the ban, defending freedom of speech. He edged nervously away from the poster. Good on him. He expresses his delight at the fact that I`ve accepted the Liberal policy of a local income tax as the best replacement of the Council Tax. Reluctantly I agree because – dammit - he’s right. I wrote to Prezza in 1997 to say we should reform the poll tax quick - more bands more progressive, more direct financing. As usual he took no notice. A local income tax would be a bit messy but a locally determined element in income tax would work, though government is unlikely to let property escape. If only because it can`t migrate to a tax haven. It`s a mess but we`d better do something before the re-valuation crucifies us as it did Mrs T. Nick Raynsford complacently argues that it won`t have much effect. From bright hope Nick’s gone useless.

Grimsby Hospital Radio with Linda. She calls me a “stupid old sod” on air and insists that she’s been distributing DeFreitas leaflets. Can`t shut her up on air or even strangle her before she loses the entire vote in the hospital. People will take it literally, as Alec Bovill says they would do in my anti-Liberal leaflet. Which is cancelled. Despite the smashing picture of Gladstone. Though who’ll know who he is. I think the Liberals only won Grimsby once, in 1906, and the member soon resigned.

Drive to Yorkshire and cycle out to see the lammy-bammy-pammies. Too late. Most of them are sturdy teenagers now and impervious to my hopes they’ll pretend to get Foot and Mouth and delay the election. Or is it cows that get F&M? As I sweat up the road the farmer stops his tractor. “Tha’d better get a motor on yon bike”. At the Steep Lane Baptist Chapel all the flag stones have been painted SLB. They were all stolen at the same time as mine. “They’re daft” said the caretaker. “they’ll just steel `em again and turn `em over. They’ve tekken all t’walls up yonder”. Hope Christine McCafferty has a policy for this. Don’t Flag in your Support for Labour.

Sunday 3 April.
The Pope is Dead, Sunday Telegraph says. The rest have more flowery/solemn/religious headlines. The old conservative has done our young one a favour by dying now. Had the TV spectacular gone on longer, Tony would have had to postpone calling the election. As it is, campaigning is called off for a day. Perhaps I’d better not write any pamphlets today. No worries. There’s no money to print them in any case.
Afternoon Set off for London - by car - to repatriate our rubbish when we’re locked out of Parliament. This week should end this Purposeless Parliament. We fell into it backwards because Tony’s no good at elections. We had no programme. So Tony made it up as he went along and it certainly wasn’t ours. We split over all sorts of lunacies, from Iraq to Foundation Hospitals, none of which did us any good. The impetus of 1997 disintegrated into irrelevance, incoherence and idiocy as we milled around. What a waste of time, majority and goodwill. Never mind. It’ll all dissolve like a mirage once the campaign begins. The scene will shift to Grimsby and 650 other places and reality will take over. Pray heaven we manage to avoid repeating the same mistake.

En route Shona phones. She’s not going to Westminster this week but staying in the constituency to do mail merges and write letters to people, particularly anyone thinking of voting Liberal because the party’s been useless in sending her any literature or help. I castigate her for this very un-New Labour attitude. Such disloyalty. Could even bring her voting record down from 110%. Besides she’ll not be there to vote on the crucial Merthyr Tydvil street paving Bill. Shona suggests we have a joint adoption meeting and doesn’t mind it in Grimsby Town Hall. I explain that I can`t do anything jointly with someone in favour of Europe. She likes Belgian chocolate and is suspect.

Newsflash. Tony is to go to Westminster Cathedral tomorrow afternoon and will delay the announcement of the election in respect for the Pope (who surprisingly he hasn’t called the People’s Pope). To when? If to next Monday why am I sat here in what’s by now a three mile tailback? Linda rings Hannah and Ben rings the Sun. It’ll be tomorrow. The delay is to tomorrow afternoon.

Newsflash. That’s wrong? Downing St has “announced” that he’s not going to the Palace tomorrow. He’s going on Tuesday a.m. Considering it never announced anything to anyone about going anywhere at any time it’s amazing to have negative announcements now. Next week they’ll be announcing that he’s not going to Bratislava. Or Grimsby. Which is as well. I’m not sure we want him.

more news from Grimsby

2005-04-01T11:28:00.000Z

Thursday 31 March
First to the office. Alec comes with another l000 pamphlets. We’re really getting through them. Yesterday`s threat has materialised. The Grimsby Telegraph did run the “Mitchell wants to evict you” story last Thursday. Compose a reply saying it was bad journalism by someone whose Aggression Quotiant is higher than their Intellegence . Quotiant and you’d never get such appalling journalism on the Grimsby Telegraph. This could be my De Freitas moment (the clanger dropped by the Liberal leader in trying to get out of a parking fine which filled the letters page for days).

Joy says the mail has started to roll in. Telegraph rings and I give my point of view without even inferring that the journalist who wrote it is the mistress of two Tory MPs and runs a side line importing asylum seekers and drugs. Usually on Sunday. “But I’m sure she’s a lovely person and very kind to her cats” I explain, to give a balanced point of view.

Then canvassing. Two philosophical propositions emerge from today’s streetwalking experience (to be put in the canvassing heritage museum on the tomb of the unknown canvasser in 2015). First middle-class letterboxes are more open and easier to post through than working class. Positively deep throat, in fact. With the households it’s the other way round. People come out and chat or peer through the window but the middle-class pretend to be dead. Except for one bloke this afternoon who came to the front window to tear up my pamphlet so I could watch him doing so.

Secondly I`ve no idea how real people live. I`ve never lived a normal life - at least not since I left school when mothers didn’t go out to work (mine did), fathers were home from the mill l00yards away by five, and kids by 4-30 so they all sat down for tea. Sometimes even a knife and fork tea. Since then I`ve not had one element of normality or regular routine.

I was amazed how many people are at home in working-class areas, including teenage kids, and particularly oldies, how few in the middle-class new estates where there are cars parked in the drive but no lights on, no TV, and apparently no life extent. Where are they? Shift working? Longer hours? And where are the wives? We always assumed on Calendar in the sixties that Yorkshire was home for its tea by six and ate it watching us. Not now.

Shouldn’t be philosophising on canvassing because we weren`t doing any. Merely shoving our number one pre-election leaflet through letter boxes and hoping people would come out to talk. Which a few did, though it`s difficult to guage a mood. No great grumbles and no hostility. No great enthusiasm and little interest. Nothing. Perhaps they won`t think about it until the election begins to bomb them with arguments sedimenting into a position. Perhaps they're not interested. If the first, we're OK. The second and we have a problem Houston. Sorry Old Queen St (the young one having gone to Brussels where the soft-faced men who`ve done well out of Europe go to die. And lie. In state). But we’re not canvassing because we’ve no Reading Cards, no system of voter identification to check who`s voted on the day against their declared intentions in the canvas. Reason One is that we don`t now have the manpower to do a real canvas and collate the results.

This is now done on the phone. Not by us but Shona is a Stackhanovite phoner. Perhaps she tells them they’ve won first prize of a week’s holiday in Cleethorpes (or a second of two). We don’t ask because we’ve no use for the information. Funny paradox. Can`t canvas because not enough people to do it. Yet nothing to do with the people we’ve got, except send them tramping the streets looking for a diminishing supply of people.

It’s a ritual and undignified, not an efficient part of the Constitution. But we can`t make it useful either in Grimsby because we haven`t got the pamphlets to shove through the doors. That’s why we need the introductory pamphlet Megan won`t allow us to have. She wants a series of one-offs. That will mean a small part of the constituency get five bits of paper while most of it gets none. Except the freepost.
Morning. To Willows Chatterbox Club which stops chattering as I arrive. Nice, friendly, reception on the whole, except for the fact that they`ve all heard I want to turn them out of their houses. “Austin’s gone off the rails again” says Noreen Turgoose. One bloke tells me I`m rubbish. “Never done anything for Grimsby. You’re useless” and storms out. “Odd man” they console me. Mobile phone rings (the Telegraph). “Is it the House of Lords, Austin?” says Noreen.

Ring granddaughter, Maisie, who`s just back from Germany where a wheel fell off their German car. Vorsprung Durch Mitchell. “What did you do?” “Lots”. “Oh, lovely. Lots of what?” “Stuff”. “If only I`d used the same technique with the Yorkshire Post.

Afternoon
Farebrother St. “Why is the main man out on his own? Haven`t you got anyone to help you?” says the first bloke who also complains that he’s paying more tax, immigrants are getting too much from Social Security, and that they get given cars which they drive without insurance. On the way back he offers us a cup of tea.

This is a Liberal Ward – Park - elects three Liberals, including the Leader, but Jeremy insists it’s “really Labour”. Problem is when Libs dig in it`s difficult to dig them out like termites. Not that the Ward has got much benefit from it. The housing round Peakes Parkway is atrocious. Some of it burned out, windows smashed, rubble strewn, and residents complaining they’ve got no compensation because the council has no money. Last election a shouting, bearded, Liberal bawled me out here because the council had made such a mess. Unfair because I was the one who got the objectors a House of Commons` hearing. Though that didn’t stop the road. Or the bearded Liberal.

Then to Willows with Jane King to a private part of the estate. Rather duller. Except for a lady who’s furious because she has to pay a third f her pension on Council Tax but we’re giving £200 to help them ………. it to people who don’t pay it. Like beneficiaries. I tell her she’s wrong. But I’m not sure. “Well why don’t you find out?” Home. Stiff-legged and frozen. Just like coming back from a day’s hiking. Can`t be age can it? No! Just adjusting to my new itinerant, outdoor lifestyle.

Friday 1 April
I`ve decided not to fight Grimsby, but to accept Jack Straw`s kind offer to be High Commissioner to Zimbabwe with a seat in the Lords as Baron Bulawayo.

2005-03-31T13:47:00.000Z

Leaking Boot

2005-03-31T13:46:00.000Z

Tory Poster

Blog update

2005-03-31T10:44:00.000Z

Are you thinking what we’re thinking (AYTWIT) is marvellous subliminal dog whistle stuff. We couldn’t use in the Labour Party. We’re too divided. “Blair is the greatest leader since Orator Hunt” - AYTWIT back comes not muttered assent but cries of “is `ee fuck” as well as “Oo’s Orator `Unt” and “No comment until I get the email telling me what to say”. But for right wing populists its marvellous. “What’s wrong with chopping down a few speed cameras” (AYTWIT) or “What’s wrong with shooting a few drug-crazed homosexuals who probably want to rape our Yorkshire terriers” (AYTWIT). Why should terrorists who blow themselves up in suicide bombings be treated on the NHS – AYTWIT - or even “What’s wrong with arresting and torturing a few potential terrorists if they carry round the name and address of the Prime Minister, probably to blow him up”. No, sorry, that’s one of ours.

Tuesday 29 March
Start of the non-campaigning part of the non election period. We depart for Grimsby and arrive at the same time as a huge pile of mail sent by post, plus another pile I’ve brought. Joyce and Pat eye it with despair and begin to sob quietly. All that and typing pamphlets, sending out election mail, writing thousands of letters to say I don`t want to turn pensioners out of their homes and I`m not in the market for buying them, and coping with me nervously twitching seems to frighten them. “We`re out of money in the office account”. I am in every account. Megan is saying I’ll have to make a contribution to the party to get it going. Pat thinks I should put money into the office account. The Inland Revenue have designs on a £3,900 advance tax on articles for the Yorkshire Post I wont be writing because they’ve fired me, and the Refreshment Department wants a few hundred. In the eighteenth century I’d have had to buy a Grimsby seat from Lord Yarborough (Whig). These days it`s too expensive. There are too many people to pay.

Stay in the office finishing pamphlets, writing letters and blogging – all to postpone the evil hour of meeting the people. I used to hate electioneering and canvassing. You’ve got to inflate yourself, puff up, then impose yourself on people with a false jollity which is nerve wracking as well as exhausting. One rebuff and it was down in the dumps for hours.

Last time I liked it more, partly because as party numbers shrink I was more on my own getting back in touch with real people. Now I’m positively looking forward to it. Light outdoor work. Plenty of exercise. Meet interesting people who’ll take you down a peg or three. Perhaps it`s mainly the exercise and the prospect of losing weight. But it is nice reconnecting with the real world and its broad bottomed but vague feelings about the things that make we Pols so excited
Afternoon Out with Cllr Muriel and husband PCJ. At the last council elections a voter told me Muriel and I were both too old and should step down because we’re not street-wise and don’t know the scene, the drugs, or what the kids are up to. But it’s the job of politicians to be idealists and that means naïve. We canvass the Marsh. Not many people in so no chance encounters and chats, prompting Muriel to say I should knock on every sixth door and talk to people. Tried it twice, mercifully no-one came. The few people I did bump into all raised problems duly taken down in my new black note book. One problem per street. Ceilings down, heaters not working, repairs not done. The Housing Department has taken a year off to fight the fight for privatisation. One lady - 93 - who’d just come out of hospital to find her house burgled and vandalised asked me to get her a postal vote. “I’ve been voting for you for fifty years”.

We later shift to Lord St rather than the Freeman Street Market which Muriel wanted me to go to. Chris Dixon - housebound with arthritis - gives me a harangue on the uselessness of Ruth Kelly and the stupidity of rejecting the Tomlinson Report. Sunny evening. Is this an augury of better weather to come? Canvassing is only good when its sunny and people are out in the street. Everything`s so privatised now, you`re intruding on the real campaign. Which they watch on telly and you interrupt by dragging them to the door.

Angry phone call from agent Megan. “I’m going to say this once only and no more. So listen”. She’s furious because I`ve tried to smuggle an introductory leaflet through by getting Frances Bovill to do it. She’s pretty furious. “Like dealing with a dyslexic” she says. An unruly class is a better image. But one that’s two hundred miles away.

Wednesday 30 March To office. More pamphlets for pensioners, kids, mums and on health service. Then round to Frances to get more photos onto the Introductory Leaflet plus another introductory letter Megan wants. Then to Nunsthorpe Community Centre where the churches have a regular drop-in session. Tea and lunch. The council has given the Community Centre to neighbourhood groups - in fact to a dominant person in each. Norma Lincoln has taken over Nunsthorpe but with no money and a chicken and egg situation. Unless she can do it up she can`t hire it out. Nice crowd. One old lady says if the Tories get back she`ll emigrate to New Zealand. Others politely enquire if I’m standing down or how long have you been MP?. The Credit Union has a branch there. For £l00 loan (you have to save to get it) their charge is £8 whereas the back street boys charge £80. But they’re still sort of customers. Good Labour Party turn-out but then they introduce me to a difficult asylum case - a lad from Cote D’Ivoire who`s washing the dishes. He faces cut off of support from NASS. No lawyer in Grimsby will now take up asylum cases and Pat is getting fed up because it`s so difficult to get anywhere with them its dispiriting. After lunch out with Linda to deliver our not quite introductory leaflet to Edge Ave. The party don’t like me going out canvassing on my own because it looks pathetic. But they can`t send anyone out with me. Catch 22. Linda came and we froze to death because yesterday`s glimmering has guttered. Lady crosses the road to denounce me. “You want us all to be forced to sell our houses”. “Did you read that in the Yorkshire Post?” “I never read that rag.” Was it the Grimsby Telegraph? My God was it! Ring up Pat and ask her to find out. Now I`ll have to contradict her. We’ll fight it in the homes, we’ll fight it in the sheltered accommodation, we’ll fight it at Age Concern. We will never force old people to sell their homes. It`s just that they think I will. Another customer storms up. “You lost me my council house - you and that bitch in there”. Lady comes out and says “Don’t take any notice of him, he’s barmy”. He storms off. Into his council house. I move on. “Bit late aren`t you? We’ve had two leaflets from De Freitas”.

One contemplative character, smoking his pipe by the gateway, has removed all the animals, deer and gnomes that filled his garden at the last election. “Where’ve they all gone?” “Oh I don’t bring them out until summer”. Except for a horse and a five foot boy with the leaking boot from Cleethorpes. “They’re too heavy to steal. Besides, I`ve got a CCTV on them”. Gives me faith. We should buy that concrete cow I wanted to put in our front garden. No one could possibly steal it. Round Bargate they’ll be concentrating too much effort on smashing car windows in Pelham Road where we park ours. Linda’s worked out that someone just rides past on the pavement and smashes the windows as he passes. Residents are furious because the police never come. So they’ve taken to parking their cars on the pavement and on yellow lines, confident the police won`t stop them either.

We do Edge Avenue. It`s so cold. Canvassing’s miserable when it`s like this, the pamphlets won`t fold, the letter boxes all have furry gobs like an alcoholic’s bum and there are far more signs: “Killer Dog Lives Here” “Wild cat Beware” or “Neighbourhood Watch says bugger off”. Everywhere`s more unwelcoming than it was. Perhaps it`s God’s judgement on Tony It’ll be snowing by Polling Day.

I don’t have the guts to go out by myself and do another couple of streets, like Whitby Drive in honour of Margaret Darley (who must have died a dozen years ago). In every street there’s the memory of a dead party member.

Return home to a phone call from still furious Megan. “Stay away from Frances. She and I will decide what’s to be done. Why have you altered everything again?” Turns out it`s not my beloved introductory leaflet (though she doesn’t want that because she says it will take hours to print so many photos) but my attempt to change the photo on her introductory letter. “Perhaps we should have the introductory leaflet done by a printer” I venture. She`s too weary to reject it out of hand and even promises a word with the printers. In 2006. Not many leaflets distributed. No houses canvassed. Frozen. Whacked. And the bloody election hasn’t even begun yet. But at least Radio 4 and the Guardian are fading into irrelevance; a distant half-heard chatter that`s nowt to do wi` owt.

Blog update

2005-03-31T09:46:00.000Z

Monday 21 March
Franklin College students arrive for a tour of Parliament followed by a question and answer session. This goes on for ages, they`re so keen. Toughest questions are those like “When are you going to retire?” or “How can you interest young people in politics when you`re geriatric?”

Young people are idealistic and older politicians cynical so they have different perspectives. We go for the practical, they for the perfect. You wouldn`t be in politics if you weren`t an idealist but parties are the basis for the older generation. They`re bitch goddesses and constant campaigners but you couldn`t organize government without them. However they`re unattractive to younger people who`ve got better things to do with their lives and time. They`re more interested in causes, usually the idealistic ones parties dilute to general purposes. Parties advance their section of society and party politics are a Sysiphean task where young people want quicker results.

Yet they`ve always been less interested in politics, less likely to vote, and less informed. They tend to tie into a party political allegiance when they marry, have kids and a mortgage and are as miserable as the rest of us. Thus it ever was and probably will be.

Evening.
Gordon Brown gives a powerful statement of the economic case for the government to the PLP which cheers people up. Except for Denis Skinner, who`s been touring marginals and come to the conclusion that the party members listen to all the good stuff we`ve done but then start asking questions about Iraq and nothing else. It`s not going to be as easy as it looks, says he.

Tuesday 22 March
Jitteryness is spreading. Long chat with two New Labour kids who`re very worried and whistling in the wind. One complains that after devoted loyalty and voting there`s been no reward. Next time will be different and more rebellious. Bet it won`t. Once a creep always a creep. No-one who wants a career should seek it in politics. It`s a lottery run by a bitch called party. The Mayor comes on a Parliamentary visit and tells me that the Auditorium, where Cleethorpes and Grimsby votes are both counted, has been let out for Thursday 5 May. Now we`ve not only no organisation but nowhere to count the votes either. All we need now is Foot and Mouth.

Thought of my answer to the clever Tory “Are you thinking what we`re thinking” slogan. Then you`re a dirty-minded bugger.

Wednesday 23rd March
More election preparations for the Great Undeclared. There`ll be no time to get out on the streets and meet the voters if preparations go on expanding at this rate. Householder pamphlet is nearing completion but cant be finalised until we have a Campaign Headquarters phone. That`s proving a bit difficult. We don’t yet have a Campaign Headquarters or a phone number to go in it. We’re to take over the GMB offices on Cleethorpe Road, but they won`t let us take over either of their two telephone numbers. To install a new line takes (BT say) 20 days. They can`t give us a number until two days after it`s installed. NTL should be more efficient but take 25 days. Speed of service and competition was supposed to be the reason for privatising the telephones. They’ve not yet managed to get efficiency up to Soviet levels. We’ll have to get a mobile.

Staff are being briefed in seminars by the Party on campaigning (which makes them censorious of my idiosyncrasies) and by the Commons on the new rules (which makes them terrified they’ll all be arrested and lose their jobs and pay). This in turn makes them useless and even more censorious. They won`t touch anything to do with the election or the party for fear of imminent arrest. God knows what they`re going to do for the next five weeks. Except criticise us. Everyone is terrified but the vision of Electoral Commission Officer for Labour checking on our accounts is ludicrous. Do we have any? – I remember the year the Co-op Bank sent all our bank statements to the SDP candidate who promptly began a prosecution for overspending. So is the prospect of Sergeant at Arms agents in tights and shoes with silver buckles prowling round Grimsby. They`d be picked up as poofters and dumped in the harbour.

At the Key Seats Seminar for MPs they were told to get their neighbouring Labour MPs in to help. The instructor said “Shona may not want to do taht. Sorry about that Shona”. Somehow I`m not regarded as reliably New Labour. When Michael Brown held the Cleethorpes seat we used to say the area benefited from having one government and one opposition MP. With Shona it`s still the same.

Afternoon a pushy girl rings up from the YP claiming that I`ve told pensioners to sell their houses and move to smaller ones. I always think too slowly on these occasions. It emerges I`ve answered a questionnaire by saying that I agree with the Layfield Committee recommendations of the 70s and that the costs of local government should either be paid that way or by direct grant. However, I also warned them, helpfully, no government would let property escape tax simply because, unlike people and businesses, it can`t move abroad. So the problem of pensioners living in high cost houses will remain unless they move. Miss Schiklegruber doesn’t understand that I agree that ability to pay should be the criterion and the comments on property taxation are merely obiter dicta, as they say in Harrogate. She pushes the argument in an ad hominem direction. “How long have you lived in your house?” Yonks. “How many bedrooms does it have?” Too many to count and you’re not getting into any of them. Next day a hatchet job duly appears. She’s put the argument I wasn’t making to a series of MPs and pensioners` reps. and got shock horror reactions.

Either the election is closer than I thought, or the YP wants to get revenge for being satirised on austinmitchell.org. I write a reply complaining that their journalism has fallen off since I left. Will they print it? Decide to put it on austinmitchell.org. Perhaps I should put all the rejected drafts for pamphlets on there too.

Thursday 26 March
43 days to go. Including this. Daily Telegraph You Gov poll puts us only two points ahead, though Anthony King says it`s enough to win by 70. Dolly’s great meeting to revive GRAFT brings in a pile of claims for Icelandic compensation which now have to be re-submitted.

Then to hospital to help take Easter Eggs to the Children`s Ward. A brilliant activity for a candidate but, arriving late, I meet the organiser coming out. He says “They’re dressed as rabbits. You’ll catch them up.” Dash in and round. “Have you seen two rabbits?” No one has. “Have two rabbits gone up to the children’s ward?” All look at me as if I`m mad. Retire home defeated.

Finally to Scunthorpe to speak against council house privatisation to a packed audience of ten (with four speakers) for John Ellis. He was my Whip when I was first elected and showed me over the Commons, taking me to places I`ve never seen since. John’s a genuine socialist. When he was beaten in 1979 his stoic comment was “I`m a socialist”. The best of blokes.

Friday and Saturday 27 and 28 March
Spend the days catching up with the mail. I doubt if the piles will be cleared before the election begins. Plus writing pamphlets on education, health, children, which disappear into space when faxed to Megan and Jeremy and never come back. Probably the same as the reaction they’ll get if they ever materialise into print.

Michael Howard decides that Howard Flight can`t be a Tory candidate for blabbing on the cuts to come. Overkill. Howard’s a nice bloke, however loose his canon. At this rate Michael Howard can rebuild the Tories by a candidate a day. Tony’s Gofars are doubtless watching and learning. Using the same techniques could purify the Labour Party and save Tony a lot of embarrassment and difficulty in having to drag an old guard PLP behind him. Fortunately there isn’t time for him to do this before the election.

Monday 28 March
Despite three days of work I`ve neither cleared the backlog of correspondence nor written all the pamphlets we still can`t afford to print. Yet the first day of non-campaigning campaigning begins tomorrow. How on earth am I going to get out on the streets and meet the people if all my time is filled sitting in the office writing answers to the emails pouring in, writing the Blog and trying to answer letters which should have been dealt with months ago? Gibbon wasn’t too busy writing the Decline and Fall to visit Rome. Will Grimsby get the same favour?

2005-03-23T12:30:00.000Z

Austin

Blog Update

2005-03-23T11:52:00.000Z

Wednesday 16 March
It’s a Gordon not a Tony Budget. Enough in it not to win the election because all the pensioners will have their calculators out and the Tories are offering more dosh, but to make a good fist for those groups we should help.
Elections are now auctions. Yet they’ve always been that. So it`s just that the bids are now in cash and more immediate. Besides, who cares? Provided we make the best bid. Trouble is we’ve all written our leaflets, and I for one am now going to be driven mad by trying to change anything in the text I`ve put into the immovable template which is strangling me and the entire Party.

Thursday l7 March
Correction. I have to stick to it. Jeremy, Linda and Pat have all successively given up defeated. They`ve passed it on to a poor volunteer. She`s wrestling with it. Now she tells me all the texts are too long. She’ll have to cut them down by a third. Good Grief. Nothing left to say.

This crisis came up at l-15. Along with it a request from the Icelandic Embassy that I put down an Early Day Motion to counter a daft one accusing them of environmental vandalism. Plus a request from the select committee for a press release for my fishing report. Plus belting to the station to get a train at three. I made it sweating and panting. To find the train so full we had to stand all the way to Peterborough to the accompaniment of phone calls from her telling me more of what they wouldn`t let her fit in. The Labour Party has designed a monster which strangles the Party. I`ll never use their printing firm again. And as it turns out its only £400 cheaper than a local printer. He`d allow us to save a lot of time and even more of our sanity.

Friday 18 March
After being declined access to Sure Start centres to take photos for the leaflets I’m now deluged with invitations (two today) to visit them. Indeed to open one. Went to the College for a good question and answer suggestion with students and staff. It turned out to be more of a lynching and I didn’t do very well. However it shows the problem we’re going to face, Labour’s introduced Education Maintenance Grants. No praise forthcoming. Just a lot of grumbles about students drawing them who don’t turn up, and from those on the margin who’ve been refused them. No recipient speaks out. No-one praises the idea. Others complain that the Colleges grants are being cut. I reply it`s got more money than ever. Why can`t Jamie Oliver come and look at their meals? What am I going to do about it? Not eat them? The rafters wont be ringing with cries of gratitude this election.

Evening to the General Management Committee. Next problem. More to do than ever but fewer party members to do it. Labour`s down to about 280,000 members nationally so it`ll be like Beau Geste`s forte. Bodies propped up on the ramparts and the survivors running round firing their rifles. They`re not exactly pulsing with get up and go. One member urges me to write to the PM objecting to the negative nature of our campaign. We are so busy responding to the populist grievances that we`ve nothing of our own to say. The Tories are grave digging for living dead issues and they`re stitching them together into a policy (or a shroud).

I try and answer questions and Megan takes over to tell them there’ll be no introductory pamphlet (I presume). A mistake. Nothing motivates the troops better than having something to do. Like thrusting a pamphlet into reluctant hands for them to put in the bin. That`s involvement. She later comes back saying no one will be doing anything over Easter. Because I hadn`t told them I would. Splutter. Mutter. That`s a usual party tactic. Transfer the balme.

After speaking I disappear to the Town Hall meeting organised by the Democracy Movement on the Euro Constitution. Small congregation. Good sermons. Particularly from the Chairman of the Liberal Party (no not the Lib Dems. I made that mistake when I suggested he should get himself a glass case). He`s from the Liberal Liberals, heirs to Gladstone. From whom he appears to have taken his entire economic policy. No attacks on Blair. Perhaps they`re trying to be polite to me.

Saturday 19 March
Surgery packed with complicated cases which I suppose people want to get in before I cease to be MP. Then to meet Megan and PCJ. The pictures must have disappeared into Cyberspace. They’ve been sent twice but no indication they’ve arrived anywhere.

I hope they’ve not migrated to a pornography site somewhere. Megan is adamant there’ll be no introductory leaflet. Passing the blame again she says it`s my fault because I should have done an annual report. Like Shona. “I don`t do annual reports. Just puff-pastry making summat out of nowt”. “Well you should”. However, happy for Frances Bovill to print a few thousand harangues about the Budget. I`ll call it “Labour’s Cash Bid For Your Vote. Final Offer”. She`s now abandoned her alternative of a personally addressed introductory letter. No one to address it.

There is, she keeps reminding me, no money. We`re bankrupt. We still haven`t got a number for Labour’s campaign hotline. Can Tony postpone the election he’s not called, so that we can get ready in time? October would do nicely.

Blog Update

2005-03-16T15:29:00.000Z

Saturday 12 March

Despite all the photographs taken we haven`t got the one the template demands. Full head, leaning backwards, gazing left. As I lay asleep hanging on to the beauty sleep aged candidates need, Linda wakes me at 6.45 to go down dock to take more photographs. It`s bitter cold but I have to pose in shirt sleeves to show Blairite dynamism. She can`t make either of my digital cameras work. Considerable shouting and abuse as I shiver and she takes pix of the pavement, the water, the wall. Anything but me:

40 photos before she masters it and decides that I`m better in my jacket looking rugged after all. Take the card to Jessops and get back a huge CD file of me looking bleary, eyes like piss-holes in snow, aged and half doped. But they do fit the format. Later in surgery, one customer says her son saw me down dock at seven. What on earth was I doing? Who needs CCTV in Grimsby? No secrets here. Why were you shouting at your wife?

Spend the rest of the day desperately trying to write the text. It doesn`t come easy. We`ve improved things a lot but spread it too thinly to produce gratitude. The Tories concentrate their benefits on the rich and, boy, are they big and motivating. Our people assume their better benefits come from a benign Inland Revenue. No joy. Not a word comes into my head except “You Know Labour Government Works”. That was 1966.

Sunday 13 March

Rise early to beat my tired brain against the same issue. Eventually I assemble a text and some rather limp slogans like “Let`s Go with Labour” (1964) Linda types them out. As I stand by hoping for praise, she says “Too long. Double the length you need”. “That`s boring”. “Not for women”. She`s right. But that`s all she`s going to get.

Monday 14 March

Arrive in London to find I`ve missed great fun on Thursday into Friday. People discuss it as veterans do war and treat me as a Conchie. Spend the day finishing my Fishing Report and talking to friends who think we`re blowing the election and Blair is rattled. Now we`re waiting for Browno, the Budget and whatever the crumbs he can throw (preferably prudently but otherwise fast) to the old, the kids and everyone else with their hands out. Pray God he does it. One and a half billion will see us right. Anything less and no-one will notice.

Email from Party Chairman, Jeremy (PCJ). Printers say our pix aren`t high enough quality to use. Silly bugger doesn`t realise that it`s because he hasn`t got Broadband (and wouldn`t get it). So he can`t transmit adequate quality. They also say we can`t have six pix on a space they`ve designated for one. Bastards. Force them. We might be better taking it to a local printer. Joy has been through the text to find a pile of typos. She says my claim that overall crime is down is true of the country but not of Humberside. Will we ever get the pamphlet out? And if we do will anyone read it? Perhaps we should give a CD with it.

Portcullis House Restaurant is full of MPs entertaining their constituents for the last time while others bid touching farewells to each other. “Good luck. See you in May”. Or in the case of the departing “Thank God it`s over. Now for some fun”. I`ll bet they don`t believe it. Just trying to cheer themselves up.

More MPs announce retirement. Including Boateng who`s off as High Commissioner to South Africa. Re-colonisation. If New Zealand demanded me as High Commissioner I`d go, but not to the Lords, though no-one`s likely to ask me. Grimsby`s not convenient for the young Blairites they want to park in seats. They don`t want an isolated seat too far away from London or one which makes heavy demands on their valuable thinking time. They don`t want to do the work of a real MP. Just a stool to sit on.

There`s a strange mood. Like a sinking ship, the Hood or the Titanic, as the back end goes under, survivors rush to the front to jump off or cluster, comforting each other as the waters rise. Sic transit Parliament. Death in the air, a touch of hysteria and a lot of chaos.

Tuesday 15 March

Despite the end of term jollity we don`t yet know when the election is. The best way to find out is to ask the doorkeepers who seem to know everything. Ministers won`t tell. Whips don`t know. Tony speaks only to the Sun. The doorkeepers say he`ll go to the Palace on the 5 of April (with or without wedding present) and we`ll be dissolved on 7 April. Then it`s hand shaking as a way of life. But pompous pontificators say announcement 7 April, House dissolved 12 April. A more decent interval. He has to allow 3 weeks for the campaign.

Anyway, there`s no turning back now, though Tony and the gang are pretending not to know, just in case Bubonic Plague or Asian `Flu strikes as Foot & Mouth did last time. Either way all the hard work and aggravation, sweating on Bills which will have to be junked, is a waste of time. Hopefully Tessa`s Gambling Bill will go (10-1 if you want to bet).

Thank God it's Friday (er..not)

2005-03-12T04:45:00.000Z

Nice Lad Giles(NLG)the Tory candidate. Public Scool chap I'd say (because of the charm-they all charm you as they cut your throat)-and all of fifteen.The Tories are cleverly combatting a geriatric Labour candidate by selecting a teenager. I met him at the great Fisherman's Statue unveiling and wished him luck-"though not that much that you win the seat"."Oh he's going to win"a cheerful blond lady beside him chimed in.I'd thought she was maybe his mother.She turned out to be the wife of the Tory canddate for Cleethorpes Martin Vickers.Giles grinned awkwardly. Linda muttered "we'd better look for the Job Centre"I never think quick enough on these occasion ,so I began to think we should never have invaded Iraq but made some innane remark about the statue.

Which is brlliant. Perhaps its not too late to get it selected as the Labour candidate.If we don't Dolly Hardie will put it up for UKIP

Friday ll March

Disastrous augury today. Instead of sweating throughout the night because I cant support the Terrorist bill the whips suggested I should go away.To Grimsby?For a few days in the Priory? Anywhere! So I came home and everyne asked "What are you doing here?Why aren't you in London? In Jessops-the camera shop I opened in July which was ram raided two weeks later so there's a lot of well equipped photographers in competittion with me around Grimsby.A chap came up and announced "I called my rabbit after you after the last election""Oh very nice Im honoured" "well its dead.It got very fat .It was enormous .I think it was f.....g the cat" "Oh" was all I could think to say."Odd chap that"said the manager.But he could be a prophet.

Dropped into Radio Humberside (my first American intern called it Radio Homicide) to buy a red nose (this year's don't fit) and was grabbed for an interview about photography (they said) which of course turned out to be why arent you in London? Stutteringly tried to explain as an e mail came in saying "Bloody Mitchell sitting on the Fence as usual.Beats me why people keep voting for him"Beats me too.But I hope they do.
Arrive home to find that Linda has managed to get into the Labour Party's PDF and produced a template wwhere you hae to fill in blanks such as "working hard for insert your constituency name here".Now what is it? and Health Heading 4 lines approx 7 words long be snappy" and "000 State what the number on the right refers to" though its on the left.But of course you cant say that in the Labour Party.

It's all about crime,anti social behaviour,the NHS,local litter more crime. Just like Giles's.Perhaps all three candidates can have a common text but just insert their own photo.Much cheaper.What on earth am I going to put in the blanks? Oh Harold Wilson wers't thou alive at this hour! But no one would know who the hell you were .

Less than 2 months to go!

2005-03-11T15:20:00.000Z

Tuesday 8th March

Agent Megan comes to House of Commons to tell me what I'm allowed in the way of literature.Hardly anything because we're so broke. I think canvassers need a little bit of paper in hand to thrust at people as they open the door. No introductory leaflet.Perhaps a personally addressed letter (though we've no one to address it)

The one reccomended by the party and already published in the Mail says "We all agree that ...Anytown...is the best place to live." Six idiots have already sent it out without replacing the "Anytown" with the name of their constituency.

Megan ruthlessly deletes my golden words on Europe "Against it-full of foreigners who want to come here to live"

"You can't say that"
"Don't mention the War" and
"You mustn't keep attacking Blair"

Bob Marshall Andrews MP saunters up as I sit there abjectly."You're being told off aren't you?" says the party's most fervently anti Tony man.

"Yes, for attacking Tony"

"Why don't you invite me to come to Grimsby and speak to your GMC?

Wednesday 9 March

We're going to have to exclude photographs from election leaflets.You can't take any these days.

No children in schools.Needs permission from all the parents.

No new police station.Cant be identified with any party.

No Sure Start nurseries.Only allow all three parties in together.

No hospital.Only do someone who's leaving and that needs their permission before they go in.

Apparently the only photographs I can use are of me.Taking them by myself is anatomically difficult and the only ones the Telegraph has are of me looking so miserable they were clearly taken for use after my defeat. The ones I've used for 20 years of me at Yorkshire TV now look slightly too young, while the one's party members offer all feature people who are now dead. Perhaps I can get someone to do a cartoon.

Thursday 10 March

Told that the deadline for photos and text for my Householder Election Address leaflet was three weeks ago. Fortunately we've now got a super-dooper new computer system where you can compose your own pamphlet with a template on a PDF document. Unfortunately you cant get access to it. Jeremy (Print Officer) tried all day yesterday.Linda tries all day today.Its a firm that's got the contract and their tech nology isnt quite up to it.

Linda rings up several times and each time gets a different explanation your browser-it isn't. It's NTL.Rubbish.You're doing it wrong.I'm not.Eventually she gets a special help desk they've had to install because hundreds all over the country are struggling trying to get through."Well we are the Labour Party"he admits. It's really a piece of new kit the party has bought in.No one can work it.Well it keeps us off the streets.One day wasted so far.

Perhaps we can do without an election address.It reminds me of my first psephological research in New Zealand when I wrote to every candidate asking for their election address back came letters saying 33 Leys Crescent Remuera etc. Happy Days

Fortunately the Tories seem better organised.Their nice young candidate has just sent a leaflet promising more police for Humberside, more public spendin,g and withdrawal from the Common Fisheries Policy.Thank God someone's doing something about it at last.Being in opposition must have taught the Tories to do the opposite of all the things they didn't do in l8 years of power.Adversity is a great teacher.Must explain that to all my pamphletless colleagues.

Pity the poor candidate

2005-03-09T18:20:00.000Z

No not me you idiot. I'm not a candidate until Tony tells the Queen he wants an election- Which may be on 7 April or of course may not, depending on how he feels and whether he thinks he's going to win.

Until then I work for Grimsby and Grimsby puts up with me.After it I stand for Grimsby and Grimsby decides whether it wants to renew the contract. So candidates dont exist before then.After it they're in purdah running round trying to put their case to people who go to desperate lengths to avoid them. As if they were lepers wandering the street.

It's a kind of limbo. The local press, in our case the Grimsby Telegraph will only publish short prepared statements which have to be balanced by the same from all the other candidates whether they be three or three hundred. No chance of extra coverage. Not even if I walk naked through the Riverhead pursued by an equally but more interestingly naked Jordan shouting "My Hero". Local radio will avoid us like the plague apart from a short and carefully controlled row on Radio Humberside. As for Regional Television no chance even if we manage to surfboard on Cleethorpes beach always assuming the tide ever comes high enough.We'll hold meetings to which no one will come.Folk will hide to avoid us, fearing MRSA as we rush towards them bearing leaflets which usually go into recycling unread and unlamented, deliver tonnes of literature through letter boxes to be devoured by hungry dogs,and knock on thousands of unopened doors trying to ignore the new signs saying "No Hawkers,no double glazing sales men, no religious preachers and Particularly No Candidates"have been recently affixed.

Local election campaigns, once the whole focus of our democracy could now be held in Afghanistan for all the interest they produce. Insofar as the Media (God Bless em) and the people (even more so) pay any attention at all to an electon campaign our lives depend on, it will be to a national campaign which will rarely rise above Michael Howard slagging off Tony Blair, Tony Blair slagging off Michael Howard, Charles Kennedy slagging off both, In Vino Veritas saying we're all rubbish and Ukippers urinating in an easterly direction. All of which will be true.In part.

April really will be the cruellest month.Which is the reason for this blog. It's the only way available for one desparate candidate, embarkng on what will be an Outward Bound course for the body and the brain, to reach you, Dear Elector, and give you his version of what he sees as the truth. I'll Blog for Grimsby, leaving the rest of the Peoples' Party to Blog for Britain.You can let us have your views and join the Bloguement by e mailing austinforgrimsby@hotmail.com
Please do so (say I with a touch of desperation a blog can't convey) Then you can stop this being a monologue.