A View From The Foothills
Page 34
Tuesday, 23 July
A frustrating hour and a half trying, and failing, to be called during Alistair Darling’s aviation statement. I put in a note reminding the Speaker that I was a former aviation minister, but it didn’t make any difference. Alistair’s statement was couched in the form of a consultation – the word ‘sustainable’ featured a lot – but the underlying message was that, like it or not, the south east of England is going to get more runways, more terminals and even a new airport or two – and sod the environment. Where aviation is concerned, Predict and Provide is alive and well. There was not even a nod in the direction of demand management. Cheap air travel has been elevated to a fundamental human right. Alistair kept saying that there is no alternative. But of course there is: when in doubt, DON’T. I am glad I live in the north. Life in the south-east is becoming unbearable.
Wednesday, 24 July
The stock market has been plunging all day. ‘Spare a thought for those of us who were told we had to sell our house and put the proceeds into equities,’ remarked The Man as we assembled for the parliamentary committee this afternoon. He said it with feeling. As well he might. He has been well and truly shafted. Equities have plummeted, house prices have soared. That one disastrous piece of professional advice has probably lost him more in five years than he’s earned as prime minister.
My views on new airports sparked a spirited exchange. I said, ‘During my 18 undistinguished months as aviation minister I learned two things about the aviation industry. One, that its demands are insatiable. Two, that successive governments have always given way.’ I continued, ‘There is nothing wrong with expanding regional airports, providing we insist that they are accessible by public transport, but as far as London and the south east is concerned, isn’t it time we made a stand?’
There were no takers. The Man said something about bigger and better airports being essential for the health of the economy. Doug Hoyle said that the second runway had made a big difference in Manchester. Tony Lloyd said that airports in the regions benefited from investment in the south-east.
‘You helped write the White Paper, Chris,’ offered JP, vigilant as ever for evidence of backsliding.
‘I only managed to insert one phrase,’ I said. ‘It was: “Predict and Provide didn’t work for cars. It didn’t work for housing and it won’t work for airports.”’
Liz Symons said, ‘As Minister for Trade, I’m quite worried about what Chris has said.’
Someone asserted that, if we failed to expand the south-east airports, fares might have to rise by £100 to which I responded, ‘So what? Cheap air travel is not a fundamental human right.’ At this The Man’s face assumed a pained expression. No doubt he was thinking of all those Middle Englanders who would never forgive us if they had to pay more for their fortnight in the Canaries.
‘Have you been on the cannabis again, Chris?’ inquired JP to general hilarity.
‘I can see I won’t be allowed anywhere near the transport department again,’ I said.
The Man laughed. ‘You have rather talked yourself out of that one,’ he said, adding quietly, ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty of other things.’ My ears pricked up at that. There may, after all, be a second coming.
It was a good-natured discussion, but there is a serious point: New Labour believes that Big is Beautiful.
Friday, 26 July
Sunderland
A brief telephone chat with Steve Byers. Our first contact since The Fall. He and Jan have spent a couple of weeks in Crete. He sounds calm, but subdued. Steve reckons that The Man’s enthusiasm for an attack on Iraq has cooled since Christmas. ‘I have the impression that he’s trying to talk Bush out of it.’ If only …
Tonight’s Echo billboard reads: ’621 perverts living in Sunderland’. Part of the tabloid campaign to persuade everyone that they have a paedophile living next door. For some reason the Echo is obsessed with perverts.
Tuesday, 27 August
North Ronaldsay
We are staying with Liz Forgan in her croft, having spent four days meandering up through the Western Highlands and the Orkney mainland. The Orkneys, in contrast to the rest of Britain, have enjoyed a good summer. For the first time in years the cattle fodder is being harvested in August. This evening on the beach the girls and I commenced building a Stone Age house like those at Skara Brae.
Wednesday, 28 August
Work on our Stone Age house proceeds apace. The two small Stone-Agers are hard at work. We have laid a double-width foundation of flat stones collected from the beach, Sarah has filled the gap with bucketfuls of pebbles and the result is a solid wall about two feet wide, slowly rising. At one end we have built a two-storey table topped with two great slabs of stone which I rolled along the beach. Ngoc is building a cupboard into one of the walls, Emma finding shells to decorate our table.
A day of simple pleasures. One of the happiest of my life.
Thursday, 29 August
Our house is complete. In the centre we have made a little stone hearth. On one side, by the wall, we have inserted stone slabs, sideways up to make a bed and the children have collected reeds and seaweed for bedding. And in one corner we have dug a little pond where Stone Age man would have stored his live fish and crabs until he was ready to eat them. Here we have cheated slightly. It should be lined with clay to make it waterproof. There is clay on the island, but Liz isn’t sure where. So, to save time, Ngoc adapted a plastic milk container washed up on the beach which she has cunningly concealed under a layer of stone to make it appear authentic.
Tuesday, 3 September
Sunderland
Sarah’s first day at St Anthony’s. I delivered the little nugget to Sister Aelred’s office, looking beautiful in her new uniform. I was more nervous than she was.
The Man, hotfoot from Johannesburg, has declared that we will be backing the Americans over Iraq, come what may. So much for Steve Byers’s suggestion that he’s trying to talk Bush out of it.
Thursday, 5 September
A call from M in Washington who describes the Iraq enterprise as ‘crazy to the point of being demented. I’m surprised that Blair is encouraging it.’ He says the intelligence agencies, the military and the State Department are all opposed. The CIA, he says, ‘are almost openly pissing on the whole thing’.
‘If you ask the two key questions – has Saddam got nuclear weapons and has he ever given weapons of mass destruction to terrorists? – they say there is no evidence whatever. On chemical and biological weapons, they say he has got them, but there is no evidence that he has a means of delivery.
‘If you talk to the right-wing loonies, they reply that those opposed are all wimps who need to be beaten into shape and that, in any case, the CIA failed to predict September 11 so why should we listen to them now.’
Has it got to do with oil (as Mo Mowlam asserts in today’s Guardian)? ‘No, it has more to do with Israel – most of the people pushing it are close to Sharon.’
I have been reading Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs: page 331 offers an interesting little insight into the state of the much-vaunted special relationship, even in her day. She woke up one morning to discover that (in the teeth of her strong objections) her bosom buddy Ronald Reagan had invaded Grenada. She writes:
I felt dismayed and let down by what had happened. At best the British government had been made to look impotent; at worst we looked deceitful … only the previous afternoon Geoffrey [Howe] had told the House of Commons that he had no knowledge of any American intention to intervene in Grenada. Now he and I would have to explain how it had happened that a member of the Commonwealth had been invaded by our closest ally, and more than that, we would also have to defend the United States’ reputation in the face of world-wide condemnation.
I guess we’ll have to wait until The Man produces his memoirs to find out what he really thinks of George W. Bush and friends.
Friday, 6 September
Nick Brown addressed my local party this evening. Af
terwards he came home and we talked for a couple of hours. He says relations between Gordon and The Man are ‘poisonous’ and that Cherie in particular loathes Gordon. He says there have been some big rows, one or two of which he has witnessed. So the rumours are true. This is the first time I have heard it confirmed by someone so close to one of the parties. He says the differences are part personal, part political.
In particular Gordon resents the obsession with presentation (a bit rich coming from the man who employed Charlie Whelan). He says Gordon is against an attack on Iraq and that he - Nick – would have to consider his position if we become involved in a war. Gordon, he says, is not likely to run against Tony. It would be self-indulgent and disastrous for the party. Nick also said, as others do, that despite his image as a dour obsessive, Gordon in private is good company.
Monday, 9 September
Lunch with Peter Candler, a local developer. Unemployment is at its lowest for 30 years and house prices have risen to the point where it has at last become worthwhile to do up some of our magnificent Victorian terraces which have been sliding towards dereliction for years.
Can it last? Is it all built on sand? To be sure our manufacturing base is remorselessly eroding. One after another, all along the river the old industries are closing – Vaux, Grove Cranes, Federal Mogul … The major exception is Nissan and, according to Peter, it’s only a matter of time before that goes, too. He reckons that the death of manufacturing is inevitable, part of an historic cycle which politicians are powerless to reverse. He also believes – as many do – that our ubiquitous call centres are only a passing phase. If so, we are going to be in trouble again, ten or twenty years down the line. Peter, dynamic, farsighted businessman that he is, is optimistic that something will turn up. And indeed who, ten years ago, could have predicted that we would be where we are today? I, being one of nature’s pessimists, am not so confident. I fear it is only a matter of time until the bubble bursts.
Thursday, 12 September
The war drums are beating ever louder. This afternoon George W. Bush gave an uncompromising address to the United Nations General Assembly. It was billed as an ultimatum to Iraq, but it was really an ultimatum to the UN: get behind us or else.
Friday, 13 September
This evening three hours in the company of PC Les Jordan, patrolling his beat, Doxford Park and Farringdon. PC Jordan is that rare phenomenon: a policeman on a bicycle. Everywhere, loitering teenagers, many known to Les by name and they seem to respect him. We came across a girl who was the worse for wear with drink and he phoned her parents to come and take her home. Outside Morrison’s was a crowd of underage youths clutching a slab of lager. He ordered them to pour it down the drain. Incredibly, they obeyed. We came upon another group of youths bouncing a football off the roof of a shopping parade and he threatened to confiscate the ball if they didn’t go elsewhere, which they did. He managed it all without rubbing anyone up the wrong way, always treating them with respect, which was generally reciprocated. Most of them weren’t bad kids, they just lead empty lives.
Saturday, 14 September
David and Louise Miliband came to dinner. An attractive, engaging couple. He, awesomely bright, but so far as I could see without arrogance or conceit. Despite having been parachuted into the shark-infested political waters of South Tyneside, he appears to have won over the natives and is destined for a glittering career in government.
By the election or soon after he will be in the Cabinet. He claimed not to have given any thought to becoming an MP until he allowed himself to be persuaded by The Man days before he was chosen in South Shields. If ever anyone was on an inside track, it is he. Not for him the long, unglamorous, humiliating slog around the selection circuit or the years of unrecognised toil on the Opposition front bench that was the lot of so many of our number. With one wave of The Man’s magic wand he finds himself in one of the safest seats in the country. With another wave he is in government. It would be easy for us lesser mortals to be resentful, were he not so obviously talented and infectiously likeable.
Tuesday, 17 September
To Portcullis House for a meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Part of my plan to acclimatise the boys and girls to September sittings. The great thing about conducting hearings when Parliament is not sitting is that we have everyone’s full attention. There is none of the constant nipping in and out to deal with supposedly urgent telephone messages. Also, the media tend to take more interest.
This morning we dipped our toe in the murky waters of asylum policy. Among our witnesses Sir Andrew Green from an outfit called Migrationwatch which publishes statistics suggesting that inward migration is much higher than the official figures and that anyone who gets in illegally has a nine out of ten chance of remaining. Various people have raised their eyebrows at our giving a platform to Migrationwatch, but I refuse to accept that it is not possible to have a rational discussion about immigration and asylum without being labelled racist. There is a growing political problem which we ignore at our peril and we can’t simply leave the floor to those well-meaning (and usually publicly funded) organisations who see it as their duty to poke holes in whatever measures the government comes up with without suggesting any realistic alternatives – some, indeed, do not even concede that there is a problem. As it turned out, Sir Andrew (a former ambassador with impeccable credentials) was a decent, if slightly long-winded, old cove whose presence helped offer a little balance to what might otherwise have been a one-sided discussion. Having got some facts and figures on the table my aim is to focus on how we can make the removal process (a) more efficient and (b) more humane.
Wednesday, 18 September
The session with David Blunkett went well. He looked a little pale. Not quite his usual, chipper self, but then he has been getting rather a battering of late, partly because of some of the silly things he’s been saying. He was accompanied by Bev Hughes, who exudes quiet competence. She is not given to grandstanding and retains a streak of decency essential for anyone in charge of immigration. I pressed David hard on the need to humanise the removals process – perhaps by way of a small resettlement grant. He promised to think about it, but I am not optimistic. We also pressed him on air weapons. Some signs of movement there. Is the Home Office waking up at last?
Tuesday, 24 September
To the House to hear The Man explain why we need a war with Iraq.
The chamber was packed and so was the upper gallery. I was squeezed between Anne Campbell (who is deluged with anti-war letters from all those intellectuals in Cambridge) and Jean Corston. Betty Boothroyd, resplendent in scarlet, was in pole position in the peers’ gallery and somewhere in the background, wearing his CND tie, lurked Tony Benn. The Man’s performance was flawless. He made his case calmly, without exaggeration or hyperbole. He met every argument hard, head on, and treated his critics with respect. Mostly he was heard in silence. The first rumble of discontent came about 20 minutes in when he referred to Saddam’s war with Iran in which a million people died. There were cries of ‘And we supported him.’ To which Angela Eagle, sitting in front of me, added, ‘Not only that, we sold him arms.’ The Tories looked uncomfortable as well they might for it was not ‘we’ who supported Saddam, but ‘they’. Duncan Smith kept his contribution mercifully short, well aware no doubt that too much indignation about the wickedness of Saddam in the eighties could easily backfire. Later, during questions on the statement, there was a tricky moment when The Man proclaimed that partnership with America was ‘an article of faith with me’. The Tories cheered wildly. From our side there was a stony silence. A sign of just how far out on a limb he has gone. If he’s not careful, he’ll fall over the edge.
Elfyn Llwyd, an affable Welsh Nationalist, asked the key question: will we still support the Americans if they go it alone? The Man said something which implied that we might ‘in the event of the UN’s will not being complied with’, which prompted further rumbling from our side. ‘Oh dear,’ said Jean.
‘No need to wait,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘I’ll tell you now. George Bush is intelligent, open and easy to deal with.’
‘You must see a different George Bush to us,’ interjected Doug Hoyle.
‘There is a problem,’ The Man conceded, ‘with the rhetoric coming out of the Administration. The American mindset has been changed profoundly since September 11 and that explains a lot of it.’ He went on, ‘I personally have no objection to taking out Saddam and I don’t see why the left has this problem. I’m an interventionist. I can understand where the right are coming from, but I can’t understand the left.’
‘Let me stop you there,’ I said. ‘It isn’t just the left. No one has the slightest enthusiasm for a war with Iraq.’
He went on, ‘I am bewildered by the reaction of some parts of the international community. It was always obvious that Saddam was going to offer to let the inspectors back in. The intelligence we have – and I have this from right inside the regime – is that Saddam believes he can play around with the inspectors again. Europe has to face up to some of these issues. We often call for American help and then accuse them of unilateralism. My role in relation to America is not to say, “Yes but …”, but to say, “Yes and …”’ In passing, he remarked that, unlike Afghanistan, the Americans did understand that they would have to help with rebuilding Iraq. An interesting admission.
When challenged on that point in the past, he has always claimed that the Americans were helping with reconstruction in Afghanistan.
Again I pressed the point about whether we would go in without UN backing and again The Man dodged, saying only that he was hopeful that we would get it.