Friday 3 April 2009

Still Common After All

I had begun to wonder what was taking them so long, but this morning arrived the expected letter from the House of Lords Appointments Commission. Don't call us.

No surprise there, of course: I am manifestly incapable of being a Crossbench Peer, since, regardless of who wins next year's General Election, I am extremely unlikely to be made a Government Whip (which in the Lords includes answering questions on policy) within two years of taking my preciously independent seat for life. Why, I am no longer even a member of the Labour Party, as Kamlesh Patel has presumably been continuously throughout his adult life, including when recommended to become a People's Peer.

The letter basically says, even if not in these words, that they have had a lot of applications from people like me, and that the other applicants have been more distinguished. That is perfectly possible.

So I can only assume that the next round of appointments will be replete with people from the North East, people who went to state schools, people with non-Oxbridge degrees, people born in the remaining British Overseas Territories generally and Saint Helena in particular, self-identifying mixed-race people, and people who represent a return to the days when young men inherited their fathers' seats and a few posthumous sons even took their seats at 21 (not an age for which I am in any danger of being mistaken) because they had inherited at birth.

Oh, and replete with pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, anti-war, economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots. Of course.

There are certainly people more distinguished than I in each of those categories. I will be looking out for them. So should you.

But just in case, how else are we pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, anti-war, economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative British and Commonwealth patriots to make our voice heard? Unlikely though it may sound, we may yet turn out to receive not even one of the peerages awarded any time soon! Or ever! We certainly cannot set up a party outside Parliament, since, as long-term readers will recall, the Electoral Commission will make it its business to persecute any such party out of existence.

Therefore, it looks as if we are going to have to secure the election of as many of us as possible as Independent MPs next year, and the time after that, and the time after that. Like the proper Tories, the proper Liberals and proper Labour back when there were such things, a party, properly so called, would then emerge in due season.

7 comments:

  1. I was actually offered an OBE in 2005, which was a big surprise.

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  2. You still haven't answered my question regarding what makes your candidacy so compelling that the electors of North Durham will specifically vote for you instead of against the incumbent.

    Martin Bell had his reputation and symbolic white suit. Richard Taylor had his threatened hospital. Despite countless thousands of other candidates over the years (many of which were running on very similar platforms to yours), those are the only two Independent MPs who have actually been elected as such in decades - and Bell was unable to get re-elected.

    So how are you proposing to emulate their example?

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  3. What incumbent? She's retiring. If she doesn't after all, then it will only be because, as is common knowledge round here and as she herself says in private, the people being lined up by the almost collapsed New Labour machine are hopelessly unacceptable on every conceivable level.

    I don't know when anything like my views was last offered to the electorate, but I do know that they correspond very closely to those of unmatchably well-connected people in these parts - by whom, indeed, they were largely formed - who are rightly and bitterly conscious of their own betrayal by the organisation still laughably calling itself the Labour Party.

    At least much of it also corresponds very closely to the views of the sizeable body of Independents here.

    They contact me almost daily asking me to stand. I very much doubt that several of those doing so have ever read this blog, or indeed that some of them know what a blog is. But when it comes to real campaigning on the real streets and in the real watering holes of this real constituency, their capacity is practically limitless.

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  4. Oh, and it's North-West Durham, not North.

    North in Kevan Jones. Let's just leave matters there...

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  5. Lots of semantic quibbling, but my main question remains unanswered.

    Every independent candidate who's ever stood for election has expressed views of some kind, but over the past few decades all but two have failed to get elected. What exactly makes you so exceptional that you think you deserve to become the third?

    You keep referring to this bedrock of support, but I don't believe you've actually named a single person who's prepared to stick his or her neck out and publicly declare it. Martin Bell and Richard Taylor didn't have that problem - quite the reverse!

    So who exactly are these "unmatchably well-connected people" and why are they being so shy, if you are indeed the embodiment of their views? Surely, if they're so well-connected, they'd have already started beating the drum for you? Indeed, wouldn't it very much be in their interest to do so?

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  6. Give it time. When I put up the last comment, I got half a dozen emails or phone calls in response to it.

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