The Cutting Edge

I carry no candle for Michael Heseltine.

He privatised more of the British economy than any other Minister, ever.

And he completed the destruction of the British coal industry.

All in all, and even granting that he opposed the Iraq War, it is no wonder that he loves the EU so much.

But he did say a sensible and important thing this morning.

He accurately pointed out that Copeland had been a "flukey" by-election result based on the unusual prominence of a single local industry.

There is ample time between now and 2020 to set straight the record of both parties on civil nuclear power.

And there are no nuclear power stations in what are hysterically being described as the Conservative target seats from Bishop Auckland to Tooting.

The boundaries of Bishop Auckland are in any case being altered significantly in what would ordinarily have been Labour's favour.

Much of the constituency, rather than purely the town, will be joining us in the new seat of Durham West and Teesdale.

But is perfectly possible, and it is therefore imperative, that all of the County Durham seats elect MPs from within the Teaching Assistants' campaign.

That campaign is itself the focus and the cutting edge of opposition to the regime that is soon to be overthrown on Durham County Council.

Pat Glass is retiring, and while Grahame Morris is a stalwart of that campaign, none of the other MPs who will be seeking re-election has given it any support whatever.

When Heseltine closed the pits after all, then he betrayed the UDM, as Mick McGahey had always predicted.

Its downfall since then has been the kind of thing that could happen only in real life.

But no one knows where its money went.

Meanwhile, a faction with more than one tie to it controls the massively dominant Labour Group on the first council that Labour ever won, a council that Labour has never lost in more than a century.

But nothing lasts forever.