Doing Something About It

Yet more cuts to hospital services in this neck of the woods. It would be fascinating to see how well or badly, according to every index, the mostly safe Labour seats occupied by people who have been Cabinet Ministers over the last 10 years have done when compared to the mostly safe Tory seats occupied by people who have served in the Shadow Cabinet since 1997. I confidently predict something like a 15-year gap in very life expectancy, just for a start.

Still, to give Hilary Armstrong her due, their might be precious little to show for her 20 years as MP, but she does at least come from the community here, and her concern is real, even if it seldom results in anything concrete. Those who keep piling up the Labour votes in the North East are about to be shown exactly what that party actually thinks of them as Hilary, John Cummings, Ronnie Campbell, Frank Cook, Bill Etherington, and possibly also Chris Mullin and David Clelland prepare to retire.

Each announcement will come far too late for what little local party organisation that there still is to be given the slightest say in the matter of choosing a successor. At best (yes, at best), the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party will impose someone who could not hold onto a seat in London last time: Stephen Twigg, Barbara Roache, Oona King, someone like that. If they turn up to anything at all in the constituency, they will be ludicrously late, having originally taken a train to Manchester Piccadilly, on the assumption that anywhere else in the North must be but a short taxi-ride from that station.

But at least as probably, the apparatchiki whom I remember running the National Union of Students, if they have ever even done anything that demanding, will be unveiled as the new MPs, with only the bother of a pretend election to be gone through.

Are you going to put up with this? I’m not.