A Good Start

I saw Pat Glass MP this morning, and I am delighted that she is to have an office in Consett as well as in Crook. May we hope for her to adopt other common sense policies? For example, nuclear power and clean coal technology. The restoration of British overall control of our defence capability. The docking of Ministers’ pay if either spending or outcomes are lower in the North East than in Scotland or the South East. Immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. No war against Iran. Total opposition to lap-dancing clubs. And many, many more.

May we hope that Pat will adopt traditional conservative and patriotic policies? For example, the restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law. Returning to preventative policing based on foot patrols. Making each offence carry a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or 15 years for life, in the context of restoring and defending civil liberties, so that convictions are once again harder to obtain and therefore more reliable. Restoration of the grammar schools, restoration of O-levels, restoration of excellent Secondary Modern schools, defence and restoration of Special Needs Education, and defence of church schools both against New Labour and against the Liberal Democrats.

A legal presumption of equal parenting, restoration of the tax allowance for fathers, and allowing paternity leave to be taken at any time in the first 18 years of the child’s life. Helping farmers and small businesses through a windfall tax on the supermarkets. Defending village services, saving shooting and fishing, repealing the hunting ban, and making Gypsies and Travellers obey the same planning laws as the rest of us. Preserving the historic regimental system, rebuilding the Royal Navy, and saving the Royal Air Force. And many, many more.

May we hope that Pat will adopt traditional social democratic policies? For example, no one’s tax-free income to fall below half national median earnings. Abolition of prescription charges, and restoration of free eye and dental treatment. Making employment rights begin on day one of employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, as promised by John Smith. Saving council housing, and bringing all council services back in house. Renationalising the utilities and the railways, and building a national network of public transport free at the point of use. And many, many more.

May we hope that Pat will advocate the coming together of all three of common sense, traditional conservatism and patriotism, and traditional social democracy, in the removal of all nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons from British soil and waters?

May we hope that Pat will give a voice to the alliance of the traditional Right and the traditional Left against the neoconservative war agenda and its assaults on liberty at home, including against any new Cold War with either or both of Russia and China? To the socially and culturally conservative, strongly patriotic tendencies within the British Left’s traditional electoral base, not least in this constituency?

To those who recognise that we cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level? And to those who refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich?

I very much hope so. I very much hope that Pat’s priorities include the Welfare State, workers’ rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, public ownership, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State, while having a no less absolute commitment to any or all of the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, and a realistic foreign policy.

I very much hope that Pat is aware of, understand, value and draws on the Radical Liberal, Tory populist, trade union, co-operative, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist (Pat is a practising Catholic), and other roots of the Labour Movement, rejecting cultural Marxism no less comprehensively than economic Marxism, and vice versa. That Pat, like Herbert Morrison, has “never seen any conflict between Labour and what are known as the middle classes”, to whom she certainly belongs and who predominate, without wishing to overstate this, here in Lanchester. That Pat, with Aneurin Bevan, denounces class war, calling instead for “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon” and for the making of “war upon a system, not upon a class”.

And I very much hope that Pat will co-operate as closely as possible with the forces of provincial, rural, protectionist, church-based, conservative, mind-our-own-business Toryism, forces soon to be set free by electoral reform from tendencies variously metropolitan, urban, capitalist, secular, libertarian and make-the-world-anew. Several people in the former category were also there this morning. That simply is the Right in an area such as this, as in great swathes of the country.

But I am afraid that the signs are not good. Pat has nominated David Miliband. Perhaps she hopes that he would be good for the North East. Why? Tony Blair was not good for the North East. Very far from it. Very far from it, indeed. And why not? Because, unlike Pat, he was not remotely like any of the above. Nor is David Miliband. Nor is any of the candidates for Labour Leader, although David Miliband is the worst, and at least the presence of Frank Field and Kate Hoey among those nominating John McDonnell indicates that his desire to maintain and restore the broad-based party works in more than one direction. But McDonnell is most unlikely to be on the ballot paper. And no candidate in the above vein can even be found to try.

Roll on electoral reform.