15 Years On

As 2018 edges towards its conclusion, I think back to the spring of 2003, and to the fact that I never intended to be writing for American magazines, or broadcasting to 100 million viewers on Russian television, or standing for Parliament.

The idea was to reward my successfully unremarkable first term on Lanchester Parish Council, my two school governorships in Lanchester, my absurdly many years chairing Lanchester Branch Labour Party considering that I was still only 25, and my success as a Sub-Agent in 1997 when Labour took an overall majority of the total vote on a four-way split in this traditionally unpromising Ward.

To reward me, specifically, with something that in any case nobody else wanted. That was the seat on Derwentside District Council that was being vacated by the retirement of the sitting Councillor.

By now, I would be a third or so of the way through my time as a Councillor for this Ward while beavering away at some or other day job until I could afford to jack it in, a life with which I would have been perfectly content.

The Leadership of that rather well-run, and now sadly abolished, authority had simply assumed that it was going to be getting me. It is not a coincidence that the then Leader, Alex Watson, is now one of my Campaign Patrons.

For the decree went out from the Government Chief Whip, who was then the MP for North West Durham, that her Lanchester-based tea boy, who had become politically active only at university and who held no local position except as Secretary of the Branch that I chaired, was to be the candidate. He had no expressed no previous interest in it.

He has gone on to better things since, although rather less so recently. But in 2003, that was what he was: Hilary Armstrong's tea boy.

You might think that she should have been told to mind her own business. Anywhere further north in the constituency, then she would have been, and that in no uncertain terms. But here, there was never even so much as a selection meeting.

Yes, you did read that correctly. There was no selection meeting. The first that I, the fairly long-serving Branch Chair, heard about who were to be the nominees was when I was presented in the pub with the nomination papers to sign, for the two sitting Councillors who were carrying on, and for the tea boy. 

I signed two of them. I voted for two of them. One of them kept his seat, and indeed remains a Councillor, now on the unitary Durham County Council, to this day. Having been re-elected last year in his seventies, he will be there until he dies, and I give him another 20 years. I am not joking.

The other, who was older and who died this year, unexpectedly lost his seat. And the tea boy came nowhere. Labour in Lanchester went into that election with three seats, but it came out with only one. I could not possibly have done any worse.

This whole business crystallised disaffection within and around the Derwentside Leadership with an MP whom they had never much liked, and who had never much liked them.

It began to be said that I ought to be the MP instead, something that had never previously occurred to me for one second.

After the 2005 General Election, I even began to be introduced at funerals as, "the man who should have been our MP." I have been so ever since. So of course I was driven out of the Labour Party, and banned for life from re-joining.

I was not to be the last.

If Alex had been ready to break with Labour in 2010, then I would have backed him for MP, Watts Stelling could probably have been persuaded to stand aside in his favour, he would have been the First Past the Post, and I would have been in pole position to take over from him in 2015, in 2017, or next time, as he chose.

But it was not to be. Hey, ho. We got Pat Glass, and I am the last person to complain about that. I am only sorry that she stood down after her promised "two terms" when one of those terms had been only two years long.

And so, here we are.

Neil Fleming's use and abuse in 2003 have done him no good in the long run. He has still never been elected to anything above Parish level, and he seems to have given up trying. He is no longer even employed by the Labour Party. Is he employed by anyone these days?

Back in the constituency where he once ran the MP's office, and back in the Parish where he once chaired the Parish Council, the man who was until recently Head of Press and Broadcasting for the Labour Party, and then its London Regional Director, would appear to have been given nothing politically. He should take it as a compliment that they fear him so much.

I, on the other hand, want him as one of my four Political Advisors, with the other three coming from the Independents, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats. No one is suggesting that they leave their respective political parties. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Neil has been aware of this offer for quite some time. He has not turned it down. Frankly, unless I hear otherwise, then I now consider it accepted. We are both due revenge for the events of 2003, which have served us both very ill in the years since. We are both due it, and now we can both have it.

In any case, my political position really does not differ awfully much from his. It never did, for all his obvious frustration at having to pretend to be a Blairite. From time to time, the mask did used to slip.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.