"It's a pity that only one of them can lose," said Henry Kissinger of the Iran-Iraq War. That is my favourite quotation. I find it endlessly useful. But never more so than in reference to Hilary Armstrong and Laura Pidcock. It's a pity that only one of them can lose.
With Alex Watson as one of my Campaign Patrons, my own core support is, I suppose, the formidable machine, then-Labour and otherwise, that used to run the greatly missed Derwentside District Council.
It had absolutely no time for Armstrong; while she was a Cabinet Minister in that there London, senior Labour Councillors and their Officers in Consett used to put the phone down on her staff, and possibly also on her. As for Pidcock, those same people now refer to me as "Speedboat": "Here's what you could have won."
Bringing me to a stalwart of those glory days, the very longstanding Councillor for Lanchester, Ossie Johnson, whom I have known for, what, 40 years? It is not quite that. But it is not very far off.
Anyway, Ossie has been moved from the County Council Cabinet to the Vice-Chairmanship of the Council, giving a boost to his pension entitlement if he were to retire from the Council with that position. Reelection in 2021 would leave him in office until he was over 80. Two and two together, and all that. Standard stuff, and universally expected.
Except that then came Friday's Annual General Meeting of the Constituency Labour Party, right here on Ossie's patch. Would he be prepared to give up his seat to a member of Pidcock's entourage, and perhaps even to her very bedfellow (who is still a good Lexiteer, by the way, but even so)? Watch this space.
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