From The Kitchen Table

I really am surprisingly rubbish at politics. I learnt to read using newspapers, I ran committee rooms for Margaret Thatcher’s first Minister of Health when I was 16, I wrote filler pieces for the Young Conservative newsletter before I’d even left school, before I got out a bit more into the wider world and began to reassess my political standpoint. You might think that under these circumstances I’d worked it out a bit but no. Circumstances, conviction and loyalty meant that I even went with the doomed rump of the SDP, the party I joined, as a Founder member and where I spent 10 years of my life. I was at the bedside when the life support was turned off and it died at Woolwich town hall in 1992.

I used my mastery of politics to bet that Gordon Brown would never be Prime Minister. I decided in 1997, when it was suggested that Tony had promised Gordon that he could have the next go, that is was nonsense. The idea that the Prime Ministership was somehow in the gift of the incumbent and Tony and Gordon could just arrange it between them was, to me, literally unbelievable. It also seemed (and still does to some degree) just as unbelievable that a PM would willingly stand down and say that it was “someone else’s turn” or that there would be no ambitious, smart (and not so smart) members who wouldn’t use the opportunity to take what would possibly be their only chance to be leader of their party and PM too. Luck is a huge element in politics and the chances for the top job don’t come about that often. In the event, we know that I was wrong. Apparently there was no-one else who felt either the desire or capability to stand for the post. No members strong enough or brave enough to challenge Brown. That the Labour members allowed this to happen is, in my opinion, to their discredit and has done Gordon Brown no favours.

Three weeks ago I decided that there would be no PR for the Westminster Parliament in my lifetime. Obviously I’d be ill advised to predict my lifetime so I don’t but look, here is a resurgent movement for change (which of course I signed up to this morning).

I can only hope that my legendary political instincts are working as well as always, in which case be prepared for PR by the next election!