THE Labour Party may be pretty well bust (that’s Tory boom and bust, not Gordon Brown boom and bust – quite a different matter), but it can still afford to offer £40,000 a year for a new regional director for Yorkshire and the Humber. Plus benefits and a final salary pension scheme, of the kind now virtually defunct in the private sector.
Unemployment in Yorkshire last week rose by 17,000 or 12 per cent – to 163,000, which is 6.2 per cent of the working population – but while all about are losing theirs, the party is plainly determined to buck the labour market.
Adverts in the regional press say Labour is looking for a dynamic and committed individual, able to motivate and lead staff and volunteers, to ensure future Labour success and so on. The successful candidate will have “extensive political experience, the ability to work with stakeholders at all levels, a proven track record of team management, outstanding leadership qualities and be motivated to win the political fight for Yorkshire and the Humber’s future”. And an ability to write – or, at any rate, understand – gobbledygook like this, I suppose.
Interviews will take place in mid-November, but the deadline for applications is today (October 24), so if you’re reading about it for the first time here, get on the train to Wakefield right away.
* * *
AND so to the fascinating case of Janet Oosthuysen, Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the marginal seat of Calder Valley to succeed Chris McCafferty, who is retiring. The South African-born Oosthuysen was chosen in July, beating Stephanie Booth, Cherie’s stepmother, into second place – by a single vote, I understand.
Unfortunately, West Yorkshire police have confirmed that Oosthuysen was interviewed about an incident a year ago in which the BMW 320 car owned by her ex-partner Craig Moore was deliberately scratched outside the Fox and Goose pub in Heptonstall Road, Hebden Bridge. There’s not a great deal to do in hippie Hebden Bridge, I grant you, except watch the folk music acts laid on by my pal Peter Lazenby at the town’s Trades and Labour Club, but this didn’t go down well with the cops.
A police spokesman said that Oosthuysen was questioned about the incident, “made a full admission and was subsequently cautioned”. She genuinely regrets damaging the BMW, pleading that: “The end of this relationship was a very difficult part of my life.” And she didn’t tell party activists about her police caution, because there had been “no opportunity” to do so. “I was never asked the question”, she says. Oh dear, no question of volunteering the information, then.
Oosthuysen regards the matter as closed – as well she might. Labour Party bosses were giving final endorsement to her candidature as Tribune went to press. But that will not go down well with some local party stalwarts who are unhappy with the turn of events, and now say they would have voted for Stephanie Booth – latest wife of Cherie’s awkward-squad father, Tony. The couple live in nearby Todmorden and I would have thought that a bit of showbiz glitz is just the thing Labour needs to win in Calder Valley.
Instead, Oosthuysen got a full page in the Labour-baiting Mail on Sunday, which also resurrected rumours that she had an affair with Kris Hopkins, Tory parliamentary candidate for the next-door seat of Keighley. “He was very attentive to me for a couple of months”, she pouted. “But I have never kissed a Tory.”
Quite right, my dear. Very likely they will turn into a frog. And who said politics was no fun any more?
* * *
SHAHID MALIK must be heaving a small sigh of relief in marginal Dewsbury, where the Tory candidate has pulled out of the parliamentary race.
Like a proper Conservative, Kevin Hollinrake says he wants to spend more time with his property company as well as his family “in these difficult economic times”. York-based firm, Hunters Property Group of which he is joint chief executive, was established in 1982 and at the last count had more than 20 estate agencies. There are direct trains from Dewsbury – birthplace, irrelevantly, of Betty Boothroyd – to York, but clearly his business is more important than defenestrating Brother Malik.
If they have half a brain, the Tories will choose a local Asian candidate, although the most obvious, Baroness Warsi, is already in the Upper House. The runner-up to Hollinrake, Karen Wood, has subsequently been chosen to fight Health Secretary Alan Johnson in Hull West and Hessle.
Another bit of good news for minister Malik: the British National Party lost the Dewsbury East seat on Kirklees council to Labour in a by-election last week. The poll was caused by the resignation of a sitting BNP councillor and the far right now only has one seat on the council.
