Party bosses cancelled Labour’s regional conference in Bradford the other weekend, which was a pity because I was looking forward to a grand reunion of city hall old boys, chiefly MPs Gerry Sutcliffe and Marsha Singh.
It’s not quite in the Bullingdon Club league, but it was fun. In the 1980s, a bevy (should that be a bevvy?) of Labour councillors used to drink in the Jacob’s Well Inn, hard by the city’s magnificent council offices, often used by television dramas to represent Westminster. The offices, that is, not the pub. They were grand times and worth reviving.
But the impending by-election in Barnsley Central, caused by the conviction of MP Eric Illsley on expenses fraud charges, prompted Yorkshire officials to call off the event. That’s the official explanation, though I hear it might have been abandoned on grounds of economy. Huge sighs of relief all round, I imagine, for the big hitters of the Shadow Cabinet, most of whom live in the county. Two live in the same house in Castleford, with a panoramic view of the town. Not many of those around; indeed, not many wanted.
So an opportunity was lost to make a splash about the economic problems of the north of England, which are bound to be greater than those of the south because public spending cuts have a much bigger impact up ’ere. One by one, the councils are wheeling out horrendous job losses. This will be an employment holocaust and no one, much less the gaggle of effete new Tory MPs in the county, has offered a convincing prospect of the private sector taking up the slack.
With unsought irony, Labour, having wrested back power in Leeds and Bradford, has to implement Tory cuts. At the head of a minority administration in Leeds, Keith Wakefield has just announced that 1,500 jobs will go this year, 100 more than expected. More than 1,000 are out of the door before the end of next month and the final tally will reach 3,000 by 2014. That’s in one city – a city coming to terms with cuts of £215 million in spending over the next three years.
There has never been anything like it in the post-war history of local government. In Manchester, the GMB is consulting on a possible strike ballot of city hall employees facing similarly draconian job losses, raising the prospect of industrial action against a Labour council in the run-up to the local elections in May. Yet Labour is poised to make considerable gains in the spring polls, such is the unpopularity of the Tory Government. I refuse to call it a coalition or even a Tory-led government. It is as much a Tory government as anything I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen a few.
Against this dismal backdrop, here comes the galloping major. Major Dan Jarvis has ridden into Barnsley on a white charger or, perhaps more accurately, dropped from the skies, since he was an officer in the Parachute Regiment for the past 15 years. He’ll take Barnsley Central at a canter whenever the by-election is called. This constituency has been Labour for 73 years. Even in the depths of his expenses scandal, Illsley held it with a majority of more than 11,000.
Major Jarvis, a lean, 47-year-old career soldier, is an unexpected choice, having no links with the area or the mining industry, both of which combined to produce the MP for as long as anyone can remember. In fact, he’s from Nottingham, home of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers, the mere mention of which in Arthur Scargill’s heartland can freeze the goolies off a goat at 100 paces.
But it was a smart choice by the local party. At a stroke, it neutralised a perceived threat from the British National Party, whose fake patriotism is no match for the real thing: the major served with special forces in Helmand. Nor must it be forgotten that the young men who join the Paras come from the estates in which Barnsley abounds.
Real interest in this by-election will focus on the hapless Liberal Democrats, who beat the Tories into third place by only six votes at the 2010 general election. Nick Clegg’s cadets have promised a “positive campaign”, but his party’s shocking snub to Sheffield Forgemasters just down the road and the impact of the abolition of education maintenance allowances and hikes in student fees hang like an albatross round their necks. Not a pretty sight, but heartwarming all the same. A Lib Dem member of the borough council quit the party last year saying she hadn’t been elected to implement Tory policies.
So, although the poll outcome is a foregone conclusion, there is still scope for some political theatre of the absurd. I just want to be there when the first naive BBC reporter disinters the hoary old council propaganda about Barnsley being like an Italian hill town – “like Tuscany, in fact” – that was all the rage a few years ago.
