Alun Michael, the beleaguered bardic premier, should have remembered that if a week is a long time in politics, six years is not. Mr Charisma has got into difficulties as First Person of Wales largely because he cannot get Treasury funding for his Welsh Budget. Can this be at all connected with his refusal to join the standing ovation for Gordon Brown at the Wales Labour Party conference in 1994, shortly after the death of John Smith, when the then shadow chancellor made an agonising speech about the future of the party he was destined not to lead?
Michael, whom Smith rejected as his parliamentary private secretary on the grounds of dullness, wrote a three-page letter of apology to Ir'n Broon. He explained that he could not stand up and applaud because he would have hit his head on a television camera. He even got shirty when he read about his conduct in a Welsh-language magazine.
Bardic footnote: a member of the WI in Ron Davies's constituency, when asked if she ever thought there was something strange about him, said: "Well, he was the only man who took his dog for a walk without a torch."
Is the publishing world afraid of Tony Blair? I ask because a number of publishers have turned down Carol Hayman's satirical novel Hard Choices, while giving it "rave rejections". I have read the book, virtually at a sitting. It is a cross between The X-Files and Aldous Huxley, set in the year 2010 when new Labour governs from the Dome and Prime Minister Gideon gets up to some murky tricks to control the population. I can understand the trepidation of some politically sensitive publishers because Hayman gets very close to the bone. The portrait of Alastair Campbell is particularly gruesome. But it is a fantasy, and readers should be allowed to choose if they want to buy this stuff.
Panic has gripped the top echelons of Unison. They fear that an ultra-left challenger will win the general secretaryship elections (the ballot closes on 18 February). After welding together the three public-service unions into one, and seeing the national minimum wage become a reality, Rodney Bickerstaffe is bowing out. The heir apparent is Dave Prentis, Bickerstaffe's deputy. But Roger Bannister - not the four-minute miler but a self-confessed member of the Socialist Party (aka the Militant Tendency) - is running a close second, and might just pull off a political coup. Quite apart from the potential impact on public-sector pay bargaining, it would be a constitutional nightmare for Millbank. The leader of Britain's biggest union could not be a delegate to the Labour Party conference, because he was expelled for Militant activities. But party bosses could not refuse a visitor's ticket, giving him an open sesame for embarrassing media interviews.
Inever thought I would feel sorry for bruiser Ken Clarke, but his current ire is understandable. The former Tory chancellor has told friends he is fed up with standing outside the tent, in the rain, exhorting the values of Europe and the euro, while new Labour sits snugly inside playing "wait and see" at longer and longer odds. Meanwhile, Archie "Boreman" Norman is Millbank's preferred target. A fat party file on him says his rich pals present "a picture of incestuous, even nepotistic, structures going against the best practice of corporate governance". Since when has Labour been the party of corporate governance? Since the name of the local government conference was changed to governance last week, I suppose. The words tell you everything.
I do not normally bring you tidings of a court or social nature, but this is an exception for its wit. David Healy, the best-liked man in the Westminster lobby (ex-Press Association and Daily Record, now toiling for Bloomberg) is getting married this month. Where? At Regretna Green, as it is known. But in this case, it becomes Je Ne Regretna Green. Healy is remarrying his ex-wife June.
The writer is chief political commentator for the "Mirror"
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