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  1. Politics
18 July 2013updated 26 Sep 2015 12:46pm

Commons Confidential: Help from Blair’s friends

PLUS: A trip to Durham for the 129th Miners' Gala.

By Kevin Maguire

Blue Ed’s bashing of the trade unions is opening coffin lids as Blairites rise to offer advice, to the Miliband they opposed, on how to fight a Labour civil war. The prospect of a factional dispute prompted Peter Mandelson to slip quietly into the back of a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting. Regulars couldn’t recall when he last tipped up, and likened his presence to a shark scenting blood in the water. Mandy scribbled furiously and said nothing. Miliband, I hear, avoided informing MPs he’d require unionists to opt in to, not out of, a levy to the Labour Party. On the eve of the huge announcement Blue Ed was deliberately vague, several of those present tell me, about the details in order to avoid a hostile reception. The calculated haziness recalled how Tony Blair failed to spell out his Clause Four plan at the 1994 conference, inserting a soft line at the end of his speech on the need to change the constitution, so that most delegates left the hall ignorant of his plan. All very Mandelsonian.

Where is Michael Foot’s walking stick? John Wrobel, the manager of the Gay Hussar eatery in Soho, favoured for decades by the one-time Labour leader, is trying to track it down. Wrobel intends to display the stick on the wall in memory of his old customer, who died in March 2010. The “donkey jacket” that Tory MPs and right-whinge papers claimed Foot wore to the Cenotaph on a Remembrance Sunday, supposedly insulting the war dead, is on display at the People’s History Museum in Manchester. The short overcoat was in fact bought from Harrods by Foot’s wife, Jill Craigie, who insisted the Queen Mother complimented her hubby on his choice of attire. Foot’s stick could double today as a support for MPs leaving the Gay Hussar, mostly unsteady after a long lunch.

To the city of Durham for the 129th Miners’ Gala, where Dave Hopper, chief hewer to the local pitmen, introduced yours truly as a journalist on the Daily Mail. I resisted the temptation to liken his slip to me calling this National Union of Mineworkers veteran of the heroic 1984-85 strike a member of the scabbing Union of Democratic Mineworkers, not least because Hopper’s a big lad. Ed Miliband spoke at last year’s Big Meeting, as Durham people call the local gathering of the coalfield clans, and indicated he’d be delighted to attend next year. The invitation will be issued. It will be interesting to see if the Labour leader accepts, after recent events.

The ex-Paisley Daily Express hack now Glasgow Labour MP Tom Harris is turning Dennis Skinner memorabilia into a nice little earner for his constituency party. Harris collects the Beast of Bolsover’s prayer cards – reservations carrying a name which are slotted into brass holders to bag a spot on the green benches. Skinner signs them for Harris to raffle. The last raised £25. Hardly a hedgefund million or a gift from the unions, but every little helps.

Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror

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