When a Mitchell calls…
Posted on February 7, 2008 by editor
The phone rang. “Andrew Mitchell here - I’m just ringing to tell you, you are a complete and total c**t…” Slam!
Now I didn’t need Mitch to tell me that. Possibly he was miffed at my reference to his stewardship of the disastrous Child Support Agency when he was a DSS minister under John Major.
Or maybe he didn’t appreciate me mentioning his loss in 1997 of what had been one of the safest Tory seats in the East Midlands.
Well he did start out on that bright, new June morning of 1987 with a majority of 16,500. Ten years later, all was gone like the Spring slush. I know that 1997 was a bit rough on many of us, but that’s going it some, no?
Phillip Oppenheim
Filed under: Andrew Mitchell
Hang about, Phil. I don’t think he’s alone here. Take Amber Valley. I memory serves a majority of 9,000 in 1987 was turned into a deficit of 11,000 in 1997. What c**t did that?
But I thought Oppenheim won the seat off Labour - a surprise victory - so hardly a safe Tory seat.. like … say Gedling was?
Wingsofadove is right, Amber Valley was really a natural Labour seat. The fact that Phillip won it three times was partly down to Labour’s weakness nationally at the time but also to a particular local factor which I won’t bore you with here.
In the interests of beauty and truth, Amber Valley was a new seat in 1983 and was expected to be a pretty safe Labour one - it was primarily coal mining.
I was as surprised as anyone when I won it - just - due to a large swing in the E Mids and an evil opponent called Bookbinder, who was a very litigious and powerful county council leader.
With a little help from Mr Bookbinder I increased the majority in ‘87, as Patrick says.
Then, with a little help from Paul Linford, when he was a fearless Derby Evening Telegraph cub reporter, I dispatched Bookbinder who resigned in disgrace in 1990 after his deputy was jailed for corruption.
We were then hit by the poll tax in ‘92 which cut my majority and yup, in ‘97 I went the way of so many.
And for MPs like me who worked our sorry little butts off in the ’80s to hold former safe Labour seats, it was not much fun to watch so many colleagues with much safer seats first muck the economy up with the ERM; then mishandle the poll tax so badly; and finally rip the party apart over Europe.
All of which detracted somewhat from what was probably been the best 18 years of government in the last century.
That’s all just for the record.