The way we were

The latest edition of Total Politics magazine focuses on the 1979 general election which was of course 30 years ago next month. I have contributed a tangentially connected "Where Are They Now?" piece about the former Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun who lost her seat at that election after having become Britain's first openly lesbian MP during the course of the previous parliament. It is not a story that reflects particularly well on British society at the time or more particularly on the Labour Party.

More memories of 1979 on this blog coming soon......

I leave this party withour wancour

The story of Dennis Skinner's heckling of Roy Jenkins during his parting speech to the PLP before leaving for Brussels in 1977 never loses anything in the telling, so I naturally jumped at the opportunity to tell it again in my latest "Where Are They Now?" piece for Total Politics magazine which is now online. The subject of the piece - and the victim of Skinner's wicked humour - is Jenkins' close political ally David Marquand, a man whose career encapsulates much of the shifting history of the British centre-left over the past four decades.

Whatever happened to the Grey Man of Toryism?

The latest edition of Total Politics is now online and I continue my regular "Where Are They Now?" column with a look at the career of Grey Gowrie, who probably deserves to be remembered for more than just resigning from Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet on the grounds that it didn't pay him enough to live in London.

I would also strongly recommend an excellent a piece by blogging Labour MP Tom Harris on why David Cameron is guilty of "silly populism" and "dog whistle politics" in bringing forward plans to reduce the number of MPs.

Where are they now No 7

My latest contribution to Total Politics magazine's Where Are They Now? series can now be found online here.

Its subject, Phillip Oppenheim, is probably my favourite-ever Tory politician. Despite coming from a fairly wealthy background, he was as at home in The Spanker, Nether Heage, in his Amber Valley constituency, as he was at Annabels' nightclub. I've enjoyed a drink with him in both venues.

We first got to know eachother in Derbyshire in the late 80s when I was working for the Derby Evening Telegraph and when I arrived in the Lobby several years later he continued to be helpful to me even though he had no particular career interest in being so. He may have forgotten that, but I haven't.

As my TP piece makes clear, Phillip has now clearly moved on from the loss of his seat and forged a new and perhaps more interesting career outside Westminster.

An idea worth recycling

As a contributing editor of Total Politics magazine, I warmly welcome its new blog, but I couldn't help but be amused to see that it's been named after one of my old Newcastle Journal columns, Party Lines.

The column was a light-hearted, midweek counterpoint to my more serious "Saturday column" which still continues today.

It was actually the second column of that name to appear under my byline, the first having appeared in Derbyshire Now! magazine from 1992-94.

Sadly it was before the days of teh interwebs so no link but I still have the dog-eared cuttings in my attic somewhere...

Remembering Big Cyril

The latest issue of Total Politics is now out and Sir Cyril Smith is the latest subject in my Where Are They Now? series. The short answer is that he's alive and well and living in the same terraced house in Rochdale which he's lived in for 80 years, but you'll have to click on the link to see the rest.

The mag also has a poll on The Top 100 Political Journalists in Britain on which I feel obliged to pass some comment. I don't want to be too critical, as it was compiled fairly objectively from the votes of politicians, lobby journalists, and the TP Facebook group, but any such poll that places Peter Oborne at 60 and David Hencke at 93 has to be taken with something of a pinch of salt.

It seems the editorial team of Total Politics weren't entirely in agreement with their electorate on this either. In the preamble to the piece, they say: "We found it difficult to understand why neither Andrew Neil nor Ben Brogan made the Top 20. Surely Patrick Hennessy, Nick Watt and Peter Oborne should have been far higher than mid-table mediocrity?"

Leaving aside the odious Mr Pad, who Daily Politics show I find consistently unwatchable on account of his overweening presence, I would second all of that.

The other point I would make about polls listing political journalists is that you are essentially trying to compare very different skills. During my time in the Lobby, Philip Webster of The Times was regarded by many as the greatest story-getter, which on a traditional view of what constitutes journalism would make him the No 1 political journalist. But not even Phil would claim he was the greatest writer, commentator or sketchwriter.

The truth is that while the most highly-rated political journalists tend to have more specialised skills, venture lower down the list and you are more likely to find genuine all-rounders. The Guardian's ace sketchwriter Simon Hoggart (No 14) would be hard-pressed to write a front-page scoop, but the Mail on Sunday's Brendan Carlin (No 73) not only excels at that but wrote a mean parliamentary sketch in his Yorkshire Post days as I recall.

Remembering the public hangman

I enjoyed following the career of Peter Bruinvels in the 1980s - it was difficult not to as he was rarely out of the papers - and 20 years on I enjoyed writing about him for Total Politics magazine.

My "Where Are They Now?" feature for the magazine is now in its fifth month - previous subjects have been Walter Sweeney, Bill Pitt, David Bookbinder and David Bellotti.

Where are they now No 4

The latest edition of Total Politics is now in circulation together with the fourth instalment of my "Where Are They Now?" series of columns. This one focuses on the Liberal Democrat David Bellotti who won one of the most significant by-elections in modern times in 1990, but whose newsworthiness lay less in his rather inconsequential political career and more in having been one of the worst football club proprietors in the history of the game.

Pitt the Obscure

My second monthly "Where are they now?" contribution to Total Politics magazine can now be found online HERE and deals with the short parliamentary career of Bill Pitt. Hopefully this won't persuade him to attempt a political comeback, unlike last month's subject, Walter Sweeney.

The Sweeney rides again

You really couldn't make it up. Just days after my Where Are They Now? profile of former Tory MP Walter Sweeney appears in the launch issue of Total Politics, the bugger decides to make a political comeback. He's one of 25 candidates standing against David Davis in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election on July 10 - but as an independent, not as a Conservative.

I just wonder if Sweeney read Total Politics and decided it was a bit early for people (ie, me) to be writing his political obituary?

A more likely explanation is that it's a revenge match against DD for having masterminded the notorious whipping operation on the Maastricht Bill in 1992 that ended with Sweeney being locked in a House of Commons toilet.

It is also surely significant that Haltemprice and Howden is Sweeney's local consituency. As I pointed out in my Total Politics piece, nowadays he is a local solicitor in the village of North Cave, near Hull.

Total Politics goes live

The Total Politics website is now live and my "Where are they now?" contribution can be found HERE.

As previously mentioned, this is the first of a regular series focusing on shooting stars of the political firmament - those who enjoyed a brief fifteen minutes of fame or notoriety before returning to obscurity. In issue No 1, I focus on Walter Sweeney, a former Tory MP best known for a delightful story involving a crunch Commons vote, a 22-stone government whip, and a toilet.

On the subject of Total Politics, I was interested to read this interview with the magazine's publisher, Iain Dale in yesterday's Observer, in particular this paragraph.

"I think blogs as a phenomenon are on a plateau at the moment," he says. "Readership is growing but I don't see any great innovation. I see the mainstream media organisations embracing blogging and doing it quite well, eclipsing them in some areas. I'm really disappointed there have not been five or six other people that have built a mass readership. There are only four blogs [Dale's own, plus PoliticalBetting, ConservativeHome and Guido Fawkes] that have done that, and there's a huge gap between the four of us and the next 10."

I don't for a minute doubt Iain's sincerity in saying this - he has often gone out of his way to promote other, smaller blogs that he thinks worthy of note, including this one - but it's a fact of economic life that once someone - or a group of people - establishes a market dominance, it becomes much harder for anyone else to break in.

In a way, what has happened with UK political blogging is a bit like what has happened with UK supermarkets. There, too, you have a "big four" in Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons, with the smaller players a long way behind.