Purged! part three

When I signed up as a registered supporter of the Labour Party, Iain McNicol, the party's general secretary, wrote to me, saying how 'thrilled' he was to have received my application and how 'delighted' the entire party were to have me aboard:

It was a little disconcerting to be addressed bluntly as 'Alwyn', rather than 'Dear Mr Turner'. But I assumed that he was a busy man and that he had a lot of these personal messages to send out. Also, he's younger than me - maybe he's more comfortable than I am in using first names with those who he's never met. In any event I forgave him, because I was, of course, equally thrilled and delighted 'to be part of this movement'.

Mr McNicol also thanked me for for my three quid 'administration fee' which, he assured me, 'means you'll be able to vote in our leadership elections'.

Sadly, all this camaraderie and bonhomie was not destined to last. When I came to cast the votes that I'd been promised, I discovered that, in the words of the late blues musician Roy Hawkins, 'The Thrill Is Gone'.

You'll note that Mr McNicol and I are no longer on first-name terms. Indeed we're not on any-name terms. I'm now 'Applicant' and he's 'The Labour Party'. A very definite frost has settled on our former friendship.

There are two grounds offered for this rejection. It may be, it is suggested, that I am 'a supporter of an organisation opposed to the Labour Party'.

Well, we can clear that up straight away. I'm not. I am not a member or supporter of any other political party. I've never tried to conceal, however, that I have voted for other parties at various points in the thirty-five years since I was first entered on the electoral register, sometimes for tactical reasons, sometimes because I preferred the alternative candidate.

In 1983, for example, I voted for Anne Sofer of the SDP because I (wrongly) thought she had a better chance of dislodging the sitting Conservative MP in my constituency. And in 2000 I voted for Ken Livingstone to become mayor of London, because I thought he'd be better at it than the Labour candidate, Frank Dobson. But voting is not the same as supporting.

So if that's not the reason for my exclusion, it must be the other argument: that I 'do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party'. I'm not, it's worth stressing, required to be a supporter of the party itself, but merely to support its 'aims and values'.

And what are these 'aims and values'? Well happily they're spelt out in Clause IV of the party's constitution, which opens:

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.

So far, so good. The only bit of that that I might feel like questioning is the assertion that Labour is 'a democratic socialist party'. But I do support the idea that that's what it ought to be.

The clause goes on to specify four key ambitions: a dynamic economy, a just society, an open democracy, a healthy environment. Yep, that's all fine with me.

Then we get the commitment to working with international bodies 'to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all', and a commitment to working with British institutions as well. And it concludes: 'On the basis of these principles, Labour seeks the trust of the people to govern.'

I agree with all of that, as well. Even including the bit about needing 'the trust of the people to govern'. Indeed I made precisely that point in my piece about who I was intending to vote for.

The more I think about this, the more offended I am. Are the Labour Party seriously suggesting that I don't share their belief in 'peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection'? If so, is this libellous? Because it feels very close to being defamation.

Maybe I should have a word with my local MP, Sir Keir Starmer. He's a lawyer, he'll know whether this is actionable or not.

Those we have loved: Labour leavers

It's at this stage of a election campaign that my thoughts turn to the dear departed. There are two categories of MPs who don't return to the Commons after a general election: those who have decided to step down, and those who've been kicked out on their ear by the electorate.

We'll have to wait to see who falls into the latter category, but looking through the list of the voluntary redundancies, it is striking how many big (or biggish) names are leaving from the Parliamentary Labour Party.

At the top of the list is obviously Gordon Brown, accompanied by a clutch of former cabinet ministers: David Blunkett, Alistair Darling, Jack Straw, Tessa Jowell, Hazel Blears, Frank Dobson and Peter Hain. (The latter was the man on whom I once placed a bet that he would become Labour leader.)

Oh yes, and there's Bob Ainsworth, remembered as the defence secretary who was humiliated by Joanna Lumley into treating retired Gurkhas a little bit better. (Many would pay good money to be humiliated by Joanna Lumley.)

Then there some less elevated but still significant figures - Glenda Jackson (my original choice for London mayor), 'Red' Dawn Primarolo, Nick Raynsford, Joan Ruddock and my own favourite Austin Mitchell, whose book Four Years in the Death of the Labour Party is still the best account of the 1983 election campaign.

This is a hell of a lot of experience that's being lost, particularly in the event that Labour form the next government. Not that any of these would have served in such an administration, but it doesn't do any harm to have some people in the vicinity who've knocked around a bit. And, more widely, there's a loss to the Commons more generally.

That's in the world of politics, of course. Outside, the truth is that hardly anyone has noticed any of this lot, as a 2013 episode of Pointless made clear; asked to name cabinet ministers who served under Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, only seven in a hundred people named Straw, seven Darling and four Blunkett.

But mostly I wanted to take this opportunity to note the passing of Shaun Woodward, sometime secretary of state for Northern Ireland and one of the oddities of modern politics.

He was the Conservative Party's director of communications during the shock election victory of 1992, and was briefly a Tory MP for Witney, though he was sacked from the frontbench for supporting the repeal of Section 28. He then re-emerged as a Labour MP for the safe seat of St Helens South, despite attracting much mockery when the story got out that he retained the services of a butler.

His successor as MP for Witney was David Cameron who paid tribute to his predecessor in his maiden speech in 2001. 'He remains a constituent and a most significant local employer, not least in the area of domestic service,' Cameron said on that occasion. 'We are in fact quite close neighbours and on a clear day, from the hill behind my cottage, I can almost see some of the glittering spires of his great house.'

I think this makes Woodward the only Labour MP to be derided by Cameron for being too posh. We may not see his like again.

Who gets my vote: part 1

I live in a very safe constituency. At the last election the Labour majority stood at nearly 10,000 votes; they were around eighteen percentage points clear of the Lib Dems. But that was a bad year for Labour (in 1997 they were forty-seven points clear) and a good one for the Lib Dems. The latter phenomenon is unlikely to happen again: last year Nick Clegg's party took a hammering in the council elections.

There may be some fall-off in support for Labour now that Frank Dobson's retiring - after all, he's represented the people of Holborn & St Pancras since the constituency was first created by the 1832 Reform Act, and presumably there are some people who liked him. But despite that, the party will certainly hold the seat.

Since it therefore matters not a jot who I vote for, I shall give the matter undue thought and consideration, candidate by candidate.

First up is the celebrity star of television debates and radio interviews, Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (but not Scotland or Northern Ireland).

Bennett stood for the constituency last time round, when she came fourth with 1,480 votes (2.7 per cent). To put that in context, the previous Green candidate got twice that number of votes and saved his deposit with 8.1 per cent of the turnout. Bennett has also stood for the local council twice and once for the Greater London Authority, failing to be elected on any occasion.

Of course she wasn't leader of the party back in those days. But her performance in becoming leader doesn't give any reason to think she's much of a winner. In the Green Party leadership election, she got 1,300 first-preference votes. That's fewer people than voted for her in the general election, and that's in her own party. Even with the celebrity recognition factor, she'll do well to get above fourth this time.

The point of voting Green, though, is presumably not in the expectation of seeing them get more than one MP. It's to boost the national numbers in the hope that a sizeable vote for a party to the left of Labour might scare Labour into taking a stance that's a bit more radical (or progressive, as we now say).

That assumes, however, that we agree on what the word 'left' means anymore. Or indeed 'radical' or 'progressive'.

So I thought I ought to look at what the Green Party is proposing this time round, now that it's doing well enough to be patronised by the big parties.

And I have to start by admitting that I haven't yet read all eighty-four pages of the manifesto. I was going to do so last night, and instead found myself reading a history of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, in the belief that it would bring me more pleasure. But I have read the education section of the manifesto, and thus far I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced.

The Greens say they want to get rid of league tables and Ofsted. On the following page, however, they boast about the GCSE and A-level results achieved in Brighton & Hove under a Green council; it's good to have this information and to know that grades are improving - which is surely the point of league tables. Furthermore '80 per cent of sixth forms and colleges are good or outstanding as judged by Ofsted'. Again it's nice to know that Ofsted does have its uses after all, but why no mention of how well the schools are performing for pupils in the years before sixth-form?

The manifesto calls for the abolition of grammar schools, academies, free schools, faith schools and private schools. Instead all schools will be comprehensives 'offering mixed-ability teaching'. There would be 'democratic accountability', with 'a key role for local authorities in planning, admissions policy and equality of access for children with special needs'.

Am I being picky in thinking that a genuine democracy might also allow for diversity? And that the Green Party - of all parties the one you might hope would be in favour of diversity - should recognise this.

Similarly there would be modifications of the curriculum, but no indication that that curriculum would be anything but national.

There is some scope for those who stray from the true path, however. Having abolished faith schools, there is a gracious concession that: 'Schools may teach about religions'. Which is nice. And there is promise of protection from 'sectarian attacks' for 'schools that serve particular [sic] vulnerable communities, for example, the Jewish, Muslim or Sikh communities'. My guess is that some members of those communities might see the abolition of faith schools by the Greens as a 'sectarian attack' in itself.

I'm not overly impressed by any of this. I distrust those with the arrogance to claim they have the one true answer, and I distrust those who believe that a single solution is applicable to all situations. I like plurality and a marketplace of ideas and options.

One more thing. The Green Party shares Tristram Hunt's obsession with 'qualified teachers'. The single best teacher I ever had wasn't qualified, but boy, could he teach maths. I, on the other hand, have a PGCE and very clearly I would be completely incapable of teaching in a school classroom, particularly one that required mixed-ability teaching. Because that's really difficult.

These 'qualified teachers', it should be noted, will have received 'comprehensive training ... on all diversity and inclusion issues'. There is, on must conclude, a diversity of opinions about what 'diversity' means.

I guess that what I want from the Greens is a big vision, an alternative to existing practice - some sense of, I don't know, environmentalism, for example. And the only element of such a thing in the education policy is a promise that school dinners won't be contaminated by the evil of GM. Oh, and some of the lessons should be held outdoors.

Apart from that it's just old-fashioned, centralised control by a big state. The man or woman in Whitehall still knows best.

The Green Party promises that in their world: 'We'd all be healthier, happier and more confident'. I'm not convinced that I shall feel healthier, happier or more confident as a result of voting for Natalie Bennett. So I don't think I shall.