A worm's eye for politics

After decades of living in North London, meeting politicians (too many) and writing about politics (too much), I'm beginning to feel for the first time that I'm genuinely represented by one.

No, not  Glenda Jackson, the movie-star-turned-axe-face-of-the-old Left and my veteran Member of Parliament here in the Hampstead part of Camden. There is still some way to go before the House of Commons itself has anything for me.

No, not Lord Adonis of Camden Town, the former Andrew Adonis, the closest thing to a natural TLS-reader in the Blair and Brown governments. His choice of title for his appointed place in the Upper House of our legislature, while pleasing, does not make him strictly any representative of mine.

I do, however, have a local Councillor. He is called Alexis Rowell, a Liberal Democrat, an environmental campaigner, a blogger, a man with a wormery in his garden and good advice on electricity suppliers - and, mirabile dictu, he deals with his constituents about what is happening in the streets around us.

He genuinely represents.

So what, you may think. Isn't that what local councilllors are supposed to do, worrying about supermarket lorries, school transport and restaurant noise while the Adonises are deep in their Red Boxes and the Glendas are glaring?

I agree. But it is not a 'so what' thing when no one has ever done it for me before.

Why do I now have a representative after all this time?

Well, it is not wholly a matter of the councillor himself. We have multi-party democracy in our backyard these days - after generations of one-party Labour control.

Councillor Rowell is one of the Liberal Democrats who now lead an uneasy governing coalition with the Conservatives.

My enthusiastic representative, working to turn his passion about climate change into local and national policy, doubtless feels he has to count his votes individually rather than weigh them as his predecessors in the Committee chairs used to do.

So, yes, we are vigorously consulted and cajoled because we are needed for this young Liberal Democrat redoubt to be reinforced against Labour assault.

But, for all that, for all the natural cynicism that a lifetime in journalism has left, it is still a strange and very pleasant thing to feel represented.

Liberal Democrat politics have never been my own. And if I had ever joined a political party, which apart from a two-week error in Oxford in 1969, I never have, I doubt it would have been that one.

What has surprised me is how the sense of being represented on small matters makes a genuine difference to whether I'm prepared to be swayed on larger ones.

I never thought a talk about Tesco delivery times, or even compost-making earth worms, would lead me towards the agenda of Al Gore.

But a long life in Labour rotten boroughs can make a man forget key parts of how politics works, however much he writes or edits newspapers about it.

This weekend my representative made me promise to read a newish book - not an easy to commitment to get from an Editor whose desk is drowned in newish books.

It's called Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, a tract that I would much rather not have promised to read.

But I'm well into it now - well into a degree-by-degree prophecy of our descent into an earth of flaming sands, a new Dante's inferno.

Nebraska is dust. No coral reef has survived the acidic seas. The Amazon is ablaze. Miles of underwater ice is inundating water. A massive burp of methane is about to bring the ocean levels even closer to our doors.

I still much prefer my Dante. But I'm sticking with this new vision of hell for the next few days -

- and not only because it seems to contain clues as to where, as well as how, we might avoid its worst effects.

Oddly, high parts of the South of England seem to be among the better places to be when our failure to ban plastic bags and our reluctance to forgo foreign holidays has wrought global havoc.

Or so it seems from a first look.

Forget Sydney, San Francisco or Rome. There may be nowhere safer than here in Hampstead, in the hills above the roaring Thames.

Today the Council. Tomorrow the world.

Comments

[Brian Basham]

I share your enthusiasm for Alexis. He is the best local councillor I've ever met. Hugely energetic, principled and effective. Never though I'd vote Lib Dem Alexis has driven me to it.

[Alex D-F]

Before taking up residence in Dame Glenda's native town, I spent some years in "Via dell'Arco" or N19. LibDems - not the local councillors, but the high-ups like S. Hitchins and L. Willoughby - simply would not listen to residents. They paid for this by losing control of the council. The present councillors know this and are much more attentive than they used to be.
I note the reverse result happened in neighbouring Camden with LibDems ousting a long-held Labour majority council. But they need to bear the same lesson in mind.
PS If you want to maintain your credentials as a proper 'e'-person, can you afford to eschew the 'e' in 'forego'? Or has it been dropped as part of some offset scheme?

[Robin Young]

Dear Sir Peter, Many thanks for this warm appreciation of Councillor Alexis Rowell, who as well as representing you is Camden's energetic "eco-champion" which means that, though only a backbencher, he chairs a cross-party Sustainability Task Force of Camden councillors who make it their job to research and report on best practice for energy conservation, recycling, emission reductions etc etc Last week Friends of the Earth had a meeting on "climate change in Camden" with both the borough's Labour MPs, Glenda Jackson and Frank Dobson, billed as speakers. It attracted an audience of about 150. Neither MP turned up. Happily the evening was saved by Alexis Rowell's fluent and lucid explanation of the challenges ahead and what local authorities can do toward meeting them. Though the audience were naturally a bit miffed to be snubbed by the MPs, all seemed to think at the end of the meeting that what they had heard from Alexis and from Friends of the Earth's own speakers had made turning out wholly worthwhile.