Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea

The shadows grow longer; I feel the need to draw nearer to the crackling fire. I draw my coat about me and slowly sip from my crystal goblet, the deep vermillion wine gradually warming me. I gaze into the flames and try to remember. To remember those things which used to be so important and which now . . . now, the orange flickers with the yellow in the ever changing patterns in the fire.

See there! There, for a moment a shape, a shape like a woman, a woman I should remember. It was a long time ago, my memory is not as good as I would wish it; the flicker of the flame is like the flicker of recognition. I should remember, but it is difficult.

Then Pinochet finally dies.

Suddenly everything is back in sharp focus. All the bitter memories of the self aggrandising, blatantly bigoted, self righteous, Saint Francis quoting harridan, lurching from her crypt to reiterate her mealy mouthed support for the murdering dictator come flooding back.

A blast from the past, and all the old resentment that has been built lovingly into my political memory stretching from her time as minister of education and enduring to her last days while she was prised out of power whooshes back to the forefront of my mind.

I would have thought it impossible for her pre-eminent position in my pantheon of contempt to be surpassed, but Lord (!) Lamont (that personification of farcical financial fiasco) outdid her in his peon of praise for the dead dictator. All it needed was for Lord (!) Get On Your Bike Tebbit to shed a bitter tear at Pinochet’s departure to encourage my hatred quotient to overflow.

I also realised that there is not another person in modern British politics about whom I feel even a tenth of the passion (for or against) that is reserved for that Dowager Grotesque from Grantham. Of course I admire the fact that she was the first woman leader of a major British political party and the first woman Prime Minister, but the venom that I poured out in impotent fury at the television screen when her expression of sorrow at the death of an evil man was broadcast reminded me of an intensity for the political life of this country which I do not find myself able to express today.

Yes, I did stay up to see Michael Portillo lose his seat humiliatingly to an 'out' homosexual, and I did share the fervid enthusiasm for the hope of egalitarianism that seemed to be promised by the sweeping victory of a professed left wing party.

How naïf seems that hope now. (And even Michael Portillo has reinvented himself as a sort of New Labour Media Person!)

For that I do not blame the Labour party. They were elected: a major achievement. But they were elected by a country that has lost its working class: everyone is middle class now; or at least they have a very real expectation of sharing the material values of what they take the middle class to have.

We live in a country populated by the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Thatcher. If Tony Benn is the Voice of the Left, then he is a dangerous voice. His vision for Britain is one which will not be tolerated by the vast majority of the population whatever he might make them think by speaking in what Patrick Hannan described as “that famous everyone-knows-this-is-true-so-there’s-nothing-to-argue-about manner which has drawn him so many admirers who look upon him as a toff turned cuddly leftie who ‘talks a lot of sense, you know.’”

Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that the demographic in this country precludes a popular vote for a socialist agenda.

Some members of the Labour party were obviously not listening to Gerald Kaufman when he described the moralistic posturing of the Labour Party Manifesto of 1983 as “the longest suicide note in history” and some of them are not listening today.

Power is the prime necessity for changing anything and people like Glenda Jackson, while totally admirable in their enunciating of moral values will never keep power when people realise that moral principles come with a major price tag!

Anyone who has fond expectations that the Prime Minister in Waiting Gordon Brown will act like Bessie Braddock because he has a passing resemblance to her is kidding himself. Braddock had influence but would not allow herself to be tainted by cabinet responsibility; the compromises of being in government are inevitable and a refusal to accept the weight of the chains of expediency is, in my view, abdicating responsibility by allowing yourself the luxury of behaving with individual ‘dignity.’ Think of Nye Bevan: he demonstrates a full range of responses to the difficult questions that politics pose to the aspiring politician.

I do not envy the politicians in the present Labour party; they are constantly having to square the circle, but, perhaps that is what all politicians in all parties have to do all the time. God help them!

At least my hatred for That Woman has had a seasonal boost, and I will check the wick on her candle so ensure that it is ready to be lit as soon as she chooses to join her dictator friend.