The strange fantasy world of my paranoid party leaders

I SOMETIMES think that somebody in the Millbank Tendency must love me. Every time that my profile starts to flag, somebody in Millbank Tower finds a way to put me back in the news.

Last Sunday's papers reported that the Labour Party machine had drawn up a dossier analysing all my speeches and articles since the election, provoking several follow-up stories and a Today interview about control freakery. Even before this story had died down, the papers were filled with the news that the Government had decided to delay passing control of the London Underground to the mayor, when he is elected. The fact that this could completely disembowel the transport policies of any mayor seems not to have occurred to the intellectual giants making these decisions.

I have no objection to the Millbank Tendency circulating an analysis of my activities. It will reveal that I have voted with the Government for about 98 per cent of the time. According to the media leaks, the dossier records full details of my criticisms of Gordon Brown's economic strategy. In that case, this dossier will reveal that, even before the general election, I predicted that the world economy would be likely to head towards a recession at the turn of the century and that the British economy was likely to go through a mild recession in the mid-term of this Government. I suspect that by the time we get around to deciding Labour's candidate for mayor, my forecast of the economy's growth rate is going to look a lot more realistic than Gordon's over-optimistic predictions in his pre-budget statement.

But what is not acceptable is that the money donated by Labour Party members and by the trade unions should be wasted on circulating such a dossier about my prescient economic analysis at a time when Labour has just been pushed into third place in a Scottish Euro by-election.

Whereas all this can just be dismissed as a little bit of internal Labour Party factionalism, the proposals to withhold control of the Tube from the newly elected mayor would be a real attack on the interests of Londoners, who are desperate to see somebody tackle the capital's transport chaos.

Control of the Tube will be withheld from the mayor apparently because the Government fears that the London elections would raise the question of whether privatisation of the Tube was in the best interests of an integrated transport policy. A senior source was quoted in the Evening Standard on Monday as saying: "The key thing is not to let this issue become a political football as we move closer to the mayoral elections." The paradox, of course, is that, in removing it from the debate, the future of the Underground stays in limbo, when Londoners will be expecting the mayor and assembly to make a rapid start on improving transport in London.

The Government's plans for the Tube are already struggling, with many of the firms who have expressed an interest beginning to get cold feet. The time to change this policy is during the debates in Parliament. Once it has become law, whoever is mayor will be stuck trying to do what he or she can to make the system work for Londoners (including those who work on it). That reality would apply to me just as much as any other mayoral candidate, contrary to the implication of some of the press stories this week. It would be politically suicidal for any mayor to throw the entire Tube system into chaos just to embarrass John Prescott. I just wish that, just for once, someone from Millbank would pick up the phone and discuss these issues with me.

As if this was not bad enough, the Sunday papers reported that Millbank has commissioned a detailed dossier on my five-year "reign of terror" at the GLC. God knows what this is going to cost, but they could save their money. On the question of transport they would discover that by cutting London Transport fares by 35 per cent we got so many more people using public transport that we made a pounds 48 million surplus in 1983, which allowed us to cut the domestic and commercial rates the following year. Overall, even with the reduced fares, the total income from fares went up by 11 per cent and the 70 per cent extra passenger miles meant a 5 per cent reduction in car usage in London with consequent reduced pollution and accidents.

While everybody now agrees we were right on public transport, other issues were more controversial. The Millbank Tendency has developed the interesting line that it was "GLC excesses" over lesbian and gay rights that prompted the Thatcher government to bring in clause 28. I make no apology for tackling this issue. The GLC funded a study which showed that amongst young lesbians and gays, half had experienced problems at school, many had been beaten up because of their sexuality, some had been evicted from their homes and some had tried to commit suicide. To have ignored this problem would have been political cowardice.

It is because organisations such as the GLC campaigned with lesbians and gay men to eradicate this prejudice that we have now been able to make so many advances, including the support enjoyed by "out" gay and lesbian politicians.

I hope Millbank's dossier will deal honestly with these issues. I sincerely hope they mention the report in which we asked Mrs Thatcher's government to allow us to build an extension of the Jubilee Line out to Docklands. It's a pity she blocked it - the Government would not now face the worry of the Jubilee Line extension being finished in time for the opening of the Millennium Dome.

The fact that anyone in the Labour Party thinks I would bring the Tube system to a halt in order to make a political point merely reflects the strange fantasy world these people inhabit. Londoners would turn on anybody who played fast and loose with their quality of life. During the final year of the GLC it would have been possible for the Labour administration to follow a scorched earth policy in which we maximised the damage caused by the transition to the new arrangements for running London's services but I don't recall anybody ever making such a suggestion. Instead everyone in the Labour group, from myself on down, sweated blood to make certain we preserved the services we provided to Londoners and the jobs of GLC staff concerned.

If only the Millbank Tendency would work as hard attacking the Tories - instead of wasting their time and Labour Party members' money studying my collected works.