Screwing Up by Mark Oaten: Where's the dignity?

All over Britain there are Labour MPs with small majorities who know that they will lose their seats when the general election comes. Some have reacted to this by announcing that they will not fight again. Others are generally doing the decent thing by agreeing to fly the Labour flag at the election, while all the time putting out feelers about new employment afterwards.br /br /One Liberal Democrat MP is combining the two approaches in a manner all his own. Step forward Mark Oaten.br /br /Last year Oaten floated the idea that he might a href="http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2008/05/mark-oaten-to-force-winchester-by.html"stand down before the general election/a and force a by-election in Winchester. As I suspected at the time, nothing further came of the idea.br /br /Plan B turns out to be publishing a book. According to the a href="http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/4527687.Oaten_writes_about_affair_with_rent_boy/"Southern Daily Echo/a, Screwing Up will be published on 1 October. The newspaper quotes the release from the book's publisher Biteback:br /blockquotepThis is the story of a man obsessed by retaining his youth, fearful of turning 40 and feeling a complete failure./ppIt’s the story of coping with media scandal, and of how he and his wife Belinda managed to save their marriage, as well as his own recent decision to leave politics for the unknown./ppScrewing Up is not a political memoir but the deeply touching and human story of a man at his wits’ end, trying to cope with the onset of middle age./p/blockquoteOh dear.br /br /I am old-fashioned enough to be pleased that the Oaten's marriage has survived, but this is ridiculous. What is so terrible about turning 40? And, whatever our opponents say, being the Lib Dems' shadow home secretary hardly constitutes failure. Chris Huhne is visibly having a whale of a time in the role.br /br /The newspaper also says:br /blockquoteThe book, while offering an insight into the working life of a constituency MP, is also said to deal with former party leader Charles Kennedy’s battle with alcoholism. /blockquoteWhich rather gives the lie to Oaten's claim that:br /blockquoteI don’t intend to cause the party embarrassment by dragging up these issues./blockquoteIf Oaten was really concerned about causing the party embarrassment then he would have waited until after the election before publishing it. But then, of course, any revelations it offers would be less marketable.br /br /Suddenly, Neil and Christina Hamilton's appearance on Hole in the Wall does not look so undignified after all.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6606798-4845185471210581490?l=liberalengland.blogspot.com'//div

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