Cod Almighty | Diary
Experiences down the mines
23 July 2026
Our beloved, hero-worshipped ethical brother co-owner Jason is a great man. There is no doubt about that. Since he and Andrew stopped "kicking tyres" and called Fenty's bluff with a big wad of cash our club has been on the up. Steady incremental improvements on and off the field and proper community participations have all drawn universal applause. The missteps (keeping Paul Hurst and then panic firing him, going for B-Corp and then losing faith) are more or less forgotten. Since he got on the dotcom wave and surfed it so adroitly and financially successfully Jason has played life's game of snakes and ladders and won handsomely. Well done that man.
Until he decided to dive into politics. Jason thought he could spot the snakes a mile off, but being experienced at making money in the 21st century business world, being an open honest intelligent free-thinking tophole bloke - well that gets you the best part of nowhere in politics. It never has and it never will. The past couple of years have been bumpy travel. The ladders have been sort of virtual, the snakes big and all too real. If I asked Jason this morning (an imaginary conversation I make sure I never meet my heroes), he would probably tell me that life is about trying things and if they don't work plough on and try something else. Boundless energy and cynics are losers, etc.
A quick reminder of how he got himself into the political quagmire: first he decided to run for Mayor of Lincolnshire. Now if it had been for Mayor of Humberside and as an independent candidate I reckon he would have won with a landslide. Your Guest Diarist took soundings at the time down here in the Fens. No-one wanted anything to do with him. Farmers, country joskins, Lincoln fans all despised either this Labour government or townie Grimbarians in general. Jason got 12.3% of the vote and was trounced by the right-wing caricature that is Andrea Jenkyns.
Next, after saying several times in interviews that he was not political in the accepted sense, Jason told some Labour folk he knew how to get business investment. So Starmer heard about this, called his bluff and offered him both a peerage and a ministerial appointment. For once, that instinctive good judgement and decision-making skill left him. He accepted immediately, joining the worst Labour government of my long lifetime. Immediately Jason had to step away from his beloved Grimsby and buy a load of ties. This was the man who said he would never wear one even if away club boardrooms dictated them. The ties strangled him, and the arcane procedures and backbiting in the Lords must have strangled him even more. Starmer was booted out by his party and those ministers deemed to be Starmer acolytes were unceremoniously sacked with him. Jason sacked? Jason sacked.
The key sentence in Jason's sacking press release, replete with all the usual sycophancies that are essential in the game of political snakes'n'ladders, was this: "it has also helped me recognise that my own strengths probably lie elsewhere". Politicians eat their own and Jason had been gobbled up by a massive snake.
My older reader might remember Peter Cook in Beyond the Fringe. An epic sketch was when Peter reflected on his life. I could have been a judge but I never had the Latin. The judge's interview was full of rigour, full of Latin. My interview to be a coalminer was much simpler – one question. What is your name? I got 75% on that one. Jason never had the Latin – opposition peers ran rings round him as a labour minister in the Lords. Wrong class, dodgy tie, dodgy party. He never stood a chance. Being an all-round good bloke, being experienced in making money (dirty money, new money they probably said behind his back), being intelligent and articulate and with a desire to enact change quickly. These attributes count for nowt in politics.
To end the story – we don't get Jason back full time yet. He is running a sort of government quango called the Office for Investment. This department has been set up to field calls from all the rich billionaires and firms who are desperate to invest in ailing Britain. So Jason is a concierge whose aim is to schmooze the wealthy. Whether ties are compulsory I don't know, but with or without them your task appears sisyphean. Come back to Grimsby, Jason – smell the sea and see the sky. The bed's too big without you and you are far too good for politics. See yer.