by Chris Mullin
When I went home on the bus, at about 11.30 p.m., the queue still stretched through Victoria Tower Gardens, over Lambeth Bridge and back along the South Bank as far as the London Eye.
Tuesday, 9 April
To New Palace Yard to see the Queen Mother’s coffin taken away to the Abbey, escorted by the princes and the exquisite sound of 126 Scots pipers. The shadow cabinet, no doubt anxious to demonstrate that they are more loyal than us, marched into Westminster Hall in morning dress. This is a Tory occasion par excellence and yet only Iain Duncan Smith had an invitation to the service, whereas from our side the entire Cabinet was present in the Abbey. It must have been very galling. From my room on Upper Corridor South I could hear the choir and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s tribute relayed to the crowds outside. When the service was over, I came down and stood by the main gate, watching the captains and the kings depart.
In the afternoon the select committee met to consider our drugs report. Ours was the only meeting in the entire building. Everything else having been cancelled out of deference to the Great Event. Progress was slow. There was an argument over reclassifying cannabis. Angela Watkinson was flatly opposed. David Winnick wanted us to go all the way and legalise. Humfrey Malins, who I hope to take with us, wobbled about all over the place. It was the same when we came to Ecstasy, which most of us think should be downgraded from A to B. Again Angela objected. Again Humfrey wobbled. ‘I know it’s right,’ he kept saying, ‘but I just can’t go that far – yet.’ More than once, when we reached an impasse, David Cameron came to the rescue. The more I see of him, the more I like. He’s bright, personable and refreshingly open-minded. No doubt he’ll soon be whisked away to the Tory front bench.
Wednesday, 10 April
To the meeting of the parliamentary party to hear The Man. The press has been building this up as a confrontation over Iraq and so there was a big turnout, larger than at any time since the election. Dennis Skinner was the warm-up man. He did not mince words: ‘In the Labour Party generally, as well as in the higher echelons, most people can’t stand the sight of George W. Bush. Some of us don’t think he was elected – he had a worse result than Mugabe. And some of us think he’s not far short of being a bastard.’ He added to laughter, ‘I’m not saying what I think.’
The Man, as ever, addressed the big picture. ‘Progressive’, ‘moderate’, ‘centre left’ were the watchwords. Next week’s budget, he said, will set out the case for increased tax. This, not Iraq, will be the principal battle of this Parliament. ‘It will be a huge test of whether or not this country is a progressive democracy.’ As for George Bush, ‘With all due respect to Dennis, I don’t choose the President of the United States or any other country, but I will work with the leader of any country to represent the interests of this country.’ On Iraq: ‘Saddam is developing weapons of mass destruction. Allowing him to carry on is not an option. Whatever we do, we will do in the same calm way as we did in Afghanistan.’
Not all the complaints came from Usual Suspects. Joan Ruddock said there was no basis in international law for an attack on Iraq; nor was there evidence that it posed a threat. All neighbouring states were against an attack. Clive Soley said we must act on Palestine first. Alice Mahon wanted a commitment that any action on Iraq would be through the UN. Michael Connarty accused The Man of sending out two different messages – gung ho in the United States, reasonable here. We must solve Israeli aggression against Palestinians first, he said. This attracted a few ‘hear, hear’s, but there was no sign of the promised uprising.
In response, he flatly denied putting out different messages on either side of the Atlantic, adding, ‘However, when the British media go to Texas, they are not interested in a nuanced, balanced message. They say, “He’s got a problem with his backbenchers; how can we make it worse?” You have to understand the degree of frustration there is on the right. They think they should be in government. We’re supposed to be principled people – but in Opposition. The thing they get down on their knees and pray for is that the Labour Party will tear itself apart. It’s a game. So far we’ve been intelligent enough to avoid that. If we are to govern, we have to weather short-term unpopularity so that we are still celebrating in ten years’ time.’ He sat down to thunderous applause. With one leap he was free – for now at least.
A sandwich lunch with Martin Narey, head of the Prison Service. Decent, humane, level-headed. We couldn’t hope to find a better man to put in charge of the nation’s jails. His main message was that the rapid growth of the prison population was putting at risk all recent progress on overcrowding, purposeful activity and education. ‘I have 12,000 inmates having to defecate in front of one another. Sooner or later I am going to lose a human rights case.’ About 65 per cent of the prison population are either illiterate or semi-literate, many are school drop-outs. The huge rise in school exclusions is making matters worse. Some head teachers, he said, are promoting their schools on the basis of a tough exclusion policy. Many of the excluded were destined to end up in prison: ‘You might just as well book them a place now.’ As if all this wasn’t difficult enough, he was expected to return 1 per cent of his budget to the Treasury every year as part of Gordon’s so-called efficiency savings.
A brief moment of merriment at the parliamentary committee this afternoon. Robin Cook came in carrying a hot drink. The Man peered at it. ‘Is that cocoa?’
‘No, Tony, it’s cappuccino. I’m very New Labour. Cocoa’s Old Labour.’
‘Robin does sail close to the wind,’ Jean said to me afterwards. ‘He did a lot of lobbying against Derry’s Lords reform plans.’
Doug Hoyle again raised Iraq. ‘What has changed? What evidence is there that Saddam poses a greater threat now than he did a year ago?’
‘We know,’ replied The Man, ‘that he is continuing to develop chemical and biological weapons and there’s no doubt that he’s developing ballistic missile capability. What has changed in America is that they think they were negligent over al-Qaida and they are not going to be caught out again.’
‘Afghanistan was not an unalloyed triumph,’ I said. ‘We’ve unleashed the warlords and they are causing mayhem. We should concentrate on sorting that out before opening a new front.’
‘We’re not even at the stage of options yet,’ said The Man. ‘Iraq is just on the agenda for discussion.’
There was a brief discussion on the Middle East. Robin said, ‘At some point the penny is going to drop that the Israelis are creating another generation of suicide bombers.’
Somewhere – not necessarily in relation to Iraq, but to life in general – The Man remarked, ‘I am basically an interventionist. If you’ve got the power, use it.’
Friday, 12 April
Sunderland
Customers at this evening’s surgery included a plump young woman with a ten-month-old baby desperate to be evacuated from her home on a local housing estate. She has come under attack from local youths, one of whom threatened her with a knife. And a young couple with six children (all boys aged under 12) who are under siege in their home. Their property has been repeatedly vandalised. They are spat at and abused in the street. Their offence? They are comers-in. He’s a southerner, a former soldier. So much for any idea of a kinder, gentler north.
It is intolerable that people should have to live like this. Once again we shall end up evacuating victims, rather than evicting villains. Why are we so powerless? The police – lately at least – are doing their best, but the courts are either unwilling to deal with this plague of criminal youths or they are incapable of doing so. As a result they are laughing at us. In four years only three anti-social behaviour orders have been granted in the whole of Wearside. Why, for heaven’s sake? It’s not as though we are short of candidates.
Tuesday, 16 April
A letter from Jeff Rooker refusing my plea for the Savchenkos to be allowed to stay so the boy can stay in school until the summer. I went immediately to find him. He was on his feet in the Lords, guiding t
hrough the Police Reform Bill. I waited until the dinner adjournment and then pounced. ‘A couple of months, that’s all I’m looking for,’ I said. ‘This is the only stability this little lad has ever known and I just want him to be able to depart with dignity.’
Jeff didn’t hesitate. ‘Have you got that?’ he said to a Private Secretary who was loitering. ‘Fix it.’ And that was that.
Wednesday, 17 April
Gordon’s Budget has made everyone happy. Our side because we’ve finally decided to bite the bullet. The Tories because they can accuse us of a return to tax and spend, just like the good old days. No one is quite sure how it will play with the punters. Although the polls have been saying for some time that most people would be willing to pay more tax to fund decent public services, no one can be sure that, when the chips are down, they will not all turn back into Tories. Certainly, Gordon has hit the prosperous fairly hard – the family Mullin, for example, will have to shell out another £600 a year.
We discussed the latest funding row – the Department of Health have awarded a contract for smallpox vaccine to a company run by a Labour donor. ‘It has all the hallmarks of a cock-up,’ said Andrew Mackinlay at this afternoon’s meeting of the parliamentary committee. Not so, said The Man. The correct procedures had been followed to the letter. The contract was awarded on the basis of advice from officials. He added, ‘I don’t know what to do; whatever we do to make the process transparent only makes it worse.’
After The Man had gone there was an amusing little discussion about the unseemly jockeying for seats, within range of television cameras, that preceded the Budget. Jean said she had witnessed some ugly scenes which had taken place within sight of the hacks. The parliamentary private secretaries to senior ministers had been unable to sit behind their masters because the places were already occupied and the occupants refused to budge, even at the request of the whips.
Someone was overheard to say, ‘You are sitting in the seat I inherited from Barry Jones,’ as if the hereditary system applies in the Lower House.
We arrived at no particular conclusion, except that Alan Howarth was instructed not to minute the discussion for fear of inviting ridicule.
Thursday, 18 April
To the Chamber to hear Alan Milburn explain how he is proposing to spend Gordon’s largesse. The Man and Gordon came in and sat beside him to mark the significance of the occasion. To begin with Alan seemed flustered. His statement contained a bizarre reference to ‘the sound of bed-pans being dropped in Tredegar’ which caused much merriment on the Tory side and bemusement on ours. At the mention of plans to set up a health service commission, they shouted ‘More bureaucrats.’ Alan was on better form when he challenged the Tories to say what they would do. The truth, which they daren’t face up to, is that an insurance-based system would cost even more then we are proposing to spend. All the same, the Tories seemed in remarkably high spirits. They clearly think we have dealt them a winning card. Our side, by contrast, were subdued. Can it be that, deep down, we suspect the Tories may be right?
A fax from Jeff Rooker’s office, saying he had changed his mind about the Savchenkos. Under the terms of the Dublin Convention (by which asylum seekers can be returned to their first port of call) they had to be sent back to Spain within a month of all procedures being exhausted. I rang Jeff’s private office to ask on what date the clock started ticking and eventually I received a call from a man who explained that they should have been removed in November 2000. In which case, said I, what difference would another couple of months make? Alas, he explained, he was honour-bound. It was such a civilised dialogue that, in an attempt to inject a note of reality, I said that this was a small tragedy. ‘Most of these cases are,’ he said blithely. So that’s it then. I have failed. Any day now the little fellow will be taken away from his school and his playmates and the only stability he has ever known and, with his distraught parents, bundled onto a plane bound for Spain with no idea of what awaits them.
At my suggestion, the good Christian lady who has been helping the family is arranging for the Savchenkos’ papers, giving evidence of the persecution they suffered in the Ukraine, to be translated into Spanish. I have also written a covering letter, ‘To Whom It May Concern’, setting out their case. That, too, is being translated. Finally, I wrote out a cheque for £50 so that at least they will have some money in their pockets when they arrive.
Saturday, 20 April
Sunderland
To the County Hotel at Durham to address the annual dinner of the Crimewriters Association. Giles and Lisanne Radice were there. Lisanne told me that when the Treasury Select Committee, which Giles used to chair, published a report that was anything less than a perfect replica of the official position, Gordon Brown used to ring up Giles at midnight, incandescent with rage, f-ing and blinding, demanding retractions, slamming the phone down. At times, she said, it was so bad that Giles stopped answering the phone when it rang after midnight because he knew it would be Gordon. Giles said, ‘He had no concept of the proprieties that should exist between a secretary of state and a select committee.’
Tuesday, 23 April
Ngoc reports that Emma, observing that Bruce spends most of the day sleeping and eating, has declared that she wishes she were a cat.
‘But cats don’t have nice clothes and good fun like you do.’
‘No, and they don’t have homework either.’
Wednesday, 24 April
To Buckingham Gate to see the law officers, Harriet Harman and Peter Goldsmith. For Harriet this must be like having died and gone to heaven. Plush offices overlooking the tradesmen’s entrance of the Palace. Highly paid, not too strenuous, somewhat removed from the cut and thrust of day-to-day politics (which I sense she misses). I am not sure what the law officers do, beyond vaguely floating around offering advice to the government. Harriet’s predecessor, Ross Cranston, told me that he had visited all 42 regional offices of the Crown Prosecution Service, which suggests that he was having trouble filling his time. I suspect Harriet is, too. Today’s meeting – to discuss deaths in custody – was at her suggestion. Attorney Generals are usually grand figures like Patrick Mayhew, but Peter Goldsmith seems refreshingly normal (although I am told he was until his preferment a million-a-year QC and has just bought a house in Queen Anne’s Gate). He is from the same stable as Charlie Falconer. Bright, rich, decent – and A Friend of The Man.
I walked back across the park. In front of Buckingham Palace a team of gardeners were uprooting the magnificent, and still blooming, display of red tulips set in beds of yellow antirrhinums. Sheer vandalism. ‘Why?’ I asked a young woman standing atop a huge pile of uprooted tulips in the back of a truck, treading them as though they were grapes.
‘They will all die soon,’ she said pleasantly.
‘And what will happen to the bulbs?’
‘Compost,’ she said and resumed trampling.
On the way home in the evening, I ran into Bernard Jenkin, who has just returned from a 36-hour trip to Afghanistan. Needless to say, he is not happy. We will be stuck there for a minimum of two years, he says, and many of the Europeans there are already talking about ten. ‘We need to make clear to the Afghans that we can’t go on holding their hands for ever.’ Bernard, of course, wouldn’t have gone there in the first place. Or into the Balkans. We should only intervene, he says, when our national interest is at stake and his definition of the national interest is narrow.
Monday, 29 April
To the Treasury with Bill Etherington for a cup of tea with Gordon Brown, ostensibly to discuss the fate of Federal Mogul, although in reality there is nothing to discuss since that is all over bar the shouting. I mentioned Dewhirst’s complaint about the tariff imposed by the Americans on menswear imports and Gordon promised to make inquiries. He also undertook to inquire which government departments were in the process of relocating work out of London in the hope that something might be pushed in the direction of Sunderland.
If anything come
s of that, it will have been time well spent.
Rang Sally Morgan at Number 10 in the hope of persuading The Man to open a new school in Sunderland. ‘What do you think of this child benefit story?’ she asked. (The papers are reporting that The Man was considering docking the child benefit of the parents of outof-control youths who refused to co-operate with efforts to tame their offspring.) She said that far from being a local election gimmick, as some unkind people are suggesting, it had leaked out by accident. ‘We are very depressed about it. It is still being worked up, but no one is suggesting it should be applied widely. It is only intended to put a kick in the system for parents who are colluding with their children’s misbehaviour.’
I said that if we wanted to make an impact on anti-social behaviour, we should cut off the supply of housing benefit to rogue landlords who take no interest in either the condition of their property or the behaviour of their tenants. ‘Why don’t you send Tony a note and I’ll put it in his box,’ she said. I will indeed. Just as well I’m not a junior minister, otherwise I could never hope for such access.