A View From The Foothills

by Chris Mullin

  Thursday, 6 February

  Geoff Hoon announced the deployment to the Gulf of lots more warplanes, helicopters and airforce personnel, prompting a rumble of dissent on our side when he suggested, contrary to what others have been saying, that there might not be a vote (in Parliament) until after the commencement of hostilities ‘in order to retain the element of surprise’. When Diane Abbott pointed out that Congress in America had already been permitted a vote he retreated into bluster about ‘different constitutional arrangements’, prompting more rumbling. ‘He hasn’t got a clue,’ someone muttered. Geoff took a hard pounding. The only covering fire from our side came from Field Marshal Winnick. Meanwhile Geoff sailed on regardless. It’s not that he’s incompetent.

  On the contrary. It’s just that his body language is all wrong. He gives the impression of being gung-ho and uncaring. Also, everyone knows that, like all clever lawyers, he could make the opposite case with equal dexterity.

  Saturday, 8 February

  Sunderland

  It transpires that parts of the latest Downing Street dossier on Iraq, cited with approval by Colin Powell at the UN the other day, have been lifted without attribution from the PhD thesis of a student in California. Unbelievable. One begins to wonder whether there is any serious recent evidence that Saddam is still producing chemical or biological weapons. Many of the earlier claims have turned out to be either hogwash or years out of date. The inspectors have found little or nothing. One hears whispers that the intelligence services, on both sides of the Atlantic, are not best pleased with the way in which politicians are twisting their evidence. The case for war is slender.

  Sunday, 9 February

  Awoke to find our front gate had disappeared. I later discovered it, in undergrowth further down the street. Two other gates had also been pulled off and Richard at number 12 had his car window smashed. Really it is too much.

  Monday, 10 February

  Frank Dobson, who has been tasked with organising resistance to the British National Party, addressed a meeting in Sunderland’s council chamber. About 60 people, mostly councillors, attended at short notice. There’s no doubt we have a problem. The BNP have correctly calculated that there are rich pickings to be had in Sunderland (anyone in doubt need only glance at the letters page in the Echo). They are circulating a poisonous (but well-produced) flyer, The Sunderland Patriot, which pushes all the buttons – asylum, drugs, crime – and is cynically designed to stir up fear and loathing among the righteous. Goodness knows how we are going to breathe life into the complacent, indolent, moribund local party, but somehow we must.

  If we can’t even persuade our members to fight the fascists, what’s the point?

  There is a story in today’s Guardian about a British citizen of Pakistani origin (his father is a bank manager in Manchester) who was kidnapped in Pakistan by American special forces, stuffed into the boot of a car and driven across the border into Afghanistan, where he has been detained at Bagram airbase. Apparently, he has not seen daylight for a year. Repeated Foreign Office requests for consular access have been refused. Which shows precisely how much influence we have with our beloved American allies – none, zero, zilch.

  The headline in tonight’s Standard reads: ‘NATO FACING COLLAPSE ON IRAQ’.

  Tuesday, 11 February

  Robin’s new hours are a disaster. Everyone is moaning about them, including several of those unwise enough to vote for the change. I was the only member of the select committee present at 08.45 this morning. For a while it looked as if we were going to be inquorate, but several others eventually dribbled in.

  A poll in today’s Times says our lead over the Tories has shrunk to one per cent. ‘What a mess,’ I remarked to David Hanson, The Man’s man.

  ‘He knows he’s in serious difficulty,’ said David, ‘but he still thinks it will be alright. He thinks Blix will come up with a clear report, that there will be a second resolution and that the French won’t use their veto.’ He added, ‘That’s why I’m hanging in there.’

  ‘A worst case scenario,’ I said, ‘would be an equivocal report from Blix which the Americans ignore and they go ahead anyway.’

  ‘In that case,’ said David, ‘we’re in deep shit.’

  Wednesday, 12 February

  The Man took a battering at Question Time. The Tories, prompted no doubt by the recent decline in our fortunes, seem to have perked up. Iain Duncan Smith was unusually buoyant, shamelessly playing the asylum card. The Man repeated his foolish pledge to cut asylum applications by half by September; goodness knows what unpleasant contortions we will have to go through to achieve that. Most of the questions from our side were, unhelpfully, about Iraq and Glenda Jackson followed up with a devastating point of order on the same subject (‘I am not ashamed of my party, I am ashamed of my government’).

  The Man wasn’t at the parliamentary committee – he was on his way to Ireland for a bit of light relief. JP stood in for him. Gordon Prentice opened, saying that at yesterday’s private briefing with BBC correspondents, it was asserted that the decision to invade Iraq had already been taken and that the war would begin in the first week of March. Hilary Armstrong switched on that fixed, mirthless smile that she always displays at moments of difficulty. ‘I don’t know why you’re laughing, Hilary,’ snapped Gordon, ‘this is war and peace.’

  Hilary denied that she was laughing. Gordon went on, ‘There should be a vote in Parliament. People are fed up with all the fancy footwork.’

  ‘I’ll pass that on,’ JP said tersely. Unable to leave it at that he added, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t got a resolution’ – a reference to Gordon’s enthusiasm for votes at meetings of the parliamentary party.

  ‘That’s unworthy of you,’ replied Gordon, who (unlike JP) never loses his cool.

  Robin Cook stepped into the breach. ‘There is no wish to sidestep a vote. It is just that the precise timing depends upon events. It is inconceivable that British troops could be committed to a war without a vote in Parliament.’

  ‘Pick a date, any date,’ challenged Gordon.

  Hilary quoted Jack Straw as saying that no date for war had been agreed. ‘Do you believe a BBC journalist more than you believe Jack?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘That’s clear,’ sneered Prescott.

  ‘I assure you,’ said Hilary, ‘that the question [of a vote] is considered daily.’

  Helen Jackson said naively, ‘If there is no second resolution, there may have to be a split between the US and the UK. That’s what the party would expect.’

  No one had the heart to tell her that she was barking up a gum tree.

  Bev Hughes, the immigration minister, told me something extraordinary this evening. She said that The Man’s promise to halve the number of new asylum cases – first made in an interview with Jeremy Paxman last week and repeated at Questions today – was a mistake. ‘He’s got the year wrong. We were planning for September 2004. When we contacted Downing Street they claimed that Tony had intended to say what he said because he wasn’t satisfied with progress. That was the first we had heard about it.’ As Dennis Skinner says, The Man is becoming increasingly reckless.

  Thursday, 13 February

  Lunch with John Gilbert, who grows grander by the day, calling me ‘Dear Boy’ and ‘Old Thing’, but I like him. Always a twinkle in his eye.

  A charming, wise, unashamed bon viveur, with a fundamental streak of decency (‘in any conversation with an American, I always try to get in a mention of the death penalty’). John reckons that, in the event of war, the Americans will reach Baghdad in two or three days and that after that it will depend whether Saddam’s republican guard are capable of drawing them into street fighting, which could be very bloody. Blair’s fate, he says, will depend on (a) a second resolution and (b) a quick, clean end. He doesn’t think the Americans will necessarily embark on another adventure after this one. When we parted he said, ‘By the time we meet again – unless we convene an emergency session – Tony Blai
r may no longer be Prime Minister.’

  ‘Are you that Labour MP?’ a taxi driver asked as I waited for Ngoc at Durham station at 11 p.m. this evening.

  I agreed that I probably was.

  ‘Well you tell that Mr Blair that I’ve voted Labour all my life and I am never voting Labour again.’

  ‘Why?’

  It was asylum of course. ‘You’ve got shoot-outs between Turkish gangs in London, killings in Manchester …’

  I pointed out mildly that asylum seekers had been coming since well before Tony Blair was elected.

  ‘Well he should be getting rid of them.’ By now the man was raving. ‘I’m from a mining family. They’ve all voted Labour. Never again. There are asylum seekers here, in this station. I’ve seen them hiding so they don’t have to pay the train fare. I’ve seen them. Here, HERE.’ He gesticulated wildly at an empty parking lot. I wanted to ask him what newspaper he read, but he climbed into his car and drove away, still raving.

  Friday, 14 February

  My mood grows increasingly black. War looms, the party is imploding and I have nothing useful to say, hopelessly compromised by being inside the tent. Every day the Today programme leaves messages on my answerphone, but I don’t respond. What is there to say? Until now my silence (or near silence – I did fire a little shot at Prime Minister’s Questions the other day) has been possible to justify on the grounds that events are still unfolding, but make-your-mind-up time is fast approaching. I have drawn question four at PMQs for the first week back after the recess. That’s twice in three weeks that my number has come up (after nothing for more than a year). Someone up there is trying to tell me something.

  Saturday, 15 February

  Sunderland

  In London a huge demonstration, allegedly the largest ever, against war with Iraq. Let no one say that politics is dead or that New Labour has failed to mobilise the young and the idealistic. Not even Thatcher provoked opposition on this scale. Unfortunately it sends the wrong message to Saddam – the odds are he will continue to prevaricate, increasing the likelihood of war.

  Meanwhile in Glasgow, The Man has come out fighting – Baghdad or bust.

  Saturday, 21 February

  Sunderland

  Another promising row is brewing in the Tory Party over Duncan Smith’s decision to abandon all that phoney nonsense about helping the vulnerable and revert to the old formula which has failed them at the last two elections – fear and loathing about crime and asylum seekers and tax cuts for the prosperous. Portillo has helpfully waded in today. Who will be first to swing from a lamppost – IDS or Saddam? It’s going to be a close call.

  The Man, meanwhile, is in Rome, explaining his war-plans to the Pope.

  Monday, 24 February

  Rang Mike O’Brien at the Foreign Office to say that I have Question 4 to The Man on Wednesday and I am thinking of raising the failure of the Americans to respond to our query about compensating the Afghan woman who lost her husband and six of her eleven children to an American bomb as an illustration of how little influence we have. Far from being dismayed, Mike was delighted and promised to alert the Minister at the embassy in the hope that it might prompt him finally to get his finger out.

  An extraordinary piece in tonight’s Evening Standard saying that, despite all recent embarrassments, Cherie and that Carole Caplin woman have been spotted shopping together in Chelsea. It is reported that they visited an emporium and expressed an interest in six pairs of £300-a-time shoes and that – so it is alleged – La Caplin rang back and tried to bargain for a lower price. She is quoted as saying, ‘Well they’re very expensive, you realise. Don’t you know Cherie has four children?’ Dear Lord, hasn’t the woman got any sense? No sooner has the Bristol flats fiasco blown over than she’s at it again. I showed it to Jean Corston, who shared my amazement.

  Tuesday, 25 February

  To Thames House, Millbank, with half a dozen members of the Home Affairs Committee, for our first meeting with the fearsome-sounding head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller. Actually she was charming. A stoutish woman in her mid-to-late fifties, sporting eye shadow and two large pearl earrings; a small, downward-curving mouth, implying severity, but in fact she smiled readily, reminding me slightly of Liz Forgan. I suspect she could be good fun. She hinted, but didn’t quite say, that she might favour legalising and regulating drugs, but wouldn’t be drawn when I pressed her, except to say that a lot of chief constables were privately sympathetic to legalising. She knocked firmly on the head Ann Widdecombe’s ludicrous scheme for locking up and vetting all new asylum seekers, saying it would be a waste of resources and that, in any case, most terrorists didn’t enter the country in the backs of lorries, they tended to travel first class and had multiple identities. Finally, and most interestingly, I asked whether an attack on Iraq would make us more or less vulnerable to terrorism. She replied without hesitation, ‘More – it will radicalise a new generation of young Arabs.’ I wonder if she’s told The Man.

  A call from Elizabeth, a political officer at the US embassy about the poor Afghan woman. Her every word reeked of insincerity. ‘Oh hi Chris, great to hear from you. I’ve put together some stuff about what we are doing to help the people of Afghanistan …’

  Not interested, I said. ‘What I want to know is what you are doing to help the woman and her family whose case Mike O’Brien drew to your minister’s attention four months ago.’

  She started to explain that the great, good, merciful United States did not compensate individuals on whom it dropped bombs by accident, presumably on the grounds that there were so many of them that the coffers would soon run dry. ‘If it was up to me, I would compensate them all, but then I’m a softie …’ she prattled. I began to feel physically sick.

  ‘If we want to occupy the moral high ground in Iraq, we’d better try seizing it in Afghanistan,’ I said through gritted teeth, hoping that the mention of Iraq might cause a little light to come on, but there was no sign that it did. Gradually, it transpired that she had lost the newspaper cutting: ‘I guess it got lost in the minister’s briefcase.’

  Five months since the subject was first raised, by the Prime Minister himself, and they have done nothing, absolutely nothing. I said tersely that I would fax her another copy and put the phone down, seething.

  Wednesday, 26 February The day of the big Iraq debate.

  At this morning’s meeting of the parliamentary party Ann Clwyd reported back on her visit to northern Iraq. It seems that despite Saddam, the Turks and sanctions the Kurds have set up a more or less functioning statelet; nobody is starving, the children are in school, there is a rudimentary health service, infant mortality is lower than in Iraq proper, the Kurds even have their own little parliament. As Ann says, it gives the lie to those who argue that the piteous condition of Iraq’s people is all down to sanctions. According to Ann, the Kurds are terrified that, in the event of war, they will be occupied by the Turks, who they fear as much as the Iraqis.

  The subject came up at the parliamentary committee this afternoon. The Man’s response was forthright: ‘I can assure you that will not happen. We have reached a very clear set of understandings with Turkey. The territorial integrity of Iraq is sacrosanct.’

  ‘Why,’ asked Gordon Prentice, ‘if the case [for war] is so compelling, can’t public opinion be won round?’

  The Man responded calmly, ‘Public opinion is not so fixed. It will come round if there is a second resolution.’ He added, ‘I still believe that we will get one. I can’t be certain, but I don’t think there will be a veto.’ In response to another shot from Gordon he said, ‘It’s not a question of giving the Americans what they want. If it had been up to them, significant parts of the Administration would have gone in six or eight months ago.’

  Someone mentioned the Lib Dems. ‘Their behaviour is contemptible,’ he snorted.

  Ann said, ‘I couldn’t look the Kurds in the face again if I didn’t support the Prime Minister tonight.’ She added, ‘Even though
he sacked me in 1995.’

  ‘Did I?’ The Man’s jaw fell. He had clearly forgotten.

  ‘Yes, over a visit to the Kurds, actually.’

  There was much merriment around the table. Ann didn’t rub it in. Her only point was that she was no poodle, which nobody needed convincing about anyway.

  I briefly changed the subject – to asylum. ‘Did you really mean to promise that asylum applications would be halved by September this year?’

  The Man said he did.

  ‘Because Home Office ministers seemed to be under the impression that September next year was the target date.’

  No cock crowed. The Man repeated that he had been of sound mind, adding that applications were falling steeply since the Act came into force in November.

  Considering the pressure, he is in remarkable shape. True, his face has shrunk slightly. The lines are sharper, cheeks indented but, contrary to what one sometimes hears, his hair-line is not receding rapidly. Pictures from ten years ago show the same isolated tuft at the front; there has been a retreat, but nothing remarkable. Sometimes his face is shrouded in a haze of exhaustion; very occasionally he suppresses a yawn, but always he remains focused. The eyes never wander. He never glances at the clock. And next day, after a good night’s sleep, he is as right as rain. If we can get through the current crisis, he should be with us for a long time.

  Snippets:

  First: Steve Byers reports that he has had several long conversations with The Man about our current predicament. Steve says he has told him frankly how damaged he is by getting too close to Bush and The Man privately acknowledges that this may have been a mistake, but claims that it was necessary if the Americans were to be headed down the UN route. According to Steve, a search is underway for something to give the French in order to provide them with cover for a U-turn; the hope is that they will not want to wreck the UN.