A View From The Foothills

by Chris Mullin

  They nodded again, non-committally.

  Whatever next? Will I be asked to fly the plane in the event that the pilot is struck down by al-Qaida?

  1 Beekman Place, New York City

  Two blocks from the UN; eleven floors up, fine views across Coney Island and the fast-flowing East River, spoiled only by a vast, red-neon Coca-Cola advertisement on the far side, allegedly Joan Crawford’s revenge (she married the Coca-Cola heir) for being refused an apartment in this elite condominium.

  Our hosts, Sir Emyr Jones Parry and his wife, Lynn, as agreeable and down to earth a couple as one could hope to find in Her Majesty’s diplomatic service. As I am beginning to discover, the day of the toff is all but over at the Foreign Office (or else they are under deep cover, awaiting a more favourable political climate). So far as I can tell the toffs have been superseded by bright grammar school boys (and the occasional girl). Jones Parry is a Methodist from the Welsh valleys; Lynn, who retains her accent, is from a mining village and devotes her spare time to counselling victims of domestic violence. True, one still comes across a Sebastian or two and there is an Honourable Alice attached to the UN mission (but she turned out to be a single mother with six children).

  Friday, 6 February

  1 Beekman Place

  A cold, grey day. At breakfast Sir Emyr tells a joke about an American general seconded to Sandhurst who asks of a passing lieutenant, ‘Officer, can you tell me where the lecture theatre is at?’

  The lieutenant duly tells him, adding pedantically, ‘In Britain, sir, we don’t put the preposition at the end of the sentence.’

  ‘I get you, lieutenant,’ replies the general. ‘You mean I should have asked, “Where is the lecture theatre at, arsehole?”’

  Today I addressed the United Nations, delegates from 106 nations, no less. It’s true that by the time my turn came the big movers and shakers (Colin Powell, Kofi Annan, Dominique de Villepin) had left the stage. Sir E J P had also departed for an engagement elsewhere. Even so, the chamber was fairly full and the applause a tad above desultory. As ever, I was presented with an undeliverable text which had to be hastily redrafted between engagements. Thus the deletion of passages such as ‘I commend the Transitional Government and the international community for putting in place the Results-Focused Transition Framework.’ My job: to pledge our modest contribution to the rescue of Liberia.

  Wednesday, 18 February

  For the time being, Mum is going to have to remain at Heybridge, where, by all accounts, she is well looked after. Ngoc and I would be happy to have her live with us, but our house has stairs everywhere

  which she will find difficult to manage; anyway, Mum wouldn’t agree to move so far away while Dad is alive.

  What a mess. Four children, scattered around the country, with homes, money, none of us uncaring and yet none of us, for one reason or another, in a position to accommodate our aged parents now that their time has come. What will happen when our turn comes, as it will, not so long from now – 20 or 25 years in my case. The moral of the story is clear: stay close to your children and be prepared to compromise.

  Monday, 23 February

  The Residence, Paris

  This place is straight out of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, save only that the footmen lack powdered wigs (though those serving dinner were wearing white gloves). It was purchased from Napoleon’s promiscuous sister by the Duke of Wellington, a year before Waterloo. The steps up to the front door were the scene of Thatcher’s last stand (‘We fight on. We fight to win’). To the rear, a large walled garden spoiled only by an art nouveau lead obelisk. My suite on the second floor – four-poster bed, the latest Country Life by the bedside, white roses on the mantelpiece – affords a fine view across the gardens and beyond to Le Tour Eiffel, illuminated against the night sky and crowned with a laser beam scanning the heavens, à la Sunderland’s Stadium of Light.

  Tuesday, 24 February

  The Residence

  Tom and I took a turn around the garden; no sooner had we passed along the pebble pathway than a gardener appeared and raked away our footprints. You couldn’t make it up.

  A speech to the French equivalent of the Council for Foreign Relations, followed by a tour of the visa section. Then to lunch, hosted by First Secretary Giles Paxman (brother of Jeremy) at his splendid fourth-floor apartment in the Rue de Varenne. The guests, an amiable collection of advisers – from the Quai, the Elysée and the Matignon. From the window, a distant view across roof tops to the Sacré Coeur, on which the sunlight came and went, turning it alternately from grey to luminous white.

  Home by train from the Gare du Nord in time for supper at the House.

  Thursday, 26 February

  On the way down King Charles Street this morning I ran into Jack’s special adviser, Michael Williams. ‘Did you hear Clare this morning?’ he inquired.

  I did indeed. Casually alleging that Kofi Annan’s phone was bugged and that she had seen transcripts. ‘This will reverberate,’ said Michael, adding that just about every phone in the UN building was bugged. Presumably it’s the Americans who do the bugging and we share the product, but of course we can’t say that. Yet more fallout from this disastrous war. As Michael said, ‘It sticks like shit to your shoes.’

  Monday, 1 March

  One of my officials reported a conversation he had last week with a government legal adviser regarding the Attorney General’s opinion on the legality of the war, which the government is coming under growing pressure to publish. ‘Scarcely credible,’ according to the adviser; he added, ‘although I haven’t put that in writing.’

  Meanwhile it is becoming clear that Clare (who has spent the weekend stirring the pot) may not, after all, have seen a transcript of Kofi Annan’s telephone conversation. Tom says he never saw any such thing in all the time he worked with Valerie and she would certainly have been in the loop.

  The lunchtime ministerial meeting was taken up mainly with a discussion, led by Mike O’Brien, on the alienation of the Muslim community post-Iraq. Apparently, they are all flocking to the Lib Dems, who, true to form, are promising to give them anything they want, even though many of their demands are distinctly illiberal. Denis MacShane countered that we shouldn’t pander: ‘In the name of multiculturalism, we already turn a blind eye to unacceptable practices that we would not accept from any other community.’

  ‘Such as?’ inquired Jack.

  ‘Such as forced marriages masquerading as arranged marriages.’

  There followed a long anguished debate about what was to be done. A worry for Jack whose seat could be at risk. The truth, however (as Jack more or less acknowledged), is that no amount of appeasement will make any difference. We went through all this with Salman Rushdie and it soon passed. In any case, the scope for rational dialogue is limited. After all, a fair swathe of the Muslim world still believes that 9/11 was the work of the Israelis.

  Tuesday, 2 March

  ‘I long for Iraq to go away,’ Jack whispered during Foreign Office Questions this morning. ‘Every morning I get up and it is still there.’ He added, ‘You voted against it.’ As if to say, ‘It’s alright for you, you’re in the clear.’ Jack has several times recalled, without any hint of malice, that I opposed the war. He once remarked that this gave me greater credibility in certain quarters. Does Jack still think the war was a good idea? Did he ever? I wonder.

  Wednesday, 3 March

  In the afternoon, to Oxford to see Gil and Ann Loescher. Despite having been unconscious for weeks, Gil can remember everything up to the moment of the explosion, including someone saying ‘Oh, shit’ as the bomb went off (undoubtedly that person’s last words). I found them both cheerful, optimistic, outgoing and without a trace of self-pity. Astonishing and deeply humbling.

  Monday, 8 March

  To Carlton Gardens for a meeting of the FCO board. The entire top brass assembled around the table in the dining room, watched over by life-size portraits of George II and Queen Caroline. With one exception,
every one a forty- or fifty-something male. Main item on the agenda, Michael Jay’s plan to reorganise along functional rather than geographical lines. Although Jack is said to be signed up in principle, there is a suspicion that we are being railroaded. The paperwork, which only turned up on Friday – after ministers had departed for their constituencies – is suspiciously thin on detail. At Mike O’Brien’s suggestion, I sent Jack a note saying that he and I were unconvinced and, in order not to alert officials, we sent it up via his political adviser.

  The meeting started with a little slide show, the gist of which was that, as a result of cuts being demanded by the Treasury, we couldn’t carry on as we are and there would have to be post closures. Someone asked what value we got from our various American consulates. Someone else remarked that, but for our consulate in Houston, we would never have got so close to George W. Bush (‘That’s the case for closing it down ten years ago,’ I whispered to Mike O’Brien). Michael Jay gave a little summary of his masterplan, taking care to emphasise that ministerial portfolios would remain unchanged. ‘The holy grail,’ he concluded, ‘is a structure we can afford, so we aren’t under constant pressure to salami slice.’

  Mike went first, pointing out that, under the proposed new structure, there didn’t seem to be much role for junior ministers; indeed the organogram included with our papers made no mention of ministers. Denis MacShane, who is broadly in favour of the changes, made the same point.

  ‘Where are the numbers?’ I inquired, only to be told they had not yet been finalised.

  ‘That’s odd, I was under the impression that there was a bit of paper somewhere in the system?’

  ‘Nothing has been agreed.’

  ‘When will they be available?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ blurted Dickie Stagg, the official in charge of the shake-up.

  ‘Tomorrow? Why, when we are meeting today?’

  We were treated to some guff about Dickie having been away at the end of last week.

  ‘And when might ministers be allowed sight of the numbers?’

  ‘At the end of next week,’ offered Dickie.

  ‘When we are ready,’ said Michael Jay.

  ‘Which?’ asked I.

  And so on.

  We turned to Prism, the FCO’s much delayed IT programme. ‘How much extra will that cost?’ I inquired.

  ‘At least a million,’ said someone.

  At which point Jack sprang to life. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of this. Why wasn’t I told?’ No one quite met his eye.

  ‘Well done,’ Mike scribbled on his notepad.

  From officials, an eerie silence.

  Later, Dickie Stagg let slip that there was, after all, a paper with numbers. I pounced. ‘Oh, is there indeed? How many people have seen it?’

  ‘I think I’m the only one,’ giggled Dickie.

  ‘About ten,’ someone else replied simultaneously.

  By now it was obvious to everyone that we were being given the runaround. I overheard Jack say to Michael Jay during the tea break, ‘He’s like a terrier when he gets going.’

  Tuesday, 9 March

  To Number 10 to greet President Biya of Cameroon. His is not a regime of which we entirely approve, but he is being given the full treatment (an audience with the Queen, a meeting with The Man etc). Yet another of the bills for our Iraq adventure. Cameroon was on the UN Security Council and, in the run-up to the war, Valerie Amos was sent to butter up Biya, bearing handwritten missives from The Man (‘Do call in and see me next time you’re in London …’). In the event, Cameroon’s support was never tested, but now it’s payback time and here is the much-loved President rolling up Downing Street in a stretch limo to be photographed shaking hands with The Man in good time for his re-election campaign. Another little nail in the coffin of ethical government, but what can we do?

  The plan is that I should take the President up to the White Drawing Room, keep him chatting for half an hour, after which we will be joined by The Main Person.

  One small difficulty looms. The President speaks French as does The Man, but the Minister for Africa does not. We have an interpreter for the first part of the proceedings, but for the second part there is a danger that The Man will wander in and start chatting away in French, leaving his wretched Minister marooned.

  In the event, this is exactly what happened, but fortunately I had taken the precaution of enlisting the aid of our bright young ambassador to Yaounde who, as soon as The Man appeared, moved to sit beside me and whisper a translation. Humiliation narrowly avoided.

  Biya is one of Africa’s longest-serving rulers. Although by no means the most venal he presides over a regime where corruption and torture are endemic and where the political process, to put it mildly, lacks transparency. To what extent he is responsible for the bad things that happen in his country is unclear since his style of government is so laidback (‘absent yet omnipresent,’ says the briefing note).

  We, The Man and I, have been briefed to deliver tough messages. The Man, however, doesn’t do tough messages (except to the Labour Party), so it is down to me. The difficulty is that, like so many of his kind, the old rogue oozes charm and goodwill and talks like a seasoned democrat; he is also very long-winded, which limits the opportunities for messages of any sort. By the time we see him off the premises, only the haziest messages have been delivered and Biya could be forgiven for thinking he enjoys the almost unqualified support of HMG.

  ‘He talks the talk …’ I murmur to The Man as we stand on the doorstep, waving goodbye.

  ‘They all do,’ he sighs.

  An interesting little postscript to yesterday’s board meeting: apparently, as soon as ministers were off the premises, officials held another meeting at which the version of the organogram containing the numbers miraculously appeared. As it turned out, it was thought to be unsaleable and the relevant officials were sent away to rewrite it. In the meantime every copy of the original was carefully collected up … Pure Sir Humphrey.

  Thursday, 11 March

  A brief chat in the Tea Room with Ann Clwyd, who has just returned from Iraq. She says the Americans have detained about 6,000 people and are either unable or unwilling to release the names of many of them. As a result there are long queues of anxious relatives seeking information about their ‘disappeared’. Ann has been pursuing allegations of torture and mistreatment (and apparently The Man has, too), but Paul Bremer (of whom Ann speaks highly) protests that he is powerless because the prisoners are in the hands of some sort of special interrogation unit controlled from Florida. Presumably the chain of command goes back to Rumsfeld. So much for winning hearts and minds.

  To Chelmsford to see Dad – parched, emaciated, his skin hanging loose. He is being fed through a tube in his stomach. He keeps asking for water and managed to sip from a teaspoon. A tiny spark of humour. When I asked if there was anything I could get him, he replied, ‘You could sneak me a few gallons of booze.’ I sat with him about an hour, holding his hand and came away with tears in my eyes. ‘Why can’t I die?’ he said to Liz the other day. I fear he will live for some time yet although he is slowly starving.

  Friday, 12 March

  A series of bombs have exploded on trains in Madrid. Huge casualties.

  It is unclear whether the culprits are al-Qaida or ETA.

  Monday, 15 March

  To London on the 09.00. Everyone paranoid in the wake of Madrid; people nervously eyeing the luggage rack, constant loudspeaker injunctions to keep our luggage with us at all times. Then: ‘Will the person who has left a bag in the first class toilet please go to the guard’s van?’

  Followed ten minutes later by: ‘If there is a William Etherington’ – my colleague from Sunderland North – ‘on board, would he please go to the guard’s van?’

  Wednesday, 17 March

  To the weekly meeting of the parliamentary party, where David Blunkett described Immigration and Nationality as ‘the most dysfunctional department in t
he civil service’. He went on, ‘When I was in local government I could intervene in a dysfunctional department, but if I intervene in a government department they immediately cry foul. I could sack the entire senior management, but if I did they would leak every single bit of paper in the building.’

  Thursday, 25 March

  Up at five and to Cheltenham to spend an hour trailing the Queen and the Duke around the brilliant new GCHQ building. As usual, when confronted with royalty, I put my foot in it. ‘Morning Ma’am, you’ve brought the rain with you.’

  She (huffily), ‘It wasn’t raining when we left London.’

  Then a minor spat with Philip. ‘Would Charles approve?’ I inquired, referring to the ultra-modern design.

  ‘Charles, Charles who?’ He knew perfectly well, of course. You could see him thinking, ‘Who is this upstart who affects to be on first name terms with the Prince of Wales?’

  Then back to London for a meeting with Hilary Benn and Patricia Hewitt, the purpose of which was to try and encourage the Department of Trade and Industry to take more interest in pursuing British mining companies who have been up to no good in the Congo. In the event, the train was 30 minutes late and so I ended up participating, via Tom’s mobile, sitting outside a Sushi bar on Paddington station.

  Monday, 29 March

  To Carlton Gardens for a ‘political’ lunch. The party pollster Greg Cook gave us the lowdown on the latest polls. The news is not good. Levels of dissatisfaction and cynicism are approaching those of the Major years. There was a discussion on Europe, Jack said that the EC had had ten years of ‘seriously crud’ leaders – Santerre and Prodi. Prodi, he said, would be lucky to hold down even the lowliest government post in this country and yet in Italy he was considered prime ministerial material. The argument over the proposed EU constitution he referred to as ‘a fucking fandango’; we were being squeezed by both the Lib Dems and the Tories. Denis MacShane said that we needed to expose the Tories for the ‘isolationists’ and ‘withdrawalists’ that they are. Liz Symons said, ‘Our refusal to hold a referendum is becoming an issue of trust. We should reconsider.’ Mike O’Brien agreed.