Decline & Fall

by Chris Mullin

  Well, it’s had the opposite effect on me. I am not voting for this nonsense under any circumstances, even though it means jettisoning any thoughts of a comeback.

  Tuesday, 8 November

  6pm, Committee Room 12

  Gareth Peirce came to urge us to stand firm on the Terrorism Bill. The meeting was sparsely attended but he offered two nuggets. First, that two of the 7 July bombers were under surveillance – photographic and audio – well before the bombings. Which confirms what M told me soon after the event and contradicts the original police version. Second, that the suspect who did a runner in the so-called ricin plot, one of the cases highlighted by Assistant Commissioner Hayman, had been released after only two days in custody, thereby making nonsense of the claim that had the police been able to hold him longer, they might have snared a major terrorist. This detail is omitted from Hayman’s letter, one of the key documents in the police case for greater powers. I shall look for an opportunity to get that on the record.

  Wednesday, 9 November

  11.30am: the big day. A huge lobbying operation underway. Gordon is on his way back from Israel, after only an hour on the ground. Jack is coming back from Moscow. Several messages for me to ring Hilary Armstrong and one to ‘call Number 10’. I ignored the Number 10 message, but called in to see Hilary, who was at her most emollient. ‘Chris, I need your help.’ I politely explained that I was unable to oblige. That I wasn’t revelling in being a rebel. That, on the contrary, I was deeply depressed by the prospect. In any case my name is on the Winnick amendment and there is no way I can leave him swinging in the wind. ‘In that case, I think The Boss will want to talk to you.’ Yes, I am sure he will. It’s an exact repeat of the Iraq vote. There is a pecking order of pressure. First, the junior whip. Then Hilary. Then The Man. Or JP or Gordon, as appropriate. In vain I protest to Hilary that I ought not to waste The Man’s time. After all, he’s entertaining the Chinese president, the Polish prime minister and goodness knows who else, on top of which he has to answer Questions in 20 minutes. I am just getting up to leave, when Hilary’s factotum puts his head round the door and says, ‘The Prime Minister is on the line for Mr Mullin now. . .’ Oh Lord. I have been set up. Hilary suddenly vanishes and I find myself alone at her desk, clutching her telephone, talking to Himself.

  His tone is, as ever, friendly; not at all assertive; unhurried despite having to face Michael Howard across the dispatch box just 18 minutes from now. ‘Chris, I need you to vote with the government.’

  ‘I’d love to Tony, believe me, but I spent much of the eighties and early nineties rescuing people who had fallen foul of the so-called terrorism experts and I don’t want to go through all that again.’

  ‘There are safeguards. A High Court judge.’

  ‘Some High Court judges are very gullible.’

  ‘That’s not my experience.’

  For once it is I who bring the conversation to a close, pointing out (as if he doesn’t know) that he has Questions in a few minutes.

  ‘We must talk again,’ he said.

  Not if I can help it, I said to myself.

  Two other points from the conversation with Hilary: (1) she had the audacity to assert that the reason we are sticking to 90 days was because our backbenches are demanding it; (2) that, contrary to reports, Gordon had not been summoned back from Israel. He (and Jack) had been paired so their absence would have made no difference. Gordon was coming back of his own accord, presumably because he wants the world to know that The Man’s survival depends on him. Indeed, there is evidence that his unseen hand is already at work. I ran into Joan Ruddock, who is strongly opposed to 90 days, but who has now come over all wobbly. Why? ‘Because Gordon has come back.’ Obviously she still has hopes of preferment.

  Unfortunately for Gordon, the situation is too far gone for him to make any difference to the outcome.

  12 noon, the Chamber

  Michael Howard on superb form, relentlessly exposing the chasm between Charles Clarke and The Man. Our side, subdued (so much for Hilary’s assertion that they are gung-ho for 90 days). From the other side cries of ‘Why don’t you publish a dossier, Tony?’

  Until now I assumed the regime would triumph, especially after The Man’s bravura performance on Monday. The signs are, however, that, far from caving in to pressure, most people are holding firm and The Man’s strategy of dividing the Tories isn’t working either. Also, it appears that Ian Paisley and his merry men will be voting against the government, too. Not least because the master strategists have chosen this day to publish a Bill granting immunity from prosecution to IRA ‘on-the-runs’. Nice one, lads.

  1.30pm–4.30pm, the Chamber

  Charles doing his best, but clearly damaged. Unable to explain why until Monday he was talking compromise and why suddenly the shutters came down. Everyone knows why, of course, but he can’t say. He’s also hobbled by the presence at his side of Hazel Blears, a shiny-faced New Labour automaton, who is gung-ho for everything Number 10 comes out with. God forbid that she ends up in his job, but it can’t be ruled out.

  A veritable blizzard of interventions, some from loyalists, but mainly hostile. Charles deals courteously with everyone, friend and foe alike, apparently unruffled. Until he starts praying in aid the ricin case. At which point, egged on by Clare Short and Kate Hoey, I get up and point out the inconvenient detail that the police forgot to mention – namely that they released the suspect after only two days and, therefore, this example is of no relevance to the case for 90 days. It may be my imagination, but things went a bit quiet at that point. Charles replied almost under his breath.

  David Davis was lacklustre although he did make one good point – how dare New Labour accuse the Tories of being soft on terrorism when they had lost Airey Neave, Ian Gow and Tony Berry to terrorist bombs? David Winnick, on the other hand, was brilliant. Truly, his finest hour. I forgive him all his many sins.

  4.56pm

  Ayes to the right, 291. Noes to the left, 322. New Labour’s first ever defeat. The Rubicon has been crossed.

  Later, the Tea Room

  ‘Your intervention was devastating,’ said Mike O’Brien, our Solicitor General, who was sitting next to Charles on the front bench throughout. He reported the following, sotto voce, exchange between himself and the Home Secretary while I was on my feet:

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Does it damage our case?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Oh fuck.’

  Thursday, 10 November

  ‘TRAITORS,’ screams this morning’s Sun in letters two inches high. ‘MPs betray public,’ says the strap-line. On an inside page pictures of Osama Bin Laden, Al Zarqawi and Clare Short. Mercifully, I seem to have escaped a monstering, although a full list of ‘traitors’ is to be found on the Sun website. One amusing snippet: the 7 July victim whose bloodied image was plastered across the Sun’s front page on Tuesday turns out to be a Cardiff professor who is wholly opposed to 90-day detention and outraged by having his picture so shamelessly misused. No chance of Sun readers being told about that.

  To the Education Department, where Ruth Kelly spent 40 minutes taking me through her – or rather Number 10’s – plans for the latest shake-up of secondary education. The meeting was at her request. The opening round of a big push to ensure that it doesn’t all end in tears. As she explains them, the proposed reforms don’t sound so wicked. No school will be compelled to opt out of local authority control; the Bill will be merely an enabling measure. It’s about giving working class parents the same ‘choice’ that the middle classes already enjoy by virtue of their social mobility and their sharp elbows. Maybe, but I still worry about a free-for-all leading to more, rather than fewer, sink schools. For the time being I am keeping an open mind. I don’t want to be part of another uprising, but at this distance I won’t rule it out, otherwise no one will listen.

  Geoff Hoon announced the recess dates for the next year and, sure enough, he has dropp
ed September sittings, thereby reneging on Robin Cook’s much vaunted ‘deal’. A few of us protested, but I have no doubt we are a minority. Odd, we fight hard enough to get into this place, but having clawed our way in we can’t wait to go home.

  Friday, 11 November

  To the Immigration Detention Centre at Yarlswood near Bedford in an attempt to rescue the Angolan family from Hendon who face destitution if they are sent back.

  I hired a young Angolan woman to interpret and we interviewed the family for a couple of hours. The woman seemed deeply depressed and just stared ahead blankly. The man, though fairly buoyant, is still in denial. He doesn’t believe it’s going to happen. I think it will. When I said that to him he began to shake. Meanwhile the little boys played happily in the background, oblivious to the fate that awaits them.

  I was about to depart when a woman security officer wandered in and said casually to the husband, ‘Go to your room and pack. You’ve been released.’ Only temporarily, as it turned out. But of course they had no home to go to. Their house in Cairo Street is boarded up and a call to the Chief Immigration Officer at North Shields quickly established that there wasn’t a chance in hell of getting it unboarded by this evening. Instead they were expected to make their way into and across London and report to a hostel at Heathrow, where they were to wait until Monday and then find their way back to Sunderland. Never mind that they hardly speak English, that they are utterly unfamiliar with the terrain, that it is rush hour on Friday and that they are carrying all their worldly goods and two small boys.

  ‘This is madness,’ I protest.

  ‘It happens all the time,’ replies my relentlessly cheerful minder.

  After some discussion we agree that I will take the family to King’s Cross and put them on a train to Newcastle, where they will be picked up by friends who will accommodate them for the weekend.

  Only when I see their baggage do I realise what I have let myself in for. It is 8pm by the time we reach London and even then there is the difficult task of transporting the family and their bags the 600 yards from the Thameslink to the mainline station. I buy them all a sandwich, load them onto the 21.00 train to Newcastle and wave them goodbye. Then I race back to Parliament, collect my bags and get back to King’s Cross just in time to catch the last train to the north. Home at 2am.

  Monday, 14 November

  Unless I am mistaken the mood is turning ugly. At the parliamentary party meeting this evening there were calls for retribution against some of last week’s rebels. Clare Short in particular, for referring to last week’s meeting as ‘a Nuremberg rally’ and Bob Marshall-Andrews for allegedly colluding with the Tory whips. Last night I caught a glimpse of Tessa Jowell on television talking of ‘betrayal’. And this evening someone drew my attention to an article on the Guardian website by Kitty Ussher, a young upwardly mobile New Labour zealot elected a mere five months ago, saying that those of us who voted against 90 days will have blood on our hands in the event of another atrocity. How dare she? What does she know of Guildford, Woolwich, Birmingham, Judith Ward, the Maguires? The trouble with these shiny New Labour types is that they think history started in May 1997.

  A call from a Ugandan of my acquaintance to say that Museveni has arrested the opposition leader and charged him with treason; the man had recently returned home after several years in exile and there is an election pending. Another of our favourite Africans sets off down the slippery slope. We have the same problem in Ethiopia, where my friend Meles Zenawi has locked up the opposition and is charging them with treason. If this goes on we will have no choice but to withdraw support. What’s the use of increasing aid, if there is nowhere to spend it?

  A chat with Alan Milburn in the Tea Room. He says it is vital that The Man is allowed to see through his programme. ‘If there is a long lingering death, it won’t just be Tony who is damaged; it will destroy the Labour Party.’

  In that case, I say, The Man is going to have take us all into his confidence. No more proclamations from on high. No repeat of last week’s folly.

  On that last point, Alan doesn’t accept that 90 days was folly. On the contrary, he says, the issue may have to be revisited in the next year or two. As regards proclamations from on high, he agrees and says he’s told The Man so. ‘I told him not to oversell the education reforms. Apart from the fact that the education white paper is unreadable, the proposals aren’t all that Tony claims.’

  Wednesday, 16 November

  A new horror from Iraq. American troops have discovered 170 starving, terrified prisoners in cells underneath an Interior Ministry building; some have been hideously tortured. And that’s not all. After weeks of denials – the latest only yesterday – the Pentagon has been forced to own up to using napalm in Falluja. Where will all this end?

  Thursday, 17 November

  The Garden Room, Clarence House

  Gwyneth Dunwoody regal, radiant, dressed entirely in red save for a long string of pearls, occupies a chair by the mantelpiece. A dozen of us lesser Members are arranged tightly on a pair of luxurious sofas. HRH immaculate, pin-striped, double-breasted, a maroon white-spotted handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket, a large gold signet ring, his only jewellery, on the small finger of his left hand. We are about the same age, he slightly younger, but his brow is furrowed, his face deeply lined, his complexion a teeny bit florid. The burden of office? The frustration of being forever in waiting? Or is it angst about the state of the country, the planet? Let no one doubt, he cares about these matters and has thought more deeply about them than most of us.

  Alongside HRH, slumped (that is the right word) the Hon. Nicholas Soames, normally the life and soul of any party, except that today he is on his best behaviour, expertly chairing our little gathering, introducing each of us, referring to HRH as ‘Sir’ even though they have been friends for 20 years or more.

  We have stepped back in time. We are in the cluttered Edwardian sitting room of a great house. The date is any time in the last 100 years. A huge tapestry depicting a turbaned Arab potentate dominates the rear wall. Opposite, to the right of the mantelpiece, an exquisite Chinese cabinet full of tiny drawers. A grand piano, covered with framed family photographs, mainly black-and-white; one depicting Princess Margaret as a young woman to the fore. Autumn sunshine, filtered by the plane trees, streams in through the long windows. A servant dispenses refreshment. The room, indeed the entire lower floor, is exactly as it was when the Queen Mother was in residence. One half expects to see the old lady come hobbling in on her sticks or perhaps just to catch a glimpse of her disappearing around a corner.

  HRH addresses us. He speaks without notes, with passion and self-deprecating humour, holding our attention for a full 20 minutes. His theme, the work of his various charities. Their range is vast, but always he comes back to the same point. How to widen the horizons of the young, especially the disaffected, the unlucky and even the malign. I confess I am impressed. This is a man who, if he chose, could fritter away his life on idleness and self-indulgence, as others who have borne the title Prince of Wales have done, and yet he has chosen to take an interest, a detailed interest, in the human condition. What influence he has he uses, sometimes to great effect, even at the risk of treading on official toes. It isn’t just talk. His mentality is can-do – and he has a track record of achievement clearly visible for anyone who cares to look. To be sure he has faults. Don’t we all? But let he who has done more cast the first stone.

  A discussion ensues. Everyone contributes. HRH making the odd note with a thin gold pen. Some of our number use the occasion to invite him to their constituencies, which is not really the point of the exercise. Dari Taylor describes her childhood in the Rhondda. Others address the bigger picture. Alan Simpson turns the discussion to sustainable living, another of HRH’s passions. It is apparent that the Prince has taken a shine to Alan. There is talk of a Great Exhibition. Alan says to him, ‘Don’t take this wrongly, but there is a role for someone to be the Jamie Oliver of the en
vironment.’ Adding sadly, ‘I don’t think the lead will come from Parliament.’

  The meeting lasts nearly two hours. When it ends HRH presses an ornate button on the table beside him and the door opens, but he doesn’t disappear. On the contrary, he lingers. On the way out I persuade the butler to give me a tour of the dining room. The walls are crammed. A veritable art gallery. A Sickert of George V at the races; an unusual Monet depicting a stark granite mountainside; various portraits of the Queen Mother, a large one of her as a young woman hangs over the fireplace; a series of bleak paintings of Windsor, commissioned at the outbreak of war because the King and Queen feared that the castle would be destroyed and wanted to preserve the memory.