Decline & Fall

by Chris Mullin

  Wednesday, 11 July

  Front-page headline in this morning’s Sun: ‘Cheshire housewife marries Bin Laden’.

  Friday, 13 July

  To the Stadium of Light for David Puttnam’s final outing as chancellor of the university. A delightful man. One of that small band of life enhancers of my acquaintance (others include Liz Forgan and Charles Baker Cresswell). Merely to spend time in his company is to come away refreshed. At lunch David remarked that Sunderland and the north-east had regained its self-confidence during the last ten years or so. He told of an exchange with the late Bishop David Shepherd, regarding the revival of Liverpool, which might equally apply to us.

  ‘How come?’ he had asked.

  To which the bishop replied, ‘We stopped feeling sorry for ourselves.’

  Sunday, 15 July

  Mark Malloch-Brown, the new Africa–Asia–UN minister, has unwisely given an interview in the Telegraph in which he appears to be under the impression that he is a rather more significant figure than he actually is. By evening he had been firmly put back in his box by Miliband. Another little foretaste of the problems that lie ahead with these big tenters? In the Lords they are taking bets which one will be the first to throw his toys out of the pram and walk away denouncing us. The smart money is still on motormouth Digby Jones, but Malloch-Brown obviously can’t be ruled out.

  Monday, 16 July

  Chief Whip, Geoff Hoon, announced at this evening’s meeting of the parliamentary party that we were going to have to suspend the convention that parliamentary private secretaries should not serve on select committees because we didn’t have enough people to fill the vacancies. For this parliament only, he said, but we shall see. So much for strengthening Parliament’s ability to scrutinise the executive. The problem is that ever more backbenchers have been incorporated into the executive. The process began as a device for neutralising Parliament and has mushroomed under Gordon – a record number of ministers (including two and a half juniors at DFID doing the job I resigned from six years ago because there wasn’t enough work for one), including ten unpaid; a record 57 parliamentary private secretaries, who while away their time planting questions (and sometimes even the supplementaries), half a dozen ‘special envoys’ for Cyprus, the rainforests and goodness-knows-where-else, and another half a dozen party vice-chairs. Barmy.

  Thursday, 19 July

  To the Treasury in an attempt to persuade Jane Kennedy not to allow the Inland Revenue to close their tax offices in the centre of Sunderland. The girl on reception had never heard of Jane and had to make a telephone call to discover who the ministers were . . .

  I pointed out that it made no sense for one part of the Treasury to be farming out civil service jobs to the blighted regions while another department in the same building was looking for ways of disposing of them and suggested that the two should talk to each other. Whether or not they will take any notice remains to be seen.

  Then to the chamber, where I made a short and unintended contribution to the Zimbabwe debate. A dismal affair. A handful of the usual suspects, Nicholas Winterton et al, huffing and puffing, and the latest in a long line of hapless Foreign Office ministers, Meg Munn, who has never set foot in Africa, reading from a script about events with which she is utterly unfamiliar. Not her fault, poor woman. It’s more than two years now since the Foreign Office had a minister in the Commons capable of answering questions about Africa.

  In passing, a nice little story from George Young. He went to help out in the by-election at Ealing Southall, part of which he represented until 1997, and called at a restaurant he used to frequent. The proprietor, who hadn’t seen him for more than ten years, didn’t bat an eyelid and greeted him with the words, ‘Usual table, Sir George?’

  Home on the 20.00.

  Friday, 20 July

  Half a dozen or more members of the new Cabinet have ‘fessed up’ to smoking dope in their youth, including wide-eyed, innocent Yvette Cooper. This sudden bout of breast beating has apparently been prompted by plans to tighten the law on cannabis, combined with the emergence of a youthful picture of our new Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, looking a little on the high side.

  Monday, 23 July

  The floods have reached Tory England, which means that any day now the media will be setting out in search of someone in government to blame, although David Cameron has provided a welcome distraction by disappearing to Rwanda even as the flood waters lap at his constituency.

  A mesmerising performance from George Galloway in response to the Standards and Privileges report on his relationship with the former Iraqi regime. No one left the chamber during the one hour and 18 minutes that he was on his feet. In turns angry, humorous, outrageous. He would have gone on much longer, but for frequent interruptions from the Speaker urging him to address the report and stop slagging off members of the committee. Eventually the Speaker lost patience and named him, leaving George to slink ingloriously out from the chamber, whereupon George Young was called and proceeded to scientifically demolish the huge wall of bluster that Galloway had so painstakingly erected. He was duly excluded for a month without pay, for all his brilliance a busted flush.

  Sunday, 5 August–Saturday, 11 August

  Montréal du Gers

  To France to stay with Ray and Luise Fitzwalter, clutching a copy of Alastair Campbell’s diaries. I had intended to give it to Ray as a present, but he already had one that he and Luise were competing to read. We whiled away a pleasant week with outings and a couple of six- or seven-mile randonnées through fields of vines and sunflowers. Dinners by the pool, a concert in the church at Forces, medieval night in Montréal (beautiful, innocent, yob-free fun). Just as we were about to depart, Ngoc received a text from Saigon to say that her father was dead.

  Sunday, 12 August

  Sère, Gascony

  Communication with Vietnam proved difficult but we eventually made contact on a bad line using the owner’s landline. Grandpa will be buried tomorrow. Later, a text from Luise to say that Ray’s daughter had given birth to a son. As one life ends, another begins . . .

  Monday, 13 August

  This morning, at about the time Grandpa’s funeral was taking place far away in Kontum, we went up the hill behind our cottage and held our own little service. We stood in a circle and Ngoc described his life with its dramatic changes of fortune, how he went from being a refugee to prosperity, before being reduced again to penury. I said a few words. Then we stood facing east, put our hands together and bowed. We were up there about an hour, a pale view of the Pyrenees on the distant horizon.

  Wednesday, 15 August

  Sère, Gascony

  A short walk in the Pyrenees. We drove to the Col d’Aspen, picnicked in the woods and then the girls and I (Emma complaining all the while about the heat) walked a couple of miles to a viewpoint offering stunning 360-degree views, range after range receding into a blue haze.

  Wednesday, 22 August

  Sunderland

  Ngoc has set up a little altar for Grandpa on the mantelpiece in the kitchen. A framed photo flanked by small candles, flowers and a bowl of fruit. Death in Vietnam is not so clinical and impersonal as it is here . . . the body removed within hours, a trip to the crematorium, a buffet lunch for the mourners and then back home to get on with life . . . In Vietnam it is much more complicated. The body remains in the house until the funeral, friends visit and must be entertained, monks are hired to pray and perform the rites. The dead are still believed to be present for the first three days and food must be prepared for them. The spirit doesn’t leave the body until day 49, at which point it will be determined whether the departed ends up in heaven or hell. The ritual accompanying the 49th day is, therefore, especially important and Ngoc will be going home for that.

  Wednesday, 29 August

  Sunderland

  A trickle of new Labour Party members, about a dozen this month. The first for a long time. Not to mention an eight-point lead in the polls. Gordon must be doing some
thing right.

  Thursday, 30 August

  I rescued a woman and four young children facing eviction because their housing benefit claim had been rejected. So rare these days that I do anything useful apart from collecting the litter in the street.

  Sunday, 16 September

  A crisis brewing re Northern Rock, which is rumoured to be in trouble. On every television news bulletin, long queues of depositors trying to reclaim their money, despite the view of most commentators that there is not the slightest chance it will be allowed to go under. Anyway, deposits make up only about 20 per cent of the bank’s income; the rest comprises mortgage repayments, which are proceeding normally.

  Monday, 17 September

  Alistair Darling has been on the bulletins all weekend, trying to reassure Northern Rock depositors that their money is safe. If ever there was a man for an hour like this, it is Alistair. Whoever heard of a crisis on his watch in any of the many departments in which he has served? Yet this morning, on Radio 4, I thought I detected just the merest tremor in his otherwise unruffled demeanour. Why, he was asked, did the government not increase the guaranteed level of compensation in the event of collapse if it wants to put an end to the crisis? No doubt this is being considered, but Alistair isn’t yet in a position to say.

  Tuesday, 18 September

  The Great Panic is over, the government having announced that it will guarantee all Northern Rock deposits. Overnight the queues have disappeared.

  Sunday, 23 September

  Labour Party Conference, Bournemouth

  Arrived to find the place in the grip of election fever. Until now I had assumed it was all got up by the media but it appears that the clever young master strategists around Gordon are furiously talking up the possibility on the strength of a couple of good polls and some crap about Gordon needing his own mandate. Pure insanity. We have a majority of more than 60 which is unlikely to be improved upon and more than two years of this parliament still to run. Apparently they are talking about early November. Good grief, it’s hard enough persuading the citizens of Sunderland to vote on a sunny evening in May, let alone on a dark, rainy evening in November.

  In fairness I should record that it isn’t just the master strategists. At Waterloo I met a hotshot Labour lawyer from one of the big City law firms. ‘Gordon should go now,’ he said. ‘The word in the City is that more banks will be in trouble by January – and Gordon will be blamed.’

  Monday, 24 September

  ‘Am I the only person who thinks all this election talk is bollocks?’ inquired Alastair Campbell, who I came across holding court outside the Highcliff Hotel.

  ‘No, Alastair, you are not.’

  I asked about the diaries. Had he run them past The Man prior to publication?

  ‘Yes, Tony saw it all. He wanted me to stick it on Gordon a bit more.’

  ‘When might we expect the unexpurgated version?’

  ‘Some of the stuff with Gordon is mind-blowing. Not sure I can even put it in the unexpurgated version. I saw a poll that said only 8 per cent of people now think we are divided whereas last year it was 60 per cent. The fact is that Gordon was the cause of the divisions. It was all Gordon. There wasn’t a single member of the Cabinet who didn’t at one time say that Gordon wasn’t up to being prime minister.’

  The Speech. A leaner, fitter Gordon, in contrast to the puffy, exhausted, driven figure we are used to. Relaxed, almost. No razzmatazz. Few jokes. Verging on the dour. Much talk of hard work, duty, honour. A great deal of shameless sloganising about Britain and Britishness. Some substance – increased maternity leave, an elected second chamber, a commitment to restore the link between pensions and earnings. Seemed to go down well with everybody, even the hacks. I guess just not being The Man is enough to get by for the time being.

  Someone drew my attention to an extract from the latest volume of Tony Benn’s diaries in today’s Daily Mail in which he quotes me – accurately – as advising him not to visit Saddam and says, ‘Chris is so right-wing now and so loyal and Blairite.’ Incredible. The old rascal sells his soul to the Daily Mail and then accuses me of selling out.

  Tuesday, 25 September

  Breakfast with Tony Benn. I hadn’t realised he was staying in the same hotel until he appeared at my table this morning. I couldn’t resist pointing out what I have so far refrained, despite considerable provocation, from mentioning. Namely, that Blair had intended to appoint me, not Hilary, to the job at International Development and had only been talked out of doing so by the whips on the grounds that I had voted against the Iraq enterprise whereas Hilary had voted in favour and duly stepped into my shoes. I bear Hilary no malice – on the contrary I greatly admire him – but it is a bit galling to be accused of selling out on one page of Tony’s diaries and on the next to find him celebrating Hilary’s promotion. I am not sure how much of it sunk in, but he was kind enough to present me with a copy of the book, inscribed to ‘A dear friend’.

  Wandered down to the conference centre, but couldn’t bring myself to go in. Instead I sat outside in the sunshine finishing off The Inheritance of Loss, this year’s Booker winner. Gordon Brown walked by, deep in conversation with someone I didn’t recognise, closely shadowed by a posse of acolytes and trailed discreetly by his grey official Jaguar and a black Special Branch Land Cruiser. No sign of election fever abating, but apparently polls from Scotland are indicating that the Nationalists would do well, which might prove sobering.

  Took part in a panel discussion organised by Amnesty about extraordinary rendition. The others were the Amnesty General Secretary Kate Allen, Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who represents some of those in Guantanamo, and a bright young Muslim lawyer whose name I didn’t catch. Inevitably there was a great deal of America-bashing, which began to get on my nerves after a while, so I pointed out that, terrible though it all was, none of this would have happened were it not for Islamist terrorists blowing up embassies, the twin towers, nightclubs in Bali etc. This was received in total silence. It’s not what anyone wants to hear.

  Then to Northern Night, where Gordon and Sarah made a cameo appearance. He made a nice little speech complete with a couple of self-deprecating stories; she looked awkward and rigid, obviously hating every moment of it.

  A beautiful full moon in a cloudless sky, reflected in the sea.

  Wednesday, 26 September

  Breakfast at the Highcliff. Then out with Graham Bash, a delightfully amiable head-banger whose views haven’t changed one iota since the early eighties, and a couple of his friends for a walk along the coast to Swanage, and back by bus.

  This evening, passing the security checkpoint en route to the ITV reception, a policeman took me to one side and whispered, ‘Can I just say, sir, that – as a London Irish person – I would never have had the confidence to join the police if it wasn’t for your work with the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four . . .’

  Thursday, 27 September

  To London on the train with Derek Wyatt, who shares my view that an election now would be bonkers and whose view might be thought to have some relevance since he has a majority of 79. Like me, Derek thinks this madness is too late to stop.

  Monday, 1 October

  We seem to be talking ourselves into an election, come what may. Bill Crawford, Sunderland’s local electoral registration officer, says November would be ‘the worst possible time’ from the point of view of the number of voters registered. The new register doesn’t come into effect until December and across the City at least 6,000 people would be disenfranchised. The Association of Electoral Registration Officers has put out a statement saying that up to a million people could lose their right to vote if the election takes place on the old register. Might this provide Gordon with an excuse to back down without too much loss of face? I put in a call to Jack Straw, whose antennae are normally pretty good, to see what he thinks and register my concern. Jack was cautious: ‘I have mixed feelings. It’s Gordon’s call. He is entitled to a mandate.’ He added t
hat, if we didn’t go now, there was absolutely no case for an election in 2008, the moment for the mandate argument would have passed. He then went on to suggest that a November election was no big deal, citing the Americans and the fact that, at some time in the distant past, our borough elections used to take place in November. He also mentioned the impact of the Ashcroft money, to which I replied that the solution was not an early election but to use our majority to close the loophole that Ashcroft was exploiting. Jack said that he was just about to go into a meeting on that very subject, but we could only amend the law if we had the support of the Liberal Democrats and anyway it would take until March next year. He thinks the election will be on 8 November.