by Chris Mullin
Attended two fairs and a meeting of the ‘Friends’ of our various parks. I enjoy getting out and about. It’s what I do best, but in truth it’s all rather pointless since, in a year or so, I will be gone – just another prematurely retired pensioner.
Monday, 14 July
Another day, another initiative. The latest is Jacqui Smith’s suggestion that youths found with knives may be made to visit stab victims in hospital. Yesterday she was all over the media with it. Today, however, she is retreating in the face of near universal ridicule. Shades of our late great leader, marching anti-social youths to cashpoints . . .
Wednesday, 16 July
Came across a former Cabinet minister in the Library Corridor to whom I told the story of Gordon’s visit to the Chinese embassy. ‘He’s got to go,’ he said. He repeated this a couple of times and then went on quietly to relate that preparations for a coup are underway. ‘The plan is for four or five ministers to go and see him and threaten to resign if he doesn’t go. I’m talking to some of them. Jack Straw, Alistair Darling and Geoff Hoon were among the names mentioned. I’m against involving Alistair because I think he’ll be loyal to the end, even though he’s been badly treated.’ Who, if not Alistair? James Purnell was another possibility, though it was unclear whether he has already been sounded out. ‘I’m going to say that if they don’t remove him the backbenchers will. I’m gathering names of people prepared to sign. About 80 so far.’ He said he would come back to me. When? ‘End of August, beginning of September.’ For now, Gordon’s fate hinges on the outcome of next week’s by-election in Glasgow East, though even a narrow victory there may not be enough.
Monday, 21 July
With cousin Jo to a garden party for backbench members and spouses at Number 10. A relaxed-looking Gordon worked the crowd for nearly two hours, which was impressive considering that his day had started with an address to the Israeli parliament. He joked that the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has a current poll rating of just 8 per cent, which makes his look positively rosy.
Wednesday, 23 July
Lunch with a friend from Foreign Office days. He ran into Jack Straw ten days ago who gave him the clear impression that an uprising is afoot. Jack’s assessment of the current state of play was unequivocal: ‘We’re fucked.’
Friday, 25 July
Awoke to the news that we have lost the by-election in Glasgow East to the Scottish Nationalists on a swing of over 20 per cent. At 7.20 a call from the Today programme, who haven’t been interested in anything I’ve said or done for two years. I have only to pronounce the words ‘Gordon must go’ to be all over the bulletins. Instead I let the answerphone take the call. Fifteen minutes later up popped Martin Salter, sounding very statesmanlike. ‘We must keep our nerve’ was his message. We loaded up the car and set off for Norfolk.
Saturday, 26 July
Burnham Market
The papers are full of speculation about the possibility of a September coup in the wake of yesterday’s by-election result. Patrick Wintour in the Guardian is particularly well informed, reflecting the conversation I had last week, citing unnamed ‘friends of Jack Straw’. A couple of flies in the ointment: (a) even in the unlikely event that Gordon were to be dispatched with minimal bloodshed, there is no evidence that we stand the remotest chance of winning under anyone else; the best that can be said is that we might save a few seats; (b) far from being postponed, defeat would be hastened by the fact that a new leader would find it impossible to resist demands for an early election.
Glorious sunshine. We spend the day on Scolt Head Island, a long spit of dunes, marsh and sand cut off from the mainland at high tide.
Monday, 28 July
After a weekend of feverish speculation Jack Straw has issued the following statement: ‘I am absolutely convinced that Gordon Brown is the right man to be leading the Labour Party.’ All day I kept my ears peeled for the sound of a cock crowing.
Wednesday, 30 July
Great excitement in the media about an article in today’s Guardian by David Miliband which is alleged to be evidence that he is positioning himself in the event that an accident were to overtake Gordon. But then, of course, it is the silly season.
Thursday, 31 July
Burnham Market
Emma’s friend Catherine lost her purse containing about £35. Close questioning revealed that it was last seen two days ago when we visited the shrine town at Walsingham. So, without much expectation of success, off we went back and retraced our steps down the main street, calling at half a dozen shops, to no avail. We were on the point of giving up when I casually asked a young man who was locking up his shop whether a purse had been handed in and sure enough one had. He unlocked, went back in, reached behind the till and there it was. Another 30 seconds and our paths would never have crossed. A minor miracle. Appropriate perhaps, considering the location.
Tonight’s TV news shows David Miliband signing autographs and looking very prime ministerial. My first thought when his article appeared in yesterday’s Guardian was that the fuss was all got up by the media, but on reflection there does seem to be something in it. His protestations of innocence were not quite as heartfelt as they might have been. Bob Marshall-Andrews and Geraldine Smith were also on the bulletins tonight, demanding that Miliband be sacked for disloyalty.
Wednesday, 6 August
Sunderland
My assistant, Michael Mordey, placed on my desk a file of about 30 letters and emails from party members asking that I think again about my decision to retire. Actually, it’s not so many considering that he’s been running a little campaign behind my back. Anyway there’s no going back, though no day passes without my wondering if I should have stayed put.
Later, to Thompson Park in Southwick to bear witness to the opening of a new playground, where I was assailed by three local councillors asking that I reconsider.
Monday, 11 August
The Russians have invaded Georgia. The television news is full of pictures of Russian armour rolling through the Georgian countryside and demands for Western intervention from Georgia’s smooth, English-speaking president. Just like old times. Or is it? It appears that the Georgians started this with an attack on South Ossetia, a disputed enclave, 90 per cent of whose citizens hold Russian passports, timed to coincide with the opening of the Olympics. Also, the Americans have been messing around, training and arming the Georgians right under Russian noses.
Thursday, 14 August
Montréal du Gers
Sarah’s A level results, obtained from the internet: three As. She will be going to Oxford. I am so proud of her. If only her Granny and Grandpa had lived to see this day.
This evening, a four-mile guided randonnée. We started outside the mairie. About 40 people, all but a handful French. Fine views of the floodlit church up on the ramparts as we returned in darkness. We ended with a cup of lemonade and biscuits in the square. What a lovely spirit there is about these little French towns with their fairs and fêtes. I could happily live here.
Monday, 18 August
Sunderland
Home to an unexpected bonus. A Tory think tank, Policy Exchange, has published a report suggesting that governments should give up trying to regenerate cities like Sunderland and encourage people to move south. Needless to say, the author, an academic from the London School of Economics, has never set foot in Sunderland. This has provoked a huge outbreak of local patriotism and embarrassed wriggling from the Tories, local and national. A wake-up call for those foolish people who believe they will behave differently next time round. We must exploit this for all it is worth.
Tuesday, 19 August
Rain all day. Indeed it has been raining all month. An overwhelming sense of grey. For the second year running summer has been all but wiped out. A poll in today’s Guardian says that replacing Gordon with Miliband would make no difference. People actively prefer Cameron.
Saturday, 23 August
With Emma and half a dozen party members, I s
pent a couple of hours pushing through local letter boxes a leaflet mendaciously entitled ‘What the Tories think of Sunderland’. It consists almost entirely of press reports with headlines like ‘Write off the North in favour of the South’ and ‘Cities in North doomed, says favourite Tory think-tank’. Low politics, I am afraid, but hey, why not? They’ve shafted us often enough.
Sunday, 24 August
Tonight’s television news showed an American warship carrying ‘relief supplies’ docking at a port in Georgia. Two more are said to be on their way. A dangerous, stupid game. Before we know it the Russians will be back in Cuba.
Wednesday, 27 August
The Georgia crisis is hotting up. Awoke to the news that Dick Cheney is on his way to Georgia and David Miliband is in Ukraine, ‘building a coalition against Russian aggression’. Here we go again. Why do we have to dance so enthusiastically to the tune from Washington? Today’s Guardian reprints an article from the Washington Post, purportedly by Ukrainian President Yushchenko but probably drafted by the same PR agency that the Georgians have been using. It says, ‘We need to be embraced by NATO.’ Like hell they do.
In Afghanistan meanwhile the Americans have had another of their ‘accidents’, the biggest so far, killing about 90 civilians, including 60 children.
Sunday, 31 August–Friday, 5 September
With John Williams for our annual walk in the hills. Along the Cleveland Way from Sutton Bank to Robin Hood’s Bay, 75 miles and a good deal of up and down. Mist on day one, but after that fine views across the Vale of York and north to Teesside and far beyond. On day two, at Bilsdale, a perfect rainbow, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Four days across purple moors and two down the North Yorkshire coast, through idyllic little settlements – Runswick Bay, Staithes, Whitby and finally to Robin Hood’s Bay, a small masterpiece: a mix of fishermen’s cottages and fine Georgian houses linked by a maze of passageways, clinging to the cliff side.
Unscathed save for a blister on my right big toe, the first since I acquired my Brasher boots eight years ago. Weather generally good until the final day, 14 miles along precipitous cliffs lashed by unremitting rain.
Saturday, 6 September
Upsidedown Cottage, Robin Hood’s Bay
Torrential rain for much of the night. The television news depicting scenes of flood and pestilence with predictions of more to come and yet, miraculously, we awoke to find sunshine breaking through the grey gloom After breakfast John and I strolled up the cliff path, water streaking off the cliff tops, Ravenscar wreathed in cloud. Then we went our separate ways.
St Bede’s Terrace, Sunderland
Home to find that last night’s storm has ripped another huge branch from the ash tree by our garden gate, mercifully no one injured and no damage to the neighbours’ cars. Also, a message from Fraser Kemp saying that he, too, is standing down, aged just 50. So that’s all three of the Sunderland MPs going. Astounding. Later, we spoke by phone. Fraser seems to have no clear plan, but like me sees no point in hanging around the Tea Room for the next five years. Re the general situation, he sees no way out. On the contrary the pit is getting deeper with every day that passes: Charles Clarke has been sounding off again and there are endless, irresponsible demands from trade union leaders which, if conceded, would only serve to narrow our base still further. We appear to have developed a death wish.
Friday, 12 September
Fraser Kemp to lunch. Like me, he thinks the damage is irreversible and that we are faced with a lengthy period, if not an eternity, in opposition. This evening, news that Siobhan McDonagh, hitherto an ultra-loyalist, has been sacked from the whips’ office for calling for a leadership election. Amazing. So far as I am aware, until now there is no recorded instance of her ever having stuck her head above the parapet on anything.
Saturday, 13 September
Joan Ryan, another ultra-loyalist, has joined the call for a leadership election. It’s beginning to look like orchestrated subversion. So far only a handful are implicated, but could this be the beginning of the long-awaited uprising?
Tuesday, 16 September
The world financial system is on the brink of meltdown and we have little or nothing to say. Instead we are preoccupied with our own local difficulty. Tonight we lost our first minister, David Cairns, from the Scottish Office. So obscure that it wasn’t until he appeared on the television news that his face rang a bell. All the same, this continual drip, drip is very debilitating. Meanwhile, our television screens are showing erstwhile Masters of the Universe emerging ashen-faced from Lehman Brothers’ gleaming tower in Canary Wharf, carrying their possessions in cardboard boxes. Tonight there is talk that the American insurance giant AIG is on the point of collapse. Other names are being mentioned, notably Halifax Bank of Scotland. Ironically, all this market turmoil is likely to shore up, rather than undermine, Gordon’s position. After all, can we afford to entertain the nation with a protracted bout of navel gazing when the economy is collapsing around our ears?
Wednesday, 17 September
The American administration has effectively nationalised AIG. It occurs to me that if we want to demonstrate our relevance and put some clear blue water between us and the Tories, we should abandon our hitherto slavish pandering to the City and come up with a plan to bring the Masters of the Universe within the rule of law. There will never be a better opportunity. I devoted an hour to drafting a letter addressed to Gordon enumerating half a dozen areas where we needed to strike – bonus culture, unsecured mortgages and so on – but in the end balked at sending it since for me this is terra incognita.
Thursday, 18 September
Awoke to the astonishing news that Lloyds are being allowed to take over Halifax Bank of Scotland to prevent impending catastrophe. Only yesterday, the top man at HBOS was proclaiming that all was well, although now I come to think about it he did look a little ashen. The new bank will control a third of the market and competition laws are being waived to allow the deal to go through, which may well store up problems for the future, but what else can we do in the face of this tsunami? Meanwhile our beloved prime minister has at last found his voice and is now talking for the first time of ‘cleaning up the financial system’, although whether his enthusiasm will outlive the current crisis remains to be seen.
An email from Claes Bratt in California saying that ABC is reporting that 68 per cent of Americans believe in angels, 46 per cent think they have a personal angel and 20 per cent say they have met either an angel or a devil. He adds, ‘Meanwhile we hear little these days about “the wisdom of the market”. Or the brilliant idea of privatising social security.’
Saturday, 20 September
J. K. Rowling has donated a million pounds to the Labour Party in recognition of our child-care policies and in protest at Tory plans to skew the tax system against unmarried mothers. Hooray for J. K. Rowling. At a time when so many of New Labour’s fair-weather friends have melted away, when the polls are showing us 20 per cent behind the Tories, she rides to our aid. A rare shaft of light in these days of unremitting gloom.
This afternoon Emma and I went to the Stadium of Light as guests of Niall Quinn, to see Sunderland beat Middlesbrough 2–0. ‘You’ve brought us luck. You can come again,’ he said to Emma.
This evening, supper in the garden, during the course of which I berated Emma for neglecting her reading, to which she replied, ‘I am the intellectualest [sic] person in my class.’
Monday, 22 September
A fascinating piece by David Marquand in the current issue of the New Statesman, arguing that our current woes are not primarily due to the failings of our leader: ‘They stem from a profound intellectual and moral malaise that has gripped the Labour party for at least half a decade.’ He goes on: ‘Labour lost its soul under Blair, not Brown. I hoped Brown would help the party to find it, and I am sad that he has not. I now realise that the task is beyond the capacity of any leader.’
The core issue is, according to Marquand, ‘a fatal mismatch
between public expectations and political rhetoric on the one hand, and the realities of tightening resource constraints, destructive climate change and the mechanics of global capitalism on the other. We live in a society where everyone believes they have a divine right to ever-rising living standards; that we have finally reached the sunlit uplands of ever-increasing consumption, and that if the good times come to an end, our leaders must be to blame.’
He continues: ‘The age of abundance will pass whatever we do . . . The choice lies between a gradual controlled, but still painful transition to a new age of austerity, and an infinitely more painful and destructive transition at a somewhat later date. The first option is patently the right one yet it involves a transformation of the moral economy – a revolution of mentalities as radical as the reformation or the implosion of communism – of which there is as yet, no sign. The real charge against Brown is that he has failed to grasp this ugly truth.’
The party conference is underway in Manchester. I am now so utterly irrelevant that, for only the second or third time in 38 years, I cannot bring myself to go.