Decline & Fall

by Chris Mullin

  Wednesday, 15 October

  Caroline Dawnay, from United Agents, rang to say that Pat Kavanagh, who has loyally stuck with me through many fallow years, has an inoperable brain tumour. Pat of all people. So sharp, bright and always in such good shape. Only this year she and Julian walked across Sicily.

  This evening, in an upper committee room, Jack Straw outlined his long-awaited Bill, intended to tighten the regulation of postal voting rules, shake up the much complained about Electoral Commission and, hopefully, put an end to the so-called Ashcroft loophole. Jack’s Bill also has implications for trade union donations to the Labour Party – which could be fatal. This provoked a full-frontal assault from Don Touhig, an amiable but traditionalist Welshman, who demanded that the Bill be abandoned, that the Electoral Commission be done away with and that we ‘stop dancing to the tune of the Daily Mail’. Jack responded robustly, pointing out that the Electoral Commission, for all its faults, was our baby. ‘We are the party of regulation. When the Tories were in power we made a big issue about transparency and disclosure of donations, none of which could be implemented without a Commission. We simply can’t abolish it.’ He added archly, ‘My only interest is in making sure the Labour Party is protected.’ On postal voting he said, ‘The blunt truth is that there has been industrial-scale fraud among the Asian community and it needs sorting.’

  Thursday, 16 October

  Ed Miliband, on his first outing as Secretary of State for Climate Change, delivered a statement conceding just about all the demands of the environmental lobby – higher emissions targets, feed-in tariffs and the inclusion of emissions from aviation and shipping – for strengthening his Climate Change Bill. Congratulations flowed in from all around, though naturally the Tories and the Lib Dems claimed to have thought of it all first. Can it be that, after all, we are serious about tackling climate change? Afterwards, I tackled Mike O’Brien, who is just commencing his second stint as energy minister, and says there are some huge renewable energy programmes in the pipeline – windmills on Dogger Bank, the Severn Barrage and so on. At the moment they are stalled because some of the big investors are pulling out as a result of the current banking crisis, but the good news is that the more enlightened Gulf states are starting to take an interest.

  Friday, 17 October

  Sunderland

  A visit from two constituents recently made redundant from a local call centre servicing a national chain of furniture stores. About 130 jobs have gone altogether. Actually, the whole thing is a scam. The company have called in receivers and are setting up an arm’s-length operation in Cardiff under some of the same management, employing people on a casual basis to avoid having to pay pension contributions, holiday or sickness pay or any of the other benefits that we used quaintly to associate with civilisation. My constituents complained that they had been gulled into staying on until the end in return for a promise of a decent pay-off – one had even turned down another job – only to find that all the lines had suddenly gone dead and none of their former management were responding to calls. Needless to say, virtually no one was a trade union member. We’re in for a lot more of this as we march resolutely backwards to the nineteenth century.

  Monday, 20 October

  In the Tea Room this evening Des Browne told me the following tale about a constituent, a signalman on the railways, who early each morning took a short cut to his signal box across the estate of the local laird. One day he was intercepted by the said laird on horseback.

  ‘What are you doing on my land?’

  ‘I’m on my way to work,’ replied the signalman, adding insolently, ‘a concept that may be unknown to you.’

  ‘You’re on my land.’

  ‘How did you come by it?’

  ‘My ancestors fought for it.’

  ‘Well,’ replied the Bolshie signalman, ‘if you come down off that horse, I’ll fight you for it.’

  At this the laird, recognising that he had met his match, rode away.

  Pat Kavanagh died this morning.

  Tuesday, 21 October

  George Osborne is in trouble for allegedly soliciting a donation for the Tories from a Russian oligarch who he met in August while staying at the Rothschild villa on Corfu. The source of his embarrassment is an extraordinary letter in yesterday’s Times from Nat Rothschild, but the feeling is that Osborne’s real offence is to have caddishly leaked to the Sunday Times an account of the conversation he had with Peter Mandelson while they were staying with the Rothschilds in Corfu. L’affaire Osborne dominates today’s media. Such is the effect Peter has on British politics.

  During tonight’s Division, a former Treasury minister whispered to me that, about a year after we were elected, he took part in a two and a half hour meeting at which officials briefed Gordon that our apparent prosperity was built on unsustainable levels of debt and that, sooner or later, the bubble would burst unless reined in. Gordon rejected the advice and the rest is history. In fairness, let it be said that Gordon no doubt took the view that this was an attempt by officials to nobble Labour’s spending plans before we had our feet under the table.

  Wednesday, 22 October

  Much merriment at George Osborne’s discomfort, not least because it has provided the media with an excuse to reprint pictures of those arrogant, spoiled, upper-class louts in the Bullingdon Club, featuring both the youthful David Cameron as well as George Osborne and Nat Rothschild. At today’s PMQs Osborne was sitting sheepishly beside Cameron as our side taunted him with cries of ‘Roubles’.

  Keith Hill encountered him in a lift yesterday. ‘Hi, George. How’s your day been?’

  To which, quick as a flash, Osborne replied, ‘Wait until he starts on you.’

  Thursday, 23 October

  The broadsheets are full of tributes to Pat Kavanagh. Everyone talks of her modesty, integrity, elegance and the awe she inspired in authors and publishers alike (so it wasn’t just me). Someone wrote: ‘Pat died as she had lived: with no fuss and most efficiently.’

  Friday, 24 October

  To police HQ at Gillbridge Avenue for one of my occasional meetings with the divisional commander, Dave Pryer. Apropos our growing compensation culture, he related the following tale: he was on a bus in County Durham which came to a sudden halt, throwing the passengers forward. Nothing serious. Everyone initially declared themselves unhurt. Until up got a smart alec who asserted that anyone with an injury could claim up to £5,000. Whereupon some of his fellow passengers started murmuring that perhaps they had been injured after all. At which point up got Dave and drew everyone’s attention to the security camera. ‘I don’t know whether or not it records sound as well as pictures, but you could be in serious trouble if you tell lies.’ Suddenly, all talk of compensation died away.

  Saturday, 25 October

  Sarah, who, as is the fashion among today’s youth, is generally contemptuous of her old dad, was telephoned by a boy she met on a recent visit to Edinburgh. ‘I’ve just seen a great film,’ he said. The title? ‘A Very British Coup.’ ‘Oh,’ said Sarah, ‘my dad wrote that.’ Whereupon, never previously having shown more than a passing interest in my life’s work, she took the DVD down from the shelf, went upstairs and watched it. One up for Dad.

  Sunday, 26 October

  To St Aidan’s Church to hear a talk by a Christian woman from Bethlehem in which she described how the city had been virtually cut off from the outside world by the accursed Israeli wall. She illustrated her talk with slides. It is only when you see the pictures that the enormity of what the Israelis have done strikes home. She showed the settlements, all built on stolen land, advancing remorselessly, connected by roads on which only Israelis are permitted to travel. I came away boiling with impotent rage. Even if, by some miracle, Obama is elected next week nothing is likely to change, such is the strength of the Israel lobby in Washington.

  Monday, 27 October

  Sterling is plummeting as the colossal extent of our economic cataclysm unfolds. So much for the ide
a that we are better placed than other comparable economies to weather the tsunami. Ngoc reports that the cost of an airline ticket to Vietnam is up 20 per cent and rising, thereby jeopardising our planned expedition next summer.

  Thursday, 30 October

  Michael Chertoff, the US Secretary for Homeland Security, addressed a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society in Committee Room 14. The Friends of Israel were out in force, to judge by the applause that greeted his response to my question about the Israeli wall. He compared the fight against Islamist terror to fascism in the thirties and the Cold War. ‘We face a similar ideological struggle, not with Islam – a great religion – but with people who infuse Islam with fascist ideas.’ The struggle would be long and arduous. ‘It is important not to become complacent or resigned as we did in the struggle against communism in the seventies.’ There was talk of good and evil, freedom and democracy, and a passing reference to ‘the difficulty of Vietnam’, but his message was that we had to stand up to Islamist terror as Reagan and Thatcher had stood up to communism. Despite occasional simplicities, it wasn’t an unintelligent presentation. But in parts he reminded me of Alden Pyle in The Quiet American.

  Sunday, 2 November

  Sarah is 19 today. I drew a card depicting her in her current incarnation as a Sainsbury’s checkout person with a conveyor belt of shopping stretching along the front of the card and round the back. With Emma we went to lunch at the cathedral café in Durham and afterwards walked along the river toward Houghall Woods.

  Monday, 3 November

  John Hutton, our new Defence Secretary, looking more than usually gaunt, addressed the parliamentary party. The situation in Iraq, he said, had changed fundamentally (he used the word about ten times). The Sunnis were now onside. The troop surge had worked and the Iraqi army was gradually becoming a credible force. So much so that he had recently been able to walk around the centre of Basra, escorted only by Iraqis. Afghanistan, on the other hand, was another story. No end in sight, but withdrawal too awful to contemplate. Re defence spending he spoke of imminent ‘difficult decisions’.

  Wednesday, 5 November

  Awoke to the news that Barack Obama has been comfortably elected President of the United States. Everywhere rejoicing crowds, people cheering, weeping, embracing. In Chicago, his home town, a quarter of a million gathered to hear him claim victory. A seminal moment. Hope has triumphed over fear. America has rejoined the world.

  Thursday, 6 November

  Lunch with Tom Watson in the Cabinet Office. A rotund, delightfully self-effacing fellow, he enjoyed a brief moment of fame when he was credited with triggering the attempted coup in September 2006. The truth, he insists, was a little more prosaic. Despite being a junior defence minister, he agreed to sign a letter drafted by Chris Bryant, calling on The Man to go, and then, with touching naivety, set off for an official visit to the Earl Haig poppy factory in Scotland. Having time on their hands, Tom and his wife decided to make a weekend of it and booked themselves into a smart hotel. While they were about it, they decided to call in on Gordon and Sarah to hand over a present for their newborn son. Meanwhile, back in London, word leaked out about the Bryant letter, bearing the signatures of Tom and 14 colleagues (half of them office holders of one sort or another). All hell duly breaks loose. At which point Tom receives a call from a Daily Mail journalist asking if, by any chance, during his sojourn in Scotland, Tom had called on Gordon. ‘As it happens,’ says Tom, ‘I did.’ Bingo. A conspiracy is born and Tom is deemed to be up to his ears in it. That’s his story, at any rate, and I am inclined to believe him.

  Not that it’s done him any harm. Along with most other participants in the ‘06 uprising he has been wafted into Gordon’s government. A fact which, of course, only compounds the conspiracy theory.

  I asked what caused him to lose faith in The Man. He mentioned several things. The bill for Cherie’s hairdresser,* an article in The Times in which The Man talked of going on indefinitely (which seems to have been the trigger for the Bryant letter), but the straw that broke the camel’s back was unbelievably trivial. ‘I was sitting in a meeting in the MOD, idly chipping away at the gold star on my security pass. “Don’t do that, Minister,” remarked one of the army top brass. “That star is what will get you admitted to the bunker in the event of a nuclear war.”’

  ‘Where is the bunker?’

  ‘Seven floors down from where we are now sitting. We can arrange a tour, if you’d like.’

  ‘Have the Blairs been round?’

  ‘Yes, they took a look at the prime minister’s quarters.’

  ‘And were they satisfied?’

  ‘No, as it happens. Mrs Blair didn’t like the décor. We had to redo it.’

  And that, according to Tom, is what tipped him over the edge.

  Tom, incidentally, believes there will be no election until the autumn of next year at the earliest – and probably not until 2010.

  Friday, 7 November

  Sunderland

  Awoke to the news that, contrary to expectations, we won the by-election at Glenrothes. The majority was a comfortable 6,000, which brings the Nationalist bandwagon to a sudden halt.

  To St Aidan’s School to address the sixth form and then to Pennywell Youth Project, the success of which is celebrated by ministerial visits and on government websites. And yet, despite heroic efforts by all concerned, the centre is in danger of folding. Why? Because no one is willing to provide core funding. There is no shortage of money available for new capital projects – indeed, the National Youth Agency has £1.9 billion to spend – but little or nothing for paying the bills once they are up and running. I hear this complaint everywhere I go. Unless a solution can be found, Sunderland in years to come will be dotted with derelict youth and community facilities, every one a monument to folly.

  Saturday, 8 November

  Sunderland

  Everywhere I go people are lamenting my impending retirement. I haven’t met one who thinks it’s a good idea. ‘You’re leaving us!’ remarked a prominent local woman. She repeated it several times, as though I were a deserter.

  Monday, 10 November

  To London in bright, cold sunshine, which by Doncaster had given way to grey mist and swollen rivers.

  The headline in today’s Times reads, ‘Council homes for life to be scrapped,’ over a story that suggests that Margaret Beckett is considering plans to give new tenants fixed-term contracts, subject to review every few years. Much muttering in the Tea Room. Hard to think of anything more barmy. As though we are searching for ways to alienate that part of our core vote that we failed, despite best efforts, to alienate when Gordon abolished the ten pence tax band. It seems to have been dreamed up by one of the ubiquitous think tanks and I’d be amazed if someone as sensible as Margaret falls for it, but it needs knocking on the head pronto.

  Huge relief at the Glenrothes result. Gordon Banks and Frank Roy, who masterminded our campaign, were lavishly praised at this evening’s party meeting. Also, a mini-uprising over a suggestion by Chief Whip Nick Brown that in future anyone who has voted against the government in the last year will not be considered for a place on a select committee.

  Nick is already in retreat. ‘You know I won’t do it,’ he said to me as we passed through the Aye Lobby this evening, but that’s the point. He already has.

  Tuesday, 11 November

  The 11th day of the 11th month. I ventured out into Whitehall for the two-minute silence, hoping to catch sight of the three old boys, Bob Stone, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham – aged 108, 110 and 112 – the last survivors of the Great War. Alas, the crowd was vast and I was too far away.

  To Wingfield House, the American Ambassador’s magnificent residence in Regent’s Park; unfortunately the wrong time of year for a tour of the garden but from the windows a distant glimpse of the Post Office Tower across acres of lawn. Ambassador Tuttle will shortly be receiving his marching orders, given the outcome of the presidential election and the fact that his is a politica
l appointment, but he and his wife were gracious. The house, a vast solid, thirties mansion, was built by the Woolworth’s heiress Barbara Hutton, who sold it to the US government for the princely sum of US$1. A long chat with a friendly Tory who gave me a lift back to the House. He described Cameron and Osborne as ‘oppositionists’ with no long-term strategy and reckons they will fall out in due course.

  Wednesday, 12 November

  Lunch with My Friend in High Places, who reports that the banking crisis has done wonders for Gordon’s morale. No more tantrums. A marked fall in the number of pre-dawn emails and telephone calls. She attributes the change partly to the calming influence of Sarah, who, she says, is now far more visible, and to the fact that Gordon now operates out of an open plan office in Number 12, which causes people to be nicer to one another. The dreaded Shriti Vadera, on the other hand, continues to upset just about everyone, even – unwisely – the ladies on the Number 10 switchboard. Apparently, however, she is very good at dealing with bankers.

  Thursday, 13 November

  A belated outbreak of common sense, re the Post Office. James Purnell announced that he was scrapping plans to put the card account out to tender. Had the contract been awarded to the private sector, as it almost certainly would have been, several thousand more post offices would have closed with goodness-knows-what political consequences. At last our young masters are starting to behave like politicians rather than managers in thrall to every new corporate wheeze. I guess it is the collapse of the banks that’s caused a little light to come on. The Tories looked very glum. Another of their foxes has been shot.