Decline & Fall

by Chris Mullin

  Wednesday, 7 January

  An email from Claes Bratt expressing pleasant surprise at Obama’s choice of Leon Panetta to head the CIA. ‘I’ve met Panetta many times . . . a thoroughly pleasant man with an ironic sense of humour, widely respected for his integrity and decency . . . very intriguing choice. I don’t imagine they are celebrating at Langley.’

  On the radio yesterday someone remarked of George Bush that he was only coherent when talking of war, revenge, punishment or baseball.

  Saturday, 10 January

  To Worcester College, Oxford, to address the annual dinner of the Study of Parliament Group. The gathering consisted of clerks and librarians past and present and a smattering of academics, including David Butler, about 60 or 70 in all. I gave an irreverent account of my life and times, laced with jokes and a shameless plug for the diaries; it went down wonderfully. ‘Why are you retiring?’ people kept asking. To which I could offer no adequate reply.

  Earlier, I caught a bus to Headington to visit Daphne Park in the convalescent wing of St Luke’s Hospital. She was in sparkling form, holding court in her dressing gown, regaling me with tales of her wartime service with the SOE, training agents who were parachuted into France and later, in Berlin and Vienna, searching out German and Austrian scientists before the Russians could kidnap them. She joined the SIS in 1948. I asked if she had known Violette Szabo, the young shop assistant from Brixton who was executed in February 1945, a bust of whom has recently appeared on the embankment, near Lambeth Palace. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I knew Odette.’

  Sunday, 11 January

  A pleasant morning mooching round Oxford. Most of the colleges were closed so I had to make do with tantalising glimpses of secret gardens, courtyards and pillared quads. Everywhere bright-faced, prosperous-looking youngsters, many on bicycles. This time next year my Sarah will be one of them. Then back to London for dinner with Liz Forgan and Rex Cowan. Rex, who is Jewish, is boiling with anger about what Israel is up to in Gaza; he and Liz had been on one of the recent demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy. ‘These are not warlords,’ he said. ‘This is a disciplined army . . . a government in control. They must be held to account. We should stop pretending we have any leverage and start organising sanctions. The trouble is everyone is afraid of The Lobby.’

  They kept on at me to make plans for an afterlife. ‘Now,’ said Liz. ‘If you leave it until after you’ve retired, it will be too late.’

  Monday, 12 January

  David Miliband made a statement on Gaza, full of well-meaning but ineffectual guff about the need for an end to violence by both sides and concern about civilian casualties. Feelings were running high. On all sides talk of war crimes and from some quarters calls for sanctions and for the withdrawal of our ambassador. Gerald Kaufman, himself a Jew, was the most outspoken. I – taking a lead from Rex yesterday – said that we were kidding ourselves if we imagined that we – or anyone else in the EU – have the slightest influence on the Israelis. Sanctions are the only hope of getting their attention.

  Later, Gordon Brown addressed a crowded meeting of the parliamentary party. He was on good form (better than I’ve seen him in a long while), talking confidently of plans to get banks lending again, boosting public investment, bashing the Tories with gusto. Points from the floor included pleas not to part-privatise the Royal Mail and calls to reconsider plans for a third runway at Heathrow.

  Tuesday, 13 January

  To Great Smith Street, to the offices of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, to bend the ear of Sir Christopher Kelly about the iniquitous ‘communications allowance’. A final throw of the dice, having failed to persuade the Electoral Commission to do anything about it. He was affable, but non-committal. Afterwards we discussed Members’ allowances, which he is interested in reforming. He said they had been waiting to see if the House would reform itself, bringing in outside auditors etc., but we had funked it. I pointed out that transparency was already changing old habits, but he seemed to think a shake-up was called for. He talked ominously of ‘being brave’ about salaries in return for trimming the allowances. Being brave, of course, means another big, above-inflation increase which would trigger another great wave of public indignation and ridicule. I replied that all we need to do is tie future increases to those of typical constituents – teachers, nurses, pensioners – and leave it that way for ever.

  Wednesday, 14 January

  To Committee Room 10 to hear Peter Mandelson explaining why he is proposing to give the private sector a stake in Royal Mail. He was calm and fluent, if a trifle disingenuous, refusing to admit that what is proposed amounts even to partial ‘privatisation’ (which of course we have forsworn). His argument – shades of Air Traffic Control – was that it wasn’t just about investment, but it was good management that is woefully lacking in the Royal Mail. ‘It just doesn’t have the gene pool’ was how he put it. He was heard respectfully, but there was much scepticism. ‘If private sector management is needed, why don’t we just buy it in?’ someone asked. Someone else pointed to the mess the private sector had made of the buses. Despite all the huffing and puffing, the reality is that it’s more or less a done deal because the Treasury have insisted that they won’t rescue the Post Office pension fund unless the private sector are given a stake.

  Thursday, 15 January

  To Labour Party HQ in Victoria Street to discuss all-women shortlists with the General Secretary, Ray Collins. Undaunted by the fact that the embargo on male applicants in Sunderland Central resulted in just five applications, Harriet and the sisters have decided to repeat the experience in the neighbouring seat, Houghton and Sunderland South. All three Sunderland seats have now had all-women shortlists imposed. In every case local wishes have been ignored and two of our three are among the safest seats in the country. Somewhere alarm bells ought to be ringing. I said, ‘When are we going to admit we have a problem? Will it be when there are only four applications for a safe seat? Three? Two? One?’ He concedes there is a problem, but remains committed to the policy. Wider advertising of vacancies is his solution.

  On party finance, Ray says that last June we came within a whisker of bankruptcy. He’s managed to stabilise the situation, but it’s still precarious.

  This afternoon, a debate on Gaza. So many people wanted to take part that we were limited to six minutes each and still not everyone was called. Only two or three people spoke up for the Israelis – Louise Ellman, reading from a script which might have been supplied by the embassy. The two front benches used weasel words like ‘unacceptable’ to describe what is going on. Almost everyone else talked war crimes and sanctions.

  Friday, 16 January

  Sunderland

  A visit to the community centre at Plains Farm. The usual story, no core funding, the person in charge – a dynamic woman called Julie – desperately writing begging letters to charitable trusts, to no avail: everyone wants to fund new projects, but no one is interested in sustaining existing ones. Having no money at my disposal, all I can do is offer one or two mildly helpful suggestions and a friendly letter of reference.

  Later, a delegation from the long streets in Hendon complaining about mayhem which is gradually rendering life unbearable in what were once streets of owner-occupied cottages inhabited by working-class citizens who actually worked, but are increasingly being taken over by some of the city’s worst landlords. Then at the surgery this evening, agents for two of the town’s biggest (and in one case worst) landlords, 400 properties apiece, complained that the payment of housing benefit direct to tenants was making rent impossible to collect and that as a result they were threatened with bankruptcy. I managed to keep a straight face and forbore to mention that it was I who persuaded the Prime Minister (I still have his handwritten note thanking me for the suggestion) to stop the flow of housing benefit direct from the public purse to landlords’ bank accounts, which was causing the destruction of our inner cities. To be sure, there is a problem – and I will investigate. But I a
lso wondered whether in these particular cases bankruptcy might be in the public interest.

  Saturday, 17 January

  Gradually it is dawning on Emma that life beyond the cosy confines of St Bede’s Terrace may be a mite tougher than she has hitherto supposed. Last week, in citizenship class at school, she took part in an online test to determine the sort of career she was aiming for. She duly filled in the questionnaire and up popped a list of the careers for which she was suited. In first place: car park attendant.

  Monday, 19 January

  To the chamber to hear Alistair Darling announce a huge new bail-out for the banks, this one said to be worth £100 billion, the earlier £37 billion having been absorbed without trace. Mostly, he was heard in dead silence. The Tories, too, were subdued. It’s all too obvious they don’t have any better ideas. If this doesn’t work, a full-scale takeover of the entire banking system is the only card we have left.

  Ken Clarke is back on the front bench. Throughout the Chancellor’s statement he sat prominently wedged between George Osborne and Oliver Letwin, his unhealthily red face contrasting with Osborne’s pallid features.

  Meanwhile the Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns NatWest among others, has announced the biggest corporate loss in British history – a cool £28 billion.

  Tuesday, 20 January

  Barack Obama, a man whose father might once have been refused service in a Washington restaurant on the grounds that his skin was the wrong colour, was today sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. The event was witnessed by vast, cheering crowds stretching from the steps of the Capitol, away down the Mall as far as the eye could see. Even here, as the hour drew near, the excitement was palpable. All over the building Members, Tory and Labour alike, security guards and Tea Room staff clustered around TV sets to bear witness. Some nice moments. The shining little Obama girls bursting with pride for their dad, the smaller of the two giving him the thumbs up. And the sweetest moment of all when George and Laura Bush were seen off the premises, escorted by the Obamas to the helicopter that whisked them away on the first leg of their journey home to Texas. You have to hand it to old George W, though. He has behaved with great dignity throughout the handover, which can’t have been easy given how keen everyone was to see the back of him. Where the Obama presidency will lead remains to be seen. Expectations are so high they cannot possibly be fulfilled. But it was a moment to savour.

  Wednesday, 21 January

  To Dining Room A for an all-party media group breakfast with Ed Richards, chief executive of OFCOM, who I first came across when he worked in Number 10. The news is every bit as bleak as I had supposed. We are moving helter-skelter down the American road – hundreds of television channels with nothing worth watching on any of them. Google and satellite television are between them gradually dragging down the terrestrial channels, except for the good old ring-fenced BBC, and to judge by the comments of the Tories present, they have plans for putting paid to that, too. ‘I worry about what will unfold in the next two years,’ said Ed. He went on, ‘There is a risk of a rapid cycle of decline, cuts in ITV and Channel Four and soon we will be in a position where only the BBC will have resources for original programming, which won’t be good for the BBC either.’ Someone suggested a levy on Google, which is sucking several billions a year out of our economy, but, as Ed pointed out, there is nothing to stop Google upping sticks and moving to Luxembourg if they don’t like our tax regime. He said there were three options for public service broadcasting: continued subsidy, managed decline or privatisation. The Tories present (John Redwood, Philip Davies and a clutch of reactionary peers) were in no doubt which option they preferred. The only sign of Tory dissent was Elspeth Howe, who flashed a thin smile in my direction every time one of the headbangers took the floor. Alas, she is the past. They may be the future.

  The Aye Lobby

  An extraordinary exchange with one of that small band of über New Labourites whose systematic abuse of the franked envelopes for purposes that were blatantly party political led to our stationery being strictly rationed.

  ‘I bet you don’t use your allocation,’ she said.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Would you mind ordering a thousand franked envelopes in your name and letting me have them?’

  I demurred, pointing out that I was a member of Standards and Privileges, the committee that adjudicates on precisely such abuses.

  She was unfazed. ‘Strictly between you and I. No one would know.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Other people do it for me.’

  She just didn’t get it.

  Thursday, 22 January

  The London Standard has been bought by a Russian oligarch. Someone from Guardian Online rang to ask if I thought this was a threat to free speech. ‘Can’t be worse than the Rothermeres,’ I replied. Later, in the Tea Room, Bruce Grocott held up the early edition of tonight’s Standard. The headline was was ‘Good news: gas prices cut by 10 per cent’.

  ‘When was the last time you saw good news on the front of the Standard?’ asked Bruce. When indeed.

  Saturday, 24 January

  Today’s Telegraph contains an interview with Denis Healey in which he recommends doing away with Trident. Now he tells us . . .

  Sunday, 25 January

  The Sunday Times is leading with allegations that four Labour peers agreed to accept cash in exchange for amending, or persuading the government to amend, legislation. Cash for questions all over again, only this time it’s our turn.

  In the morning I dug out the compost heap. After lunch Ngoc and I drove to South Shields and walked along the cliff top in bright sunshine, stopping on the way back for a drink at Marsden Rock. It was warm enough to sit outside on the terrace watching the waves.

  Monday, 26 January

  Jack Jones and Michael Foot, both aged 95, came to this evening’s meeting of the parliamentary party. It was moving to see the two old boys, both big figures in their day. Jack positively glowing, but not entirely with it. Michael a poor old ruin, wild, skeletal, no longer in control of his movements. It seemed almost cruel to expose him. Superlatives flowed. There were several standing ovations. People clicked away with their mobile phone cameras, knowing this is probably the last glimpse we shall see of either of them. To the New Labour generation, of course, they are ancient history, ghostly reminders of a past long ago repudiated, but everyone entered into the spirit of the occasion. Neil Kinnock, as ever too loud and too long, did the introductions. Gordon Brown made a simple, effective little speech. Then, with Gordon clutching his right arm, Michael spoke. Strong and clear. Only a few sentences, but enough to show that his mind is still alive inside that ruined body. Dear old Jack just smiled benignly.

  Tonight’s bulletins feature a tape of Lord Taylor of Blackburn, one of the accused peers, hawking his services for upwards of 100 grand. Everyone is livid with the silly old fool. This is going to do us enormous damage. As someone remarked, we are unravelling, exactly as John Major’s government did. Our luck has well and truly run out.

  Tuesday, 27 January

  Members’ Lobby

  As I was leaving this evening Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Climate Change, bent my ear about tomorrow’s vote on a third runway for Heathrow. ‘The author of A Very British Coup wouldn’t vote with the Tories, would he?’ I explained to young Ed, who despite his present eminence hasn’t been with us all that long, that there is not a Tory lobby and a Labour one, but an Aye and a Noe Lobby – and yes I would be voting for the Tory motion since it reflected my views. He then attempted, in a tone that suggested exasperation, to persuade me that expansion was conditional on the toughest emission constraints in the world and they would be legally binding. To which I protested that the airlines would find a way round whatever constraints he saw fit to impose, as they had with all previous restrictions. Whereupon he walked off, shaking his head in disbelief at my naivety.

  Wednesday, 28 January

  An excellent deb
ate on Heathrow. The Tories cunningly tabled a motion worded precisely as the early-day motion which a large number of us had signed some weeks ago, thereby causing much squirming and wriggling among the fainter hearts. Geoff Hoon turned in a bullying, over-the-top performance which didn’t do the government’s case any good and, with the exception of Ruth Kelly, just about everyone who spoke from the floor opposed a third runway. The west London members, whose constituencies are already blighted, were particularly outspoken. The whips were scuttling about, trying to talk people into abstaining rather than vote against the government. Even the Prime Minister was deployed. According to Mark Fisher, he was pleading, ‘Do this for me. If we lose, it will go round the world that we are unfit to govern.’ Nick Brown invited me in for a gentle chat, disclosing a piece of paper which suggested the government was within a single vote of losing. When I got back to my room I found an urgent email, several hours old, bidding me ring Number 10. Happily, however, it was too late. In the event the government won by 19.

  Friday, 30 January

  Gordon’s fatuous slogan, ‘British jobs for British workers’, has come back to haunt us. Workers at a refinery in Lincolnshire have downed tools in protest against the employment, by an Italian subcontractor, of Portuguese and Italian workers at a time when local unemployment is rising rapidly. The television bulletins are full of angry white males holding up placards and alleging that Gordon has betrayed them. Workers at power stations and refineries all over the country are coming out in sympathy. So far it is all fairly good-natured, but that could change. A gift for the BNP and our poisonous tabloids. This is where cheap populism gets you.