Decline & Fall

by Chris Mullin

  Monday, 2 February

  To London, through a bleak freezing landscape, though, for once, the north got off lighter than the south, which is under six inches of snow. Much of the capital paralysed. No buses, only half the Underground, even the Members’ Tea Room closed because the staff could not get in. The Evening Standard, which has reverted to type after its brief flirtation with good news, was ranting on about ‘chaos’, but actually it all seemed quite peaceful apart from one or two minor inconveniences.

  A statement from Pat McFadden about the ‘British jobs for British workers’ row. He conceded little, urging everyone back to work and saying we must never succumb to protectionism. Much talk from the Tories of chickens coming home to roost re Gordon’s foolish pledge. Our position is that he was referring to making the British workforce job-ready. Like hell he was.

  Tuesday, 3 February

  Walked in from Kennington through the snow. Victoria Tower Gardens was dotted with snowmen and at the Lycee someone has constructed a massive pillar of snow, about ten feet high.

  This evening a meeting re Gaza with Foreign Office and DFID ministers, Bill Rammell and Mike Foster. The Israelis are still blockading and increasingly contemptuous of the outside world. To begin with the meeting went predictably with a certain amount of huffing and puffing from most colleagues, with Bill sticking skilfully to the official line. Then Ken Purchase took the gloves off and said – as I did in the debate last month – that we should stop deluding ourselves that we had any influence with the Israelis and start distinguishing clearly between right and wrong. This triggered a much more robust discussion in which several people pointed out that there was no sign that the Israelis are interested in a two-state solution, otherwise why would they be encouraging settlements across the West Bank? Increasingly, one hears it suggested that the days of a solution based on two states are over and that the only way forward is a single secular state in which all sides learn, however painfully, to live together.

  Wednesday, 4 February

  Another stinking cold which, as ever, has gone straight to my chest. I’ve been coughing and spluttering all week.

  This evening, to dinner with the spread-betting magnate and mega-donor to the Tory party Stuart Wheeler and his wife, Tessa, in their Mayfair penthouse. Despite his great wealth, Stuart is a shy, modest man who appears to be entirely motivated by principle rather than self-interest. The purpose was to thank those involved with the All Party Rendition Group, of which he has been a generous supporter. A delightful evening, even though I was placed – to much merriment – opposite a large portrait of Mrs Thatcher. I find it one of the most attractive features of our democracy that decent people whose views on many issues are diametrically opposed can combine in support of a just cause.

  Thursday, 5 February

  The African Union has chosen Gaddafi as this year’s president in succession to the villain from Congo-Brazzaville. Really, it’s too much. Why should we take them seriously, if this is the best they can do?

  A brief chat with William Hague on the train. Re Afghanistan, which we debated this afternoon, he says that General Petraeus – the American who is credited with recent progress in Iraq – was our only hope. The Americans are fed up with Karzai and want him replaced. They are likely to press for a big troop surge. We’ve seen this film before. A liberal American president inherits a small war and then gets sucked into a big one. I can’t see a way out of Afghanistan in my lifetime. The trouble is, if we pull up stumps now – as some advise – there would be millions of refugees.

  William also remarked re the alleged crisis in defence spending that the MOD are having to dip into future years’ budgets. Sooner or later something will have to give. ‘How about scrapping Trident?’ I ventured. ‘We could never do it, but your lot could.’ He didn’t think it likely, although he happily agreed that the Tories stood a better chance than us of getting away with it.

  Monday, 9 February

  A new feeding frenzy following the revelation – in one of the Sundays – that Jacqui Smith is claiming the Additional Costs Allowance against her family home, while lodging with her sister in London. Peter Oborne has a piece in today’s Mail describing the arrangement as ‘corrupt’. A foretaste of what we can expect later this year when our expenses are published three years in arrears.

  Also, a big storm brewing over the news that the bankers – even those whose banks are largely state-owned – are going ahead as usual with their obscene annual splurge of bonus payments, unfazed by the ruin they have wrought. Mounting public fury, demands for government intervention. So far all that has been promised is ‘a review’. This evening, a meeting with a harassed-looking Yvette Cooper, who explained that the government was doing its best, but that unravelling existing arrangements was complicated. No doubt it is, but if we are not careful the government is going to find itself in the unhappy position of defending a profession that – for the time being at least – is even more reviled than ourselves.

  Peter Mandelson addressed the parliamentary party, but without referring to the issue on most people’s minds – the proposed part-privatisation of the Post Office. It came up soon enough in Questions and though Peter’s response prompted mild heckling, he was generally well received and so reticent about the Post Office that I begin to wonder if a U-turn is being organised.

  Tuesday, 10 February

  Today’s papers report a fall in profits (to a mere £61 billion) for Barclays, the directors of which have, thus far, avoided throwing themselves on the mercy of the taxpayer. However, buried in The Times report on the subject is the following chilling sentence: ‘Total Barclays assets and liabilities each mushroomed to more than £2 trillion, both now larger than the UK domestic product . . .’ With stunning understatement the report goes on: ‘The size of its balance sheet would pose problems for British taxpayers . . . in the unlikely event that the bank were to fail.’ Ye gods.

  Wednesday, 11 February

  Just four – repeat four – women have applied to succeed Fraser Kemp in Houghton and Sunderland South, one of our safest seats.

  Wednesday, 25 February

  To the Home Office with Molly Meacher and Lord Cobbold to discuss the forthcoming UN drugs summit in Vienna with Alan Campbell. On the wall in the waiting area I counted pictures of no fewer than 26 post-war Home Secretaries, one every two years on average. While we were there the news came through that David Cameron’s severely disabled son had died. PMQs was called off. Instead Gordon made a brief, moving tribute and the House was suspended.

  Monday, 2 March

  A storm raging over the discovery that Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has just recorded the biggest loss in British corporate history, escaped with a pension of £693,000 a year, payable from the age of 50. He is brazenly resisting calls to return at least some of his ill-gotten gains. Harriet was in the media over the weekend, suggesting that the government would force him to, but it appears that she has rowed out too far. Treasury lawyers are advising that Sir Fred’s position is watertight. ‘A nightmare,’ remarked Yvette Cooper at the Treasury committee.

  Also a big row brewing over plans to sell off 30 per cent of the Royal Mail. The general reaction is incomprehension. How could we be so daft? Just at the moment when the private sector is on its knees along comes Peter Mandelson (or is it Gordon?) with plans to part-privatise one of our most loved institutions. So far no sign of movement. On the contrary, the pit gets deeper every day and it’s hard to see how we are going to dig ourselves out.

  Tuesday, 3 March

  Another bank, HSBC, has published its results alongside the news that five of its bankers shared bonuses of £32 million despite a slump in profits and the bank having to write off £17 billion in bad debt. The chairman was quoted as saying, ‘People had given up focusing on whether something was the right thing to do, focusing only on whether or not it was legal.’

  A chat with my good friend Keith Hill re all that anti-B
lair spin emanating from the Treasury in the bad old days. The Man, says Keith, didn’t believe it was coming from Gordon, although the courtiers kept telling him that it was. After Gordon became leader, it all stopped. ‘That’s the proof,’ says Keith. He added that in the early days The Man had probably hinted, if not explicitly stated, to Gordon that he would only serve a term and a half – and that, of course, is the root of it all.

  Hilary Benn remarked to me, apropos Alastair Campbell’s diaries, how struck he was by how dependent The Man was on Alastair, how frequently he rang for advice, how insecure he appears and what a contrast with the brilliant, confident performer that we saw so much of in public. Hilary was also struck, as was I, by the extraordinary degree of access Piers Morgan – and other tabloid lowlife – enjoyed and what a waste of time it all was.

  Thursday, 5 March

  The Bank of England has cut interest rates to just half a per cent, prompting howls of anguish from savers. More ominously, the Bank has embarked on a mind-boggling £75 billion programme of ‘Quantitative Easing’, which apparently means printing money and using it to buy gilts from the banks in the hope that they will start lending again. Whether they will or not remains to be seen. We are entering unknown territory.

  Wednesday, 11 March

  A brief exchange of fire with Lance Corporal McAvoy re my reference in the Diaries to his girth. He (twanging his red braces): ‘If you talk about my fat belly, I’ll talk about your speccie baldness.’

  ‘Be my guest, Tommy.’

  As we were going through the Aye Lobby this evening, Michael Meacher recounted an exchange he had with The Man, shortly before the ‘97 election, when Michael was front bench spokesman on environment. A crisis had blown up, he couldn’t remember what, and he had rung up Blair to clarify what he should say. According to Michael, The Man replied, ‘You’ll just have to lie.’ Michael was gobsmacked. ‘I’ve never forgotten it,’ he said, adding, ‘And I don’t mind if you put that in your diary.’ A small addition to the growing body of evidence – remember the ‘Bobby’ incident* – that, in extremis, The Man did not always tell the truth.

  Friday, 13 March

  I am trying to rescue a young woman from Benin who the UK Border Agency is trying to remove to Lagos, despite the fact that she has never set foot in Nigeria. She has a 17-month-old son. If she goes she will be destitute. The toddler, presumably, has none of the immunities needed for life in a Nigerian slum. No one seems to have given a thought to what will become of him. It’s literally a matter of life or death. She was due to be bundled onto a flight at 10.30 tomorrow, but I managed to track down the immigration minister, Phil Woolas, in his constituency and persuade him to give the poor woman another week. I have until Tuesday to make representations.

  Saturday, 14 March

  Sunderland

  In today’s Telegraph a half-page review of my Diaries by Roy Hattersley alleging that ‘page after page exudes the conviction that he is morally superior to those around him’. Roy, I suspect, has not yet fully recovered from our differences in the eighties. Also, as so often with ‘great’ men, one never knows whether they have actually read the book or just dipped into it in search of material that supports their prejudices.

  Monday, 16 March

  A postcard from Simon Burns, a Tory MP: ‘You might think I’m sad, but I’ve just spent a weekend gripped by the diaries . . .’ Similar messages coming from all over. People knocking on my door asking me to sign copies. One Tory, a publisher by profession, described it as ‘a phenomena’.

  Tuesday, 17 March

  Binyam Mohamed, late of the dark prison in Bagram and Guantanamo, came in for a quiet chat with Andrew Tyrie and myself. To avoid recognition he has shaved his beard and is in the process of changing his name. In remarkable shape, considering his extraordinary ordeal. Ethiopian by origin, but came here from America. How come he ended up in Afghanistan? His story is that he had been living in London and had fallen in with a crowd who were doing drugs. Eager to escape, he had joined the local mosque, where someone suggested he head out to Afghanistan if he wanted to see Islam at its purest. After a few months in training camps for foreign jihadis in Jalalabad and later Kandahar he was then sent to man the second line of defence near Kabul – against the Northern Alliance – before being taken ill with malaria. He says he was in hospital when the American attack began and the Taliban took him to the border. He was picked up in Karachi, as he was about to board a plane back to the UK. He never saw any fighting and claims to have had no interest in an anti-America jihad, on the contrary his ambition had been to help the Chechens against the Russians. The rest is history. Now he just wants to regain his life and resume his engineering studies. He’s apparently good at football, having once been trialled by Chelsea. It could all have been so different . . .

  Wednesday, 18 March

  Alan Johnson relayed a message re the Diaries from his special adviser, a 32-year-old woman: ‘You’ve really lightened up my bedtime.’ And I didn’t think there was any sex in it.

  Thursday, 19 March

  Awoke to the news that unemployment has crossed the two million mark, about where it was when we came in – and rising faster than ever before. Odds are it will hit three million by this time next year. If this carries on, everything will unravel. Another lost generation of hopeless, unemployable, misbehaving youth. The Tories, with characteristic shamelessness, are dusting down their ‘Labour isn’t working’ poster from the late seventies. All we can say in reply is that we won’t be as beastly to the unemployed as they were. That plus our latest fatuous slogan: ‘Real Help Now’. Not enough to save us, I fear.

  Friday, 20 March

  Sunderland

  An hour with Paul Prest, ‘chief executive’ of the new academy at Pennywell. A messianic, driven man, vaguely resembling the BBC’s Robert Peston, who commutes from York and back each day. Already he is making waves. His first act was to insist that the kids remain on the school premises throughout the day, instead of roaming the streets at lunchtime. The inevitable rebellion was ruthlessly suppressed with mass suspensions, which seems to have done the trick. So far only one permanent exclusion, which is a good sign. The culture shock is proving too much for some. About 40 per cent of the staff have fled, but he didn’t seem sorry to have lost most of them and claims to have no trouble finding replacements. A fair amount of business-speak. As is the way these days, his deputies are ‘strategic directors’ and his speech is laced with references to American research which may or may not prove relevant to the stark realities of life on the streets of Pennywell. Early days yet. The new school, which will take children aged eight and upwards, will not be ready until September and so for now they are still operating out of the same tired, asbestos-ridden ‘60s buildings. I came away mildly optimistic. My worry is that he will burn himself out. An early test of his commitment will be whether he gives up commuting from York and moves nearer his place of work.

  Sunday, 22 March

  Jade Goody, foul-mouthed star of Big Brother and various other vulgar extravaganzas, has succumbed to cancer. In keeping with the spirit of the times, the Prime Minister put out a statement mourning her loss.

  Ken Clarke, meanwhile, has caused a storm by appearing to wobble on the Tories’ commitment to raise the upper limit on inheritance tax to £1 million – a litmus test issue in the meaner parts of Middle England. By evening he had been prevailed upon to put out a statement ‘clarifying’ his position. Useful confirmation, were any needed, that Tory priorities remain unchanged, despite our present travail.

  Monday, 23 March

  Everywhere the stench of decay. Yesterday’s News of the World devoted three salacious pages, complete with colour photos, to the antics of Nigel Griffiths with an unnamed woman in his Commons office. Meanwhile yet another row over expenses. This time the culprit is the employment minister, Tony McNulty, who, incredibly, has been claiming the second home allowance on a house in which his parents are living, even though he lives in Hammer
smith and represents a constituency no more than ten miles from Westminster. This evening he put out the usual bald statement, de rigueur on these occasions, that everything was within the rules, but it won’t wash. As even he seems to admit, it is indefensible. There is, I fear, much more of this to come.

  This evening, at the meeting of the parliamentary party, a chastened John Denham explained how the Learning and Skills Council has been merrily giving the nod to new higher education building projects without any proper accounting and as a result has commitments many times over budget. The chief executive has resigned, mercifully sans bonus, and all new building has been put on hold while the mess is sorted.

  Meanwhile the diaries have crept into the Sunday Times best-seller list – at number 10. My publisher, Andrew Franklin, emailed to say he had ordered another reprint, the second in a fortnight. Gisela Stuart, just back from Bahrain, says that each of the three Tories on her delegation had their noses buried in a copy.