Decline & Fall

by Chris Mullin

  This evening to the Methodist Central Hall for a lecture by General David Petraeus, the American in overall charge of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and much else besides. A civilised, thoughtful, decent man, far removed from the Rumsfeld/Cheney way of doing business. Already he is being spoken of as a future president.

  Friday, 18 September

  To Sunderland on the 11.27 Grand Central train from King’s Cross, only to grind to a sickening halt outside Retford, having collided with a pedestrian. A suicide. Apparently he stood with his back to the train, arms outstretched, awaiting the awful impact. A car with a note inside was found nearby. Pity the poor train driver, who must have seen him from a long way off but been powerless to stop in time. The body must have been dragged some way because we could hear stones hitting the undercarriage. It went on for a long time.

  A poll in today’s Times says that most people now believe that the NHS would be better under the Tories. Should we laugh or cry?

  Sunday, 20 September

  An unseemly bidding war has broken out to see which party can inflict the most damage on the public sector. For weeks the media have been demanding that Gordon admit that public spending must be slashed and last week, at the TUC, he obliged. Now the ludicrous Nick Clegg is at it. Yesterday he was demanding ‘bold and savage cuts’. This morning he was on The Andrew Marr Show, prattling about the need to ‘treat people like grown-ups’. This isn’t leadership. It’s follow-that-opinion-poll. A cynical ploy to shore up support among the southern middle classes. I can’t believe it is going to win him any votes. If you want bold and savage cuts, the logical thing to do is vote Tory.

  Monday, 21 September

  On the radio this morning, Shirley Williams talking sense about our current travails: ‘This is not a British crisis. It is a global crisis. A crisis of capitalism. One of the things I feel most resentful about is the way in which the Tories have managed to present it as a British crisis, a crisis caused by Gordon Brown, when in fact it is a crisis of capitalism caused by a world banking system that is deeply sick and we have got to save it.’ Come back, Shirley, all is forgiven. If only our current crop of ministers were so fluent and credible.

  A visit to Dave Thornton, the head teacher at Farringdon School. He’s taken on a bright new maths teacher and as a result driven Farringdon’s ‘5 A-C’ rating up from 32 to 47 per cent in a single year. Languages, he says, have been the big casualty of the drive to focus on practical outcomes – only 20 of 180 eligible students opted for a language – but the good news is that those who have are doing better than ever because they are no longer distracted by the surly and disaffected.

  Tuesday, 22 September

  House of Commons

  To a Royal Africa Society breakfast at the Institute of Directors to hear Andrew Mitchell, one of the best and the brightest on the Tory front bench, outline his party’s plans for international development. Sincere, fluent, well informed, he went out of his way to emphasise that there is not a Tory or Labour policy on overseas aid, but a British one. Amazingly, the Tories have committed to ring-fence aid spending and endorse the UN target – 0.7 per cent of GNP. A measure of how far they have travelled since the bad old days of the Pergau Dam and aid-related arms deals etc. Also, a tribute to Clare Short’s success in utterly transforming British aid policy. She must surely go down as one of New Labour’s most successful ministers. Oh, the irony.

  Afterwards I walked back with Andrew across the park. He says that David Cameron is entirely signed up to protecting the aid budget. Should we believe him? Maybe, at least as long as Andrew remains in post, but what happens after that remains to be seen. He also remarked, apropos my diaries, that he had recently run into John Vereker (a.k.a. Sir Two Buzzes*), who had generously remarked that ‘Chris Mullin was a much better minister than he pretends’. A fitting epitaph for my four undistinguished years in government.

  Wednesday, 23 September

  According to Channel Four’s Gary Gibbon, David Cameron at a recent press conference cited my diaries as a reason for his proposed cutback of the government car service. So, I do still retain a smidgeon of influence. Alas, however, with the wrong party.

  Later, a coffee with John Hutton, who claims to have heard whispers of yet another plot to bring down Gordon. This one involving a challenge to the chairman of the parliamentary party, Tony Lloyd, by someone standing solely on a ‘Gordon must go’ ticket. The thinking being that, since the election is by secret ballot, people would be free to give vent to their true feelings, unintimidated by The Apparatus. Much depends on who the candidate is, of course. Personally, I don’t think it will happen and, if it does, the odds are Gordon would survive, even more damaged than he is already. And were Gordon to be ousted, we would face a legacy of bitterness that would linger for years. Ken Baker, who I ran into last night, said it took the Tories ten years to recover from the ousting of Thatcher. Even John agreed that replacing Gordon at this late stage was unlikely to make much difference, though he did add that it might be the difference between meltdown and survival.

  Thursday, 24 September

  ‘Obama snub for Brown’. Yes, the junk journalists at it again. Believe it or not, this latest piece of nonsense is the lead in the Guardian and The Times. The BBC’s Nick Robinson is also at it. Gordon is at the UN in New York. The White House apparently couldn’t find a slot for an audience with the President, no doubt on the very sensible grounds that if he received Gordon there would be similar demands from Sarkozy, Merkel and Berlusconi et al. Not to mention the fact that they are all off to Pittsburgh for the G20 summit the next day, where there will no doubt be plenty of opportunities for ‘face time’. Needless to say, our hacks have chosen to interpret this as a snub. It’s all a silly game, designed to demonstrate that everything poor Gordon does turns to dust. Last time he visited the US, the lobby hacks filled the airwaves with spurious demands that he apologise for ‘causing’ the recession. Oddly, in the US itself – and in Europe – an entirely different perception of Gordon prevails. While others dithered, he is seen as the one leader who knew what to do when the banking crisis struck. On this evening’s bulletins, brief clips of Gordon receiving an award for statesmanship, but scarcely a word of this has reached the British electorate. A triumph of spin over substance, if ever there was.

  Friday, 25 September

  To Middlesbrough’s magnificent Victorian town hall, for a meeting of the Grand Committee. Parliament comes to the North-East. The whole shebang, clerks, Hansard reporters, ushers in morning suits and a quorum of the region’s MPs. I was sceptical, at first, but it turned out to be an uplifting occasion. Nick Brown, our ‘Minister for the North’, answered questions and then opened a debate on the region’s economy to which most of us, in turn, contributed. And the speeches were good. Well informed, positive, focused on the real world – exactly what the public demands of its elected representatives. Alas, however, we may have been talking to ourselves since the region’s media, preoccupied as they are with tales of mugging, murder and mayhem, were largely absent. According to Dari Taylor, before the proceedings had even started, one of the few journalists present was threatening an ‘only ten MPs bothered to show up’ story. Actually, it was 14 but it remains to be seen whether this made any difference.

  Someone, a senior civil servant, drew my attention to a programme on BBC2 last night (For Love of Money) in which various important foreigners, including the former American Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, were interviewed and said that last autumn the world economy came within a whisker of meltdown. The Americans had a plan, but it was deadlocked in Congress, and it was the decisive action taken by the British government that prevented catastrophe. If true, it means that Gordon and Alistair got right the biggest decision of the twenty-first century, bar none. Why is that a secret in this country? How come only foreigners know?

  Sunday, 27 September

  Our demoralised, depleted army is gathering in Brighton for the annual conference. Alistair Darli
ng has given an interview to the Observer in which he likens us to ‘a football team that has lost the will to live’. Gordon’s latest wheeze is ‘a Fiscal Responsibility Act’ that commits us to halving the public spending deficit within four years. Meanwhile, The Noble Lord Mandelson has let it be known that, if by any chance Labour were to be defeated, he would be prepared to continue serving the country in some unspecified capacity. I bet.

  Monday, 28 September

  Brighton

  My last Labour Party conference after 39 years. Journalists and lobbyists outnumber delegates by two or three to one. Doom and gloom everywhere. Everyone knows this is the end. Many of the speeches from the floor have a surreal quality – fluent but those reading them seem unfamiliar with the text. As though written by an unseen hand, which I suspect may well be the case. An excellent speech from Alistair Darling. Calm, credible, reassuring and what’s more he took the fight to the Tories. As well he might. On the economy and the financial crisis we have a much better story to tell than most people will admit and the Tories have made the wrong call each turn. We ought to be rubbing their noses in it.

  Peter Mandelson was the improbable star of the day. Emerging briefly from the shadows where he has always preferred to operate, he treated us to a minor masterpiece that was in turns witty, theatrical, self-indulgent, laced with faux modesty (‘I make enemies sometimes needlessly . . . I was sometimes too careless of the feelings and views of others . . .’ – where did he get that from?*). From time to time pausing to inject a sinister smile. Gordon sitting behind him, eyes half closed, affected amusement, nodding vigorously. If I were Gordon, I’d be thinking, ‘What’s this bastard up to now?’ At the end Peter was rewarded with a heartfelt standing ovation. A historic day. The party has learned to love him. It’s taken a while (about 20 years) and may not last, but it has come to pass and I have lived to see the day. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

  On the way to the station I passed an Evening Standard billboard. It read: ‘BROWN: DEAD MAN WALKING’. Hooray for British journalism.

  Tuesday, 29 September

  Brighton

  Gordon’s big day. Rarely can a leader have been under such pressure. One can’t but sympathise. For the second year running Sarah, who everybody loves, did the warm-up. A mixture of charm and American-style vulgarity (‘I know he loves our country and he will always, always put you first’). Then Gordon. Everyone was willing him to do well. And he did. He began by rattling off a list of what we had achieved (working the hall up into a frenzy) and rounded off with a list of things to come, a mixture of substance (restoring the link between pensions and earnings) and cheap populism (a right to recall errant MPs). Of spending cuts, there was scarcely a mention, which leaves us just a teeny bit vulnerable, since much of what was promised seems to involve more, not less, public spending. At the end there was the usual lengthy ovation followed by a somewhat contrived encore. Elation mixed with relief that he had pulled it off, but of course the big question is how will it play outside our little bubble? Is anybody listening? As I was leaving the hall, Jeremy Paxman thrust a microphone under my nose and demanded an instant reaction. Suspecting that he was taking the piss I offered an anodyne but friendly comment which I knew would not be used. I then asked what he thought, whereupon he came over all professional, as though he were some sort of lofty neutral observer, rather than the congenital cynic that he is. Sure enough, the Newsnight report of Gordon’s speech was one long sneer.

  By late evening word reached us that the Sun had come out for the Tories.

  Wednesday, 30 September

  How should we respond to news of the Sun’s ‘conversion’? My first reaction was mild amusement. Until last night I hadn’t realised the Sun has been on our side these past 12 years and any student of the writings of Mr Trevor Kavanagh could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The obvious response is to laugh, but there is a case for going on the offensive. How dare a billionaire American/Australian oligarch subvert our democracy? Who elected him? Etc. The difficulty with this line of attack is that New Labour have spent too long sucking up to Rupert. My pre-’97 strategy would have been to nod in all the right places, laugh at his jokes – and strike with deadly force in the first week: one daily, one Sunday per proprietor, ownership confined to EU citizens only, no one who owns a national newspaper allowed more than 10 per cent of a TV company . . . and so on. The weakness, of course, is that (a) there is no shortage of unlovable megalomaniacs queuing to gobble up whatever comes on to the market and (b) forcing Murdoch to choose could well result in the closure of The Times and Sunday Times, not that the latter would be a great loss, but The Times would be.

  Thursday, 1 October

  A snippet from yesterday’s Guardian: ‘The US secret service is investigating who was behind a Facebook poll on whether President Obama should be killed. The page offered four options: Yes, No, Maybe, and “If he cuts my healthcare”. More than 700 people responded. . .’

  This evening, to a book festival in Appledore. I was once – 39 years ago – the Labour candidate in North Devon. About 140 people attended, but I recognised no one from the old days.

  Monday, 5 October

  Sunderland

  A visit from a soldier just back from Afghanistan. ‘We had a delegation of Tories out,’ he said, ‘just interested in looking for sticks with which to beat the government.’ He added that there had been a big improvement in the quality of the equipment – fewer casualties from roadside bombs since the new armoured vehicles (Mastiffs) had been introduced. Still a shortage of helicopters, though.

  Tuesday, 6 October

  The bulletins are full of George Osborne’s address to the Tory conference, talking up the crisis in public spending, promising only blood, sweat and tears and blaming it all on the government, as if the global banking crisis never happened. All day a procession of Tories flowed through the studios, giving interviews casually studded with references to ‘Labour’s debt’ and ‘the mess that Labour has got us into’ without anyone being indelicate enough to suggest that most of the deficit had been incurred baling out the Tories’ friends in the City. Nor did anyone question whether our debt is really as bad as they keep alleging. Or whether a rise in the basic rate of tax (which has steadily fallen in recent years) might not also be part of the equation. Even government spokesmen, in so far as they are visible at all, seem only to be arguing that our cuts will be better than theirs – a recipe for defeat, if ever there was.

  Wednesday, 7 October

  George Osborne was on the radio posing as ‘Mr Honesty’, talking incessantly of the need to ‘level with the public’. But that’s just the point. He hasn’t. The analysis he has offered so far is entirely dishonest. This isn’t a uniquely British crisis, it’s global.

  Thursday, 8 October

  Today, at the Tory conference, it was the turn of David Cameron to put the frighteners on Middle England. He spoke of massive debt, social breakdown, attacked what he called ‘big’ government and even had the nerve to pose as a champion of the poor. How dare he? Broken Britain, my foot. In Sunderland we are still clearing up the mess from the Thatcher decade.

  Friday, 9 October

  To London on the 06.41. As we went down the east coast, a stunning sunrise – a gradually enlarging streak of deep, rich pink across a black/blue horizon; far out to sea a cluster of lights from a passing ship or an oil rig, and after Hartlepool the long black silhouette of the Cleveland Hills.

  Saturday, 10 October

  I am staying (post an appearance at the Cheltenham Literary Festival) with Jean Corston in her lovely fifteenth-century house on the edge of the Cotswolds. From the window fine views across the Severn Valley towards the Forest of Dean. She related how, towards the end of The Man’s tenure, Gordon presented a list of cronies who he wanted promoted to the Cabinet. ‘Do you want them because they are allies or because they are the best available?’ inquired The Man. To which there was no clear answer. In the end, The Man refused, saying th
at if Gordon wanted them in the Cabinet he should wait until he was prime minister and promote them himself.

  Monday, 12 October

  House of Commons

  Everyone waiting with trepidation for a letter from Sir Thomas Legg, telling us whether or not we have to pay back over-claimed expenses. Initially we were told they would appear on the letter board in the Members’ Lobby by noon, but as the day wore on there was no sign of them. People kept passing by, surreptitiously glancing. Smirking journalists hovered. In the event they didn’t turn up until early evening. More than 300 of us – including Yours Truly – are being asked to make repayments. Growing anger at the news that Legg appears to have changed the rules retrospectively and that the entire political class is being criminalized. Meanwhile, Stuart Bell has made another of his disastrous interventions – he is all over the media saying how unfair it all is. Unfair it may be, but the fact is we have only ourselves to blame and the public are in no mood for self-pity.