A View From The Foothills

by Chris Mullin

  To dinner at the Congress Club in Great Peter Street for a stimulating discussion about waste disposal. Most of the guests were businessmen involved with recycling. The gist of their message was that it cannot be left to the market. Unless we pull our finger out, we stand no chance of meeting the EC recycling targets to which we have signed up. They wanted more green taxes, laws to make producers take responsibility for their own waste, a tougher government procurement policy and state intervention to ensure a stable market for recycled goods. Overall, they want a regulator to drive progress. All very reasonable, but not a message the deregulators in Downing Street or the Department of Trade and Industry will want to hear. Perhaps this is an area where I can make a difference. We have to break out of the pointless cycle of consultation documents, task forces and working parties in which we are presently trapped.

  Monday, 13 December

  I set out from Sunderland to address the OFWAT Christmas knees-up in Birmingham. My fifth dispatch to Birmingham in a month. As ever, the omens were inauspicious. The sky was raining grey slush. Every horizon dominated by prefabricated concrete. My, how the Brummies love their concrete.

  I had been given the usual 15-minute speech, typed triple-spaced, to read to the assembly. Had I been addressing a crowd of men in suits it would have been fine, but this was the office party. Everyone down to the typing pool and the cleaners was there and most were utterly uninterested in the minutiae of water regulation. They had come for the karaoke and the dancing, not for a ministerial speech. Not until I was about five paragraphs in, did it dawn on me that all that was required was to thank them for their hard work, wish them merry Christmas and sit down. On I ploughed, my morale sinking at their palpable indifference. Even my feeble attempts at humour fell on stony ground. Someone on the top table was whispering to his neighbour, no doubt about my inadequacy. Why on earth invite me – or rather Michael Meacher (for this was yet another of his hand-me-downs)? The only consolation was that Ian Byatt’s speech received no better reception, and he was playing on home ground.

  Departed for London feeling down. Seven hours of travelling only to show myself up in front of 200 people.

  The papers are full of JP’s alleged demotion and Gus Macdonald’s alleged elevation. This latest round of hysteria has apparently been triggered by a piece in yesterday’s Sunday Times. In truth, all that has changed is that the hacks have finally caught up with what happened in July. Gus has indeed been sent in to get a grip on transport – and by implication persuade JP to take a back seat, but that happened five months ago. The hacks are really falling over themselves to do down JP and, as ever, the Guardian is the worst. ‘Rail fares shock for Prescott’, shouts today’s main headline over a story that ordinarily would have merited a few paragraphs on an inside page.

  Tuesday, 14 December

  Gus tells me that JP was, as ever, the author of his latest misfortune. Apparently he got wind that the Sunday Times was intending to run something on his son’s property dealings and, no doubt without consulting anyone, rang to offer what he thought was a better story in the hope that the hacks would be deflected. Which, of course, they weren’t. Result: the worst of both worlds. The story about the prodigal son duly appeared on page five and the front was dominated by the news that Gus is to take charge of transport. Once again, JP has set himself up. An exact repeat of Bournemouth three months ago. This time he has chosen the day of his big speech at the ICA which was supposed to relaunch our transport policy.

  Somehow, says Gus, we have to persuade JP to stop interfering. Gus has talked to Richard Mottram who agrees that JP’s office should cease monitoring every press release and details of every petty little decision that ought properly to be the job of us underlings. JP’s job should be strategy, something woefully lacking in the Department. ‘Look at Gordon Brown,’ says Gus. ‘He disappears for months at a time and only goes public when he has something important to announce.’ Gus added that, contrary to rumour, neither Downing Street nor Gordon are fanning the flames. ‘Alastair and Gordon have been brilliant.’

  He said that JP is very down. ‘I tried to cheer him up by saying it will all blow over, but he thinks his credibility is damaged beyond repair.’

  So do I. The shadows are lengthening. Most people like John and want him to do well. Among those who know him, there is a general recognition that, under that volcanic exterior, there lurks a decent human being. At the same time there is a barely concealed contempt among both civil servants and ministers for his absolute lack of management skills, his inability to see wood for trees and his flat refusal to listen to anything anyone is telling him. Deep down I am sure he, too, realises that he is out of his depth. That accounts for the tantrums. It was the same with Neil Kinnock, who is much nicer now he is back in a job he can do.

  Half an hour with Nick Raynsford. Again, the talk was of the latest JP crisis. For weeks Nick has been vainly seeking an audience to discuss the housing Green Paper and reducing VAT on brownfield developments – both matters which need urgent decisions. ‘The man is immersed in trivia, blowing his top left, right and centre.’ Nick went on to describe how at the weekend, at the Eastbourne policy forum, JP had needlessly alienated a roomful of people, all with goodwill towards him, by storming out of a transport workshop and retiring in a sulk to his hotel. Says Nick, who usually errs on the side of caution, ‘As soon as the election is over, he’ll be gone.’

  Wednesday, 15 December

  There has been a U-turn on the Christmas boat trip we were all supposed to be going on tomorrow. Some weeks ago a memo came round from JP ordering ministers to stump up £75 a head towards the cost of a party on board a Thames cruiser for the private office staff. The note made clear that we were all expected to attend. However, Hilary Armstrong has persuaded JP that in the current climate it would not be a good idea. He had apparently forgotten about ‘The Ship of Shame’, a similar enterprise which he organised in Opposition and which made the front page of the Sun. Tomorrow’s trip had the smell of doom about it from the outset – the boat hired is a sister ship of the Marchioness. Anyway, thanks to Hilary, common sense has prevailed. The party will go ahead, but without ministers. Relief all round.

  Friday, 17 December

  Sunderland

  Ngoc reports the following exchange with Sarah. ‘Mum, I know all about Santa Claus.’

  Her friend Rachel told her, although Sarah has been suspicious since last year when Santa Claus foolishly wrote her a note using a word processor with a typeface suspiciously like mine.

  Ngoc neither confirmed nor denied. Sarah did not press the point since she is anxious not to jeopardise the prospect of this year’s presents. She did, however, make Sarah promise not to share her suspicions with Emma.

  Sunday, 19 December

  Shaun Woodward has crossed the floor. I am astounded. He had his differences with the Tories – notably on tolerance of gays – but he never struck me, or anyone else, as terminally disaffected. On the occasions – the last being two weeks ago – that I have found myself debating with him, he was aggressive and unpleasant. There is speculation that he has done some kind of deal with our masters, but I don’t believe that. The cynical view in the Tea Room is that he will soon be given a job, but that seems unlikely. The best he can hope for, and not until after the election, is a peerage. It’s not as though we need him. In any case, the honourable course would have been to resign his seat. How anyone can justify being elected for one party and then simply switch to another without benefit of an election is beyond me. What’s more it discredits the political process. Were I suddenly to wake one morning and decide I was a Tory, I wouldn’t dare show my face in Sunderland again, let alone wish to go on representing it.

  Monday, 20 December

  Gus Macdonald was on the radio this morning enunciating our new line on the car, which is that we are not against cars, simply in favour of making more sensible use of them. He even went so far as to suggest, gratuitously, that increased car ownership wa
s to be welcomed as an inevitable symptom of prosperity. On the same basis, everyone in China (where cars are killing an unbelievable 70,000 people a year) should have one. My own view remains that we would all be better off on bicycles.

  Tuesday, 21 December

  A meeting of transport ministers at which Gus reported that our ‘repositioning’ on cars was going well, although he had yet to discuss the subject with Michael Meacher, who might not share his enthusiasm since it was his job to cope with the pollution. In truth, I don’t suppose it matters much what spin we put on our transport policy, as long as we continue to pump money into buses and light railways. All the signs are that there is some big money in the pipeline.

  Keith Hill and I amused ourselves over lunch compiling a New Labour lexicon. We came up with the following: pathfinders, beacons, win-win, stakeholders, opportunities as well as challenges, joined-up government, partnership, best value. And, of course, ‘new’ as in New Partnership Company.

  These words increasingly crop up in official submissions. I am forever deleting them from letters and draft speeches. Jessica says that in John Major’s time official papers were full of cricketing analogies, but these have largely disappeared in favour of the new claptrap. One often hears it trotted out at Question Time. I am in awe of the facility with which it rolls off the tongues of some of our more flexible colleagues. Officials, of course, have a language of their own. ‘Taking forward’ is one of my favourites. It usually means doing nothing.

  ‘I hope you are not writing a diary …’ Jessica remarked this afternoon, watching me scribbling in one of the little red notebooks that I carry everywhere. I neither confirmed nor denied.

  I was briefed by a group of men in suits about our plans for coping with environmental emergencies. The one who did most of the talking was the red-faced, puffed-up little fellow who came to see me about classified material soon after I was appointed. I asked what was the most likely cause of disaster and the answer, unsurprisingly, was nuclear power stations. I was shown a map of Europe on which they were all marked and several that are judged particularly unreliable were double-ringed. One was Chernobyl, one in Bulgaria and a third that was too far east to be included on the map, although there was a mark in the margin. However, an official added that it was the French who worried him most. Their nearest nuclear power station was only thirty miles away and they wouldn’t necessarily tell us if they were in trouble.

  Thursday, 23 December

  Sunderland

  A call first thing this morning to say that Uncle Brian is dead. I feel bad about not having gone to see him. No one from the family was present when he died, except of course that his ‘family’ were the nuns who looked after him so well and they were there. I hope when I die those who love me will come to say goodbye. Eeerily, when I got to the office two hours later there was a Christmas card from Brian waiting. It must have been written even as he was dying. In a slightly shaky hand he had written, ‘Very many thanks for the best card I have received. I have never seen the Crypt* and find it quite lovely … I hope you will be able to come and see me again soon.’

  The first batch of refugees to be dispersed to Sunderland under Jack’s new asylum regime arrived yesterday. The council is arranging for them to be housed in empty private properties. A dozen Albanian Kosovars and Moldovans. Young, single males. One of the Albanians, the only English-speaker, said he came from the Serb-dominated town of Mitrovice and had fled to Macedonia at the start of the war. He arrived in England a few days ago, having paid 4,000 marks for a ride in a lorry. No one can blame these people for wanting to seek a new life in the West. In their place I would probably do the same, but it is hard to see how most of them can claim – now at any rate – to be fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution. I guess most are going to be sent back eventually. The sad thing is they have burned up their life savings to get here.

  Friday, 31 December

  Brixton Road

  Spent an hour raking up sawdust and clearing twigs from the lawn where Lambeth Council mistakenly cut down my pear tree.

  * The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR).

  * As chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

  * Brian Foley, RC Bishop of Lancaster, 1962–85; the House of Commons Christmas card depicted the crypt chapel of the Palace of Westminster.

  CHAPTER TWO

  2000

  Saturday, 1 January 2000 Brixton Road

  A new century. My grandchildren, who I hope to survive long enough to meet, will live into the twenty-second century. What kind of world will they inherit? The planet is in a worse state now than at any time in my life. Beyond fortress Europe and North America much of the world is in meltdown. In Africa there are countries where all civilised life has collapsed. Afghanistan has returned to barbarism. The Balkans are in turmoil and even as I write the Russians are bombing Chechnya into the stone age. Already refugees from the chaos are placing strains on the political and social fabric of the developed world that may in due course become unbearable. We should not imagine as we sit smug behind our increasingly fortified frontiers that our civilisation can survive unscathed.

  Our main problem, of course, is not other people’s wars. It is that we have invented an economic system which is consuming the resources of the planet as if there were no tomorrow – and there well might not be unless we change our ways. In the United States, the home of the world’s most voracious consumers, there is no sign at all that the political process is capable of persuading – or indeed has any desire to persuade – citizens to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. All over the democratic world, politicians increasingly follow rather than lead.

  And even were an ecological disaster to occur (perhaps it has already begun) the price will be paid by those least responsible and least capable of protecting themselves. Indeed the consumers of the developed world may not even notice. To crown all, the emerging economies of Asia are falling over themselves to emulate the mistakes that we have made. Indeed they insist that it is their right to do so.

  Maybe, just maybe, this will be the century in which we learn to reduce, reuse and recycle our waste, develop benign sources of food and energy and stop burning up the ozone layer. Maybe Europe will lead the way and others will follow. Who knows, there ought to be money to be made out of going green, in which case capitalism will enjoy a new lease of life.

  Or maybe it is too late. Maybe we have failed to heed the warning signs and a long, slow slide towards ruin beckons. By the end of my life the signals should be clearer.

  As for me, I am entering a period of unprecedented obscurity. Hopefully my eclipse will be temporary. Not that I wish to be famous, only useful. At the moment I am no use whatever. I shall cling on in government until the election and, if nothing comes up, I shall return to the backbenches and try to pick up where I left off. One of my difficulties is that I am not very good at pretending. I have let far too many people know about my low opinion of my current office and, if I’m not careful, it could tell against me. Gradually, inevitably, perceptibly, the little store of goodwill and credibility that I have so painstakingly accumulated is eroding.

  Tuesday, 4 January

  Jessica rings to ask if I will stand by for an interview with the Radio Four programme You and Yours about the safety of Cuban airlines.

  They are really after Gus Macdonald, but he is indisposed. I agree. Briefing notes are faxed. Arrangements are made to open up the local BBC studio. Then comes word that the interview is off. Vetoed by JP apparently. So much for having turned over a new leaf. The JP of the new millennium is unchanged. Still interfering in every pettifogging little decision. Nothing too trivial to command his attention … except, of course, the big picture.

  Thursday, 6 January Sunderland

  With Joyce Quin for a walk in the Cleveland Hills. We drove to Nether Stilton and walked in bright sunshine along the old drove road, about ten miles in all. Joyce has been badly used by the regime. Every year a new depa
rtment. In opposition she was our Europe spokesman, a job for which she was eminently qualified, whereupon as soon as we were elected she was made Minister of Prisons and the Europe job was given to Doug Henderson, who was equally unqualified. After a year, it became clear that this wasn’t working out so Joyce was moved to the Foreign Office to do the job for which she was the obvious candidate all along. A year later, she was brushed aside to make room for Geoff Hoon. He stayed only three months to be replaced by Keith Vaz, who has no obvious qualifications. Now Joyce is at agriculture. ‘I feel totally demotivated,’ she says.

  Tuesday, 11 January

  One of those days when I wish I could change jobs with the man collecting litter in St James’s Park. Within the next 24 hours I have to reply to debates on Gatwick, sewage treatment in Thanet and the depredations of rent officers in Stockport. In addition, I have been allocated questions on acid rain in Wales, traffic congestion, empty housing in Burnley and stamp duty on houses in Torbay. Only the empty housing comes within my remit. Everything else is an adventure.

  Keith Hill was the unexpected star of Question Time. Brazen, witty, he looked and sounded as though he was positively enjoying himself. With a flick of the wrist he brushed aside Tory spokesman John Redwood, labelling him – to general merriment – ‘the Il Duce of the Home Counties’. As for me, I scraped by without incident. The relief when it was over was comparable only to that I used to feel as an insecure adolescent, emerging from the Church of the Immaculate Conception, having confessed ‘impure thoughts’ to Canon Wilson.