by Chris Mullin
On Iraq, The Man said nothing was planned in the immediate future. He would be seeing Bush in April. ‘We have to tread carefully. It depends on what’s proposed. Weapons of mass destruction is the real issue. The latest intelligence is very strong.’ He added ominously that North Korea survives only by selling missile technology.
‘The key question is with what are we going to replace Saddam’s regime?’ I asked. ‘Another tyrant? Our tyrant rather than a maverick. Who is going to clear up afterwards? Will it be us again? As in Afghanistan.’ I quoted John Gilbert: ‘Great Powers don’t do the dishes.’
‘They did in Vietnam,’ growled Prescott unhelpfully.
The Man didn’t dispute any of this. ‘I say to you very privately,’ he replied, ‘that my strategy is to get alongside the Americans and try to shape what is to be done and that won’t be done by grandstanding.’ He added that this strategy had worked in Afghanistan. ‘Things were done differently as a result of our involvement.’
After he had gone, there was a row about Frank Field. Hilary announced that a woman – Vera Baird – had been found to fill one of the places and that she would prefer George Howarth for the other, but it had been put to her that there would be a fuss if it didn’t go to Frank …
‘Frank is obviously the best. His name leaps out of the page,’ I blurted. ‘We are only talking about one place out of sixteen. Surely the whips could live with that. Do we want a repeat of what happened last time over Gwyneth?’
At which point they started getting indignant. ‘I think Chris owes us some kind of explanation for his last remark,’ said Charles Clarke, but before I could respond someone else was demanding a vote, which has never happened before. There was a discussion about who was entitled to vote.
‘If we are to have a vote,’ I said, ‘I hope we will take into account the opinion of those who are absent.’
‘Only those who are here have a vote,’ said Prescott. ‘If you don’t attend, you can’t vote.’
I pointed out that Andrew and Ann had both forcefully expressed their opinions last week and apologised in advance for their absence. Ann had even written to Jean indicating her support for Frank. Jean, who had been keeping her head well down, confirmed that this was so.
‘You’re on your own,’ someone said.
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘The chairman agrees with me.’ I shouldn’t have said it, but I was furious. It was obvious we had been tricked. Jean reddened, wobbled and then said that she wasn’t necessarily in favour of Frank. A chasm opened.
In the end Robin Cook saved the day proposing that we should put forward Vera’s name and then invite colleagues to choose on a show of hands between George and Frank. There was nothing for it but to agree even though the whips will certainly make sure that George wins. Hilary could hardly believe her luck.
Thursday, 7 March
Rang Frank to tell him what went on yesterday. It’s up to him if he wants to organise a fuss. If truth be told, there is a case against Frank. Brilliant, interesting, principled he may be, but he is not a team player; in fact he is seriously disloyal and a maverick.
Monday, 11 March
Much concern that The Man is going to sign us up to a war against Iraq. Rumours of discontent in Cabinet. Alice Mahon tried to persuade me to sign her early day motion, but I declined since the other signatories were mainly Usual Suspects, but there is no doubt that unease spreads well beyond. ‘The Prime Minister should pay more attention to the Labour Party and less to the Republican Party,’ remarked Malcolm Savidge.
An unexpected piece of good news. George Howarth says he does not want to be considered for the Public Accounts Committee. His letter to Jean, announcing his withdrawal, begins, ‘I put my name forward at the request of the Chief Whip,’ which blows the gaff on Hilary’s little games. Later in the evening Frank Field came up to my room with a letter saying that he was withdrawing, too. The ball is now firmly back with the parliamentary committee.
Tuesday, 12 March
I pointed out to Vera Baird that she would have to come off the Human Rights Committee if she wanted to go on Public Accounts. She said she had already received an e-mail to this effect from Jean Corston and she will withdraw her name from Public Accounts, too. Very satisfactory. Hilary is now in a deep little pit of her own making. The question is, will she have the sense to stop digging?
Wednesday, 13 March
To the Gay Hussar for lunch with Andy McSmith, the token socialist on the Daily Telegraph, a grudging recognition by the crazed ideologues who run the paper that they need to maintain some sort of link with the ruling party. Andy recounts introducing himself to Conrad Black at an office party. The Tyrant was raving that Britain should leave the EC and join the North American Trade Association and Andy made some mildly sarcastic remark. At first Black thought Andy was agreeing with him and then the penny dropped and he skidded to a halt.
‘Where did you work before?’
‘The Observer.’
‘Well don’t you bring any Observer attitudes here. I shall be reading your copy very carefully and if I detect any, I shall ring up Charles Moore at 2 a.m. – I do you know.’ I bet he does.
Five thousand angry, white (almost entirely) male police officers descended on Westminster to lobby against Blunkett’s reform plans. An awesome, slightly scary spectacle. Many were overweight, fit only for light duties. No wonder they are so upset at the prospect of going back to the beat. The organisation was scientific. Just about every committee room in the building was put at their disposal and each force lobbied us in relays. About 120 from Northumbria crowded into the Jubilee Room to meet their MPs. The mood was uncompromising and occasionally ugly. ‘You’re arrogant,’ ‘You don’t understand us,’ they kept saying. One detective of seven years’ experience claimed improbably that he took home the same as a ‘pasty stacker’ in Gregg’s, the baker’s. Faced with this, one or two of our colleagues opted for appeasement. David Miliband made a brave attempt to hold the line. Ronnie Campbell provided light relief and John McWilliam made a disastrous intervention, haranguing the assembly for five minutes while the rest of us just looked at the floor. For my part, I confined myself to asking a few questions and avoided expressing an opinion on the righteousness of their cause. If anything, the experience hardened my resolve and I’m not the only one. One colleague, emerging from a meeting with Manchester’s finest, remarked on how rude they had been. ‘If they talk to us like this, imagine how they treat a 16-year-old black youth.’
I arrived ten minutes late at the parliamentary committee, just in time to catch the tail end of an exchange between Gordon Prentice and The Man on the Post Office. ‘Why are we opening up the market so fast? That’s what I can’t understand.’
‘Other post offices in Europe have changed and we haven’t. We can’t bury our heads in the sand.’
Talk then turned to Iraq. ‘Listen to the folks on The Hill,’ pleaded Andrew Mackinlay. ‘It isn’t obvious that September 11 has changed anything in relation to Iraq,’ said Tony Lloyd. ‘I’m not under any illusions, but I can’t see what’s changed.’
‘The only way in which September 11 is relevant,’ said The Man, ‘is that we can’t leave these problems to fester. How to deal with them is the issue.’ He repeated that no decisions had been taken. Reports that we had been requested to supply 25,000 troops were ‘nonsense’. He was, he implied, a moderating influence on George Bush. ‘I wouldn’t underestimate the importance of giving the Americans another way of dealing with this. I don’t intend to do anything I don’t believe in.’
Beware of phoney intelligence, I cautioned, mentioning ‘yellow rain’. He clearly hadn’t heard of it, but Robin Cook nodded sagely.*
We turned to the police. ‘We are fighting on too many fronts,’ I said. We need to look for one we can close down quickly. My candidate would be the Post Office.
After The Man had departed there was an extraordinary row over the proposed Hunting Bill. Gordon insisted on tabling a resolution fo
r next Wednesday’s meeting of the parliamentary party which would bind the government to re-adopt the previous Hunting Bill rather than a new watered-down version which might come too late for the Parliament Act to be used. ‘We don’t vote on policy at party meetings,’ objected Charles Clarke.
‘Why not?’ said Gordon.
‘This has been going on for a long time,’ said Andrew Mackinlay.
‘Every once in a while we are getting out of our pram.’
Several people objected on the grounds that there was already a full programme for next week’s meeting and that anyway Alun Michael was due to give a statement to Parliament the next day setting out the government’s intentions. Gordon persisted: ‘We’ve been round this course so many times before. We are in danger of ridicule.’
Debate grew heated. Gordon then insisted on a vote as to whether his motion should be put to the parliamentary party. We voted. Gordon lost. ‘I want the minutes to record that my motion was rejected.’
Andrew Mackinlay said, ‘Last week we were duped’, a reference to the row over Frank Field and the Public Accounts Committee. (Oh dear, I thought, we’ve still got all that to come.)
Once again, Robin came to the rescue. ‘I suggest we all put down our revolvers.’ He proposed by way of compromise that Alun Michael be invited to next week’s meeting. Gordon wasn’t having that either. He forced another vote. Again he was outvoted. By now he had rubbed just about everyone up the wrong way. There is a suspicion that he is anxious to portray himself in a heroic light and the rest of us as shoddy compromisers. The irritating thing is that we are all agreed about the necessity to resolve the hunting issue once and for all. All Gordon has succeeded in doing is portraying us as divided.
To everyone’s pleasant surprise the filling of the vacancies on the Public Accounts Committee went through easily. Hilary had finally got the message that she wasn’t doing herself any good and simply caved in, pausing only to profess her innocence of any jiggery pokery. No one believed her, but no one rose to the provocation. Jean Corston said afterwards that she had remarked to Gordon Brown that everyone believed he was behind the attempt to blackball Frank. Far from denying it, he had smirked and said, ‘Fancy that.’
Thursday, 14 March
The place is like a morgue. Odd, we fight so hard to get here and yet so many of us seem so reluctant to remain on the premises for a moment longer than we are obliged. The more we vote ourselves extra facilities, the less use we make of them.
Sunday, 17 March
Sunderland
We have acquired a cat. A hairy, black and white cat called Bruce, despite being female. She used to belong to the family who lived next door but one. They moved and took Bruce with them, but she kept coming back and camping in our garden. She used to camp out all night in the top of the leylandii tree next to our back door. Eventually we took pity and started feeding her. We made a little house out of a cardboard box, covered with plastic and left it on the back doorstep, but Bruce refused to use it and now – much to Ngoc’s annoyance – she has inveigled her way into the house. Ngoc has relented on the strict understanding that she remains confined to the storeroom at the back. Bruce, however, is not satisfied. She lurks behind the door and every time it opens makes a dash for the interior of the house only to be rounded up and deposited back in her box, but it’s only a question of time. The small people, needless to say, are delighted. Meantime the pressure to buy a guinea pig has abated.
Monday, 18 March
Steve Byers boarded the train at Doncaster and sat behind me. He says that, since the election, the Cabinet has found its voice. There was a good discussion on Iraq the other day, lasting the best part of an hour.
A meeting (at his request) with Alun Michael. He’s had two meetings with The Man and there is ‘no enthusiasm’ for using the Parliament Act to push through the existing Bill, but he believes he has found a formula which will satisfy most people. Instead of an outright ban, he is proposing two tests – cruelty and utility. The result, he believes, will be an end to stag-hunting, hare coursing and lowland foxhunting. I am sceptical. I foresee years of litigation, during the course of which the judges will drive a coach and horses through Alun’s Bill, triggering off demands for yet more legislation.
Later, we voted by another huge majority for a complete ban on hunting with dogs. For the first time The Man voted with us. According to Jean Corston, he was adamantly opposed, as recently as November, to doing anything so there has obviously been some movement. Who says the parliamentary party is powerless?
Tuesday, 19 March
There is a whiff of treason in the air. Tam Dalyell suggested at the weekend that the time may be coming for a leadership election and Mo Mowlam had a piece in Sunday’s Mirror suggesting – outrageously – that New Labour is sleazier than the Tories. Mo, of course, is a loose cannon, but Tam is a rather more serious matter. Who does he have in mind as a stalking horse? Himself perhaps. It’s early days yet, but one can foresee a scenario where, if The Man ignored all warnings and fell in behind Bush over Iraq, a challenge from Tam could inflict considerable damage. It is not as though there is no alternative. The brooding, ever-present figure of Gordon is waiting in the wings.
Friday, 22 March
Sunderland
Another parent with a daughter on heroin at the surgery this evening. The third in the last couple of months. Before that I’d never had any. He was a hard-working, decent man of about my age. He had two daughters, one of whom was successful and the other in the process of self-destruction. Although he had spent much of his savings repaying debts she had run up he was completely without bitterness. ‘I love both my daughters,’ he said, ‘unconditionally.’ His complaint was about the loan sharks who, without the merest inquiry, had doled out loans to his daughter at rates of up to 40 per cent.
Monday, 25 March
A bad day. First, a statement from Patricia Hewitt presaging redundancies in the Post Office. She provoked much merriment on the Tory benches by referring to the ‘sea air at Harrogate’, where they have been holding their spring conference. After that it was downhill all the way. Steve Byers followed with a statement that, contrary to all his previous pronouncements, he would be offering £300 million to buy off the Railtrack shareholders. This provoked derision on the Tory side and bewilderment on ours. At a stroke Steve has shot away the basis for much of the support he was given in his recent difficulties. I assume, although no one said so, that he has done it because he has been advised that the shareholders would have a case if they took him to court and that, even if they lost, it would drag on for years. That, however, calls into question the wisdom of putting Railtrack into administration in the first place. Steve was on his own this time.
Hardly anyone on our side rose to defend him. Reminders that we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if the Tories hadn’t privatised the railways only provoked further derision. The Tories are growing increasingly shameless. ‘Five years,’ they kept chanting. It’s true, we can’t go on blaming them for ever. Our alibi is wearing increasingly thin.
Thursday, 28 March
A call from an immigration official to say that he was about to issue an order for the Ukrainian refugee family to be deported to Spain (their first port of entry to the EU). It will take effect within 15 days, unless I get on to Jeff Rooker. All I can do is plead for a few weeks more to enable the boy to complete his year at the Grindon Christian School, where the poor little chap is doing well. This is the only stability he has ever known. Now he must be uprooted and sent to Spain, where he will have to start all over again and the odds are that this, too, will end in failure and that one day a year or two from now he and his family will be unceremoniously dumped back in the Ukraine, where a life of impoverishment awaits them. It haunts me that I am powerless to help.
Saturday, 30 March
At midnight I turned on the radio and heard that the Queen Mother is dead.
Sunday, 31 March
Sunderland
Easter Sunday. The airwaves are thick with tributes to the Queen Mother although, to be fair, the BBC has not gone completely doo-lally, as was once threatened. Parliament is to be recalled next week, which is a bit daft. What is there to say? Most politicians are already struggling. Joan Maynard and I once encountered her at Fountains Abbey. Not wishing to tug our forelocks, but not wanting to seem churlish either, we hid behind a clump of shrubs until she had passed.
Wednesday, 3 April
In the afternoon I called on the local drugs action team. They are swamped – five years ago they had 46 referrals for heroin addiction; last year there were 574. In addition, they had another 843 for alcohol, amphetamines and prescribed drugs. Alcohol is still the biggest problem, but heroin is rapidly gaining.
Sunday, 17 April
Sunderland
The Man is in Texas, where he appears to have signed us up to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – unless the tyrant comes out with his hands up, which is not very likely. Is this sensible? The Middle East is ablaze, we are by no means out of the woods in Afghanistan and yet we appear to be organising – or at least conniving at – a new war in Iraq. A provocation too far. It could mark the beginning of the end of the Blair ascendancy. If he’s not careful, sooner or later he will face a challenge. Indeed, in my darker moments, I fantasise about throwing down the gauntlet myself, but do I want to be the man who puts the skids under arguably the most successful Labour administration ever? Of course I don’t.
Monday, 8 April
To London on an evening train and straight to Parliament, where I couldn’t resist a peek at the Queen Mother lying in state in Westminster Hall. Beefeaters in red tunics, pikes inverted, heads bowed, guarded the catafalque. Overseeing the proceedings, from the top of a flight of steps, a magnificent figure in a plumed helmet. And on either side an unending stream of silent pilgrims, flowing down the steps from St Stephen’s entrance, through the Great Hall and out into New Palace Yard. It was like stumbling onto a vast film set and so sudden. Not for us representatives of the people a six-hour wait. One moment I am hanging my coat in the cloakroom and next, wham, I am facing the flag-draped coffin topped with the crown and its wreath of white lilies. I lingered for about 15 minutes, soaking up atmosphere (hoping that Dennis Skinner wasn’t standing at the back taking notes). A marked absence of deference. A few people bowed their heads as they came alongside; a woman genuflected and made the sign of the cross, but for the rest the prevailing sentiment was curiosity rather than a desire to pay homage. There were exceptions, of course. Nick Soames, looking sombre in his great coat. I bet he’s been round at least half a dozen times, like a Tibetan making circuits of the Barkor, storing up merit for the next life. Especially poignant for him since, quite apart from the fact that he’s an unreconstructed royalist, his grandfather was the last person to be given this treatment.
