A View From The Foothills

by Chris Mullin

  ‘He’s put his case across …’ ‘Brilliantly, but it’s not our role to be his patsy.’

  No sooner had Gerald spoken than he intervened with a soft-ball question which The Man effortlessly hit towards the boundary.

  I was lacklustre, devoting my eight or nine minutes to the so-called special relationship. The Man replied to each point at length. I should have interrupted, but didn’t. We share the same values as America, he said, tolerance, democracy … Nonsense, I should have replied – the Republican Party is a front for some of the greediest, meanest, most selfish people on the planet. We have nothing in common with them. I should have said that, but I didn’t. I like the guy and I don’t want to fall out with him.

  ‘How does he manage to come across as so reasonable?’ Edward Leigh remarked afterwards. Both he and John Horam reiterated that they are against the war and that Tory voters are as divided as ours. Sure enough a poll in today’s Guardian suggests that public opinion is 43/30 against. If the Americans go ahead without UN backing and if we were to back them – as I’m sure we will – then the Man will be in deep trouble.

  Wednesday, 22 January

  Geoff Hoon, fluent, emollient, disingenuous, addressed the parliamentary party. The meeting was thinly attended at first, but people drifted in. He didn’t endear himself to the doubters by affecting not to understand the arguments against our participation in a missile defence system. He had a similar problem on Iraq: ‘I find it difficult to understand the attitude of our opponents to the role of the UN,’ he said. Several people tried to enlighten him. Malcolm Savidge pointed out that, as regards missile defence, there were doubts about the existence of a threat, about the technical feasibility, the cost and the long-term diplomatic consequences. ‘You know perfectly well what the arguments are,’ Diane Abbott told him, listing proliferation as the main one. She then started on, at some length, about Iraq. ‘Spaceship New Labour has lost touch with planet earth,’ she said, provoking groans from loyalists.

  ‘You’re on your own,’ Dari Taylor sitting behind me called out.

  ‘No she’s not,’ I hissed. ’43 per cent of the public agree with her.’ Afterwards I was berated by Dari, who can be a bit of a pain.

  Geoff replied that missile defence was a ‘modest proposal intended to deal with the threat posed by countries, such as North Korea or Iraq, which have small numbers of missiles and no regard for the welfare of their own people and which would not, therefore, be deterred by the prospect of retaliation’. On Iraq, he claimed that there was no inevitability about war. ‘You all know the argument. Unless we are prepared to demonstrate our resolve Saddam won’t take us seriously.’

  ‘I thought he was facile,’ Jonathan Shaw remarked afterwards. Jean Corston, who chaired the meeting, said much the same.

  Who should I come across beavering away in the otherwise deserted Library at ten o’clock this evening? None other than that ultra-moderniser Oona King who a few weeks ago was arguing passionately for knocking off at seven thirty on the grounds that her husband would divorce her if she kept coming home late. She was still there when I went home at 11.

  Thursday, 23 January

  Yet more evidence of dissatisfaction on the Tory benches with their leader’s slavish support for George W. Bush over Iraq. Jonathan Sayeed, my neighbour on Upper Corridor South, drew my attention to his speech – in yesterday’s defence debate – dissenting from the official line. No one seems to have noticed that he is a front bench spokesman. ‘I expected to be sacked, but nothing has happened,’ he said scarcely able to hide his disappointment. ‘Do me a favour,’ he said. ‘Ring around some of your left-wing friends in the lobby and mention my speech.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because as long as we are behind the government, it’s easy for Blair to get away with support for the Americans. There’s quite a lot of dissent below the surface on our side and I want to stir things up a bit.’

  So I rang Ann Perkins and Andy McSmith and did the necessary. We shall see what happens. Nothing, I suspect. No one is interested in the Tories.

  Once again today’s tabloids are full of poison about asylum. ‘Asylum is going to bring us down,’ Ross Cranston remarked this evening. ‘Whatever the issue, it comes back to asylum.’ Bob Ainsworth said he was being stopped in the street by irate constituents.

  Meanwhile today’s is telling its readers that students could

  Meanwhile today’s Mail is telling its readers that students could be leaving university with debts of up to £50,000. On Monday they were saying £21,000. And if we were to suggest paying for students out of general taxation the Mail would be the first to scream blue murder. What are we going to do about these loathsome tabloids? Must we lie back and take it or can we find some way of striking back?

  Friday, 24 January

  Rang M in Washington. ‘Only about five people are enthusiastic about this war,’ he said, ‘and I can name all of them.’

  Monday, 27 January

  At supper in the Tea Room, I was joined by Jack Straw, who is looking remarkably well all things considered. He spent today in Brussels, last week he visited America twice, the week before he was in the Far East. The secret, he says, is no booze, exercise and the ability to fall sleep any time, any place. According to Jack, there is a better than 50/50 chance of getting a second resolution through the Security Council. He seemed confident that the French (‘who are entirely without scruple’) will come round in the end ‘because they want a slice of the action’. He thinks there is a slim chance that the Iraqis will blink at the last minute and that Saddam will go into exile – ‘that’s why we are ratcheting up the pressure’. I wonder if Jack is entirely signed up to this enterprise? I may be wrong, but I thought I understood him to say that he wished we weren’t where we were.

  Tuesday, 28 January

  Jack used a similar phrase (‘people may have different views about whether we should be here’) when he addressed the Foreign Affairs Committee in an upper committee room this evening. That apart, however, he was entirely on message. The Blix report, he asserted, contains the clearest possible evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax, VX nerve gas. Also, several thousand chemical rockets are unaccounted for. ‘Some people have been in denial,’ he added.

  ‘Who was the chief salesman? Donald Rumsfeld, I think,’ growled Tam Dalyell.

  ‘With all due respect, Tam, I have watched you on four separate occasions – the Falklands, Kosovo, the Gulf and now Iraq – oppose war and on each occasion you have been wrong.’ Jack added, ‘My father was a pacifist. He went to jail for refusing to fight in the Second World War. I understand why. I respect that, but he was wrong. George Lansbury was wrong over Abyssinia; he nearly wrecked the party …’ Later, at the Channel Four political awards, I ran into Tony Benn, who is off to see Saddam on Friday. ‘Don’t let him use you,’ I said. His son Stephen and Jean Corston, among others, have been saying the same.

  ‘I’m too old to care what anyone thinks,’ he said angrily. ‘I shall see children who in a few weeks time may be dead.’

  ‘Saddam has killed a lot of children,’ I said.

  ‘That is already done. This is the future.’

  I asked what he was going to say to Saddam and he started spouting about the wickedness of Israel. ‘If you want to stop the war,’ I said, ‘you should advise him to give up his anthrax and his nerve gas.’

  Actually, you have to hand it to him. He may be a stubborn, self-indulgent old grandstander, but there are not many people of 77 who would get it into their heads to fly to Baghdad in the hope of talking Saddam Hussein out of a war. It is not for those of us who are doing nothing to criticise.

  Wednesday, 29 January

  ‘SURRENDER TO ASYLUM’, screams today’s Express. The strapline read, ‘We’re all set to take on Saddam, but we can’t even stop the refugee invasion of our land.’ The Sun now claims to have received 385,000 responses in support of its ‘campaign against asylum madness’. A h
eadline on page 2 says, ‘HIV, TB, Hepatitis C. We’re not racists Mr Blunkett, just terrified for our children’s health.’ Not to be outdone, the Tories are now demanding that asylum seekers be incarcerated in prison ships. So much for that nice Mr Letwin. I toyed with the idea of summoning the tabloid editors to the select committee and giving them a going over, but have decided against on the grounds that it could easily backfire.

  At Questions Alice Mahon asked The Man what next, after we had sorted out Iraq, and he blurted out that we would have to ‘confront’ North Korea. Oh Lord, a vista of endless war unfolds. Some on our side were openly heckling and the Tories were cheering. Diane Abbott claimed that Alastair Campbell’s face was a picture.

  Keith Hill, our ever cheerful Deputy Chief Whip, joined me at lunch in the cafeteria. ‘We are fighting on so many fronts that I’ve lost count,’ he said. He describes his troublesome charges as ‘the three disses – dissidents, the dismissed and the disappointed’.

  ‘Also,’ he added, ‘I detect a new tendency, the parliamentarist who believes he was elected sine Labour and is, therefore, free to exercise his judgement as he sees fit.’

  At the parliamentary committee Ann Clwyd kicked off, saying

  that we should not allow Iraq to overshadow Afghanistan. The Karzai government was fragile and he was facing elections in 18 months. The Man agreed: ‘We’d be crazy to throw it away.’ He went on, ‘Some of the countries that aren’t with us on Iraq could help us in Afghanistan. That’s one of the things I’m going to say to Bush on Friday. The struggle can take many forms’ (a quote from Gramsci as Alan Haworth pointed out afterwards).

  We had a long discussion about asylum, which is rising to the top of his agenda. The Man said he had spent six and a half hours on the subject on Monday. Big changes are on the way. ‘We are looking at whether we need to withdraw the whole system for certain specified countries and in certain specified circumstances. We need to make it a seven-to-ten-day process.’ He talked of the need for safe havens in places like northern Iraq or Somalia in which applicants could be held while their claim was processed. There was, he said, no question of resiling from Article Three of the Human Rights Convention, which is absolute. Neither, contrary to recent speculation, did we want to resile from the Geneva Convention, which, in any case, was very general in its approach. It was our courts which had interpreted it as requiring a Rolls-Royce system of appeals and it was up to Parliament to regain control of the issue. He went on, ‘I’ve no illusions. Unless we deal with the asylum problem we will kibosh ourselves. It is poisoning community relations. We cannot say it is not a problem and look as if we are in the real world.’

  There was a brief discussion about taming the tabloids. Jean drew attention to a paper from Clive Soley containing half a dozen suggestions for taking them on, including removing editors from sitting on the Press Complaints Commission and challenging the Standard’s near monopoly position in London. The Man said he wanted to open up the media to competition. ‘That’s why I’m not bothered about letting in big foreign corporations. They can’t be any worse than Conrad Black.’

  After The Man had departed there was a discussion about the Electoral Commission which was set up by us in 2000 and according to the party’s general secretary, Dave Triesman, is becoming increasingly arrogant, stupid and aggressive. ‘I told them we can’t lift ourselves over the hurdles they have created and they threatened me with imprisonment and swingeing fines. They are threatening to investigate all 13,000 candidates in the local elections. I can’t see why anyone would want to be a party treasurer. I told them they should be putting their effort into increasing public participation. We need to take them on.’

  ‘They cannot carry on as if every party treasurer is a qualified accountant,’ said Robin Cook. ‘We need to get them into the real world.’

  John Reid said, ‘We have created a monster.’

  I spent ten minutes chatting to Estelle Morris, who said she had been against top-up fees from the outset, but The Man was dead set on them. I asked how much it would have cost to pay all fees out of taxation and she said about £400 million a year, rising to £1,000 million once the top-ups came into effect.

  So, as with so much else, the will of The Man prevailed in the teeth of opposition from his Secretary of State. ‘He’s a great man,’ said Estelle, ‘but great men sometimes make great mistakes.’

  Friday, 31 January

  The Man is off to Washington for a pow-wow with his friend George W. Bush. No longer talking if, but when. As Alan Haworth remarked the other day, the mood has changed. We are drifting inexorably, inevitably into war. It could be very bloody. A leaked UN report talks of millions displaced and casualties in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. What do I think? So far I have kept my head down. The question opponents of the current strategy must answer is ‘What would you do about Saddam’s anthrax and nerve gas?’ Those who say that there is no evidence he has any are deluding themselves. To those who say, ‘He’d never dare use it’, the answer is ‘He has, twice.’ To those who say, ‘Containment has worked well until now, what has changed?’ the short answer is ’9/11’. Sooner or later this stuff is going to fall into the hands of terrorists and the results could be devastating. That, in a nutshell, is the official line. Do I buy it? Not entirely. Containment was working. There isn’t any evidence of leakage. Saddam is getting on in years, not short of enemies and won’t last for ever. On the other hand, we are in too deep. Were we to back down now Saddam would declare an enormous triumph and the credibility of the UN would be in tatters. Perhaps, however, there is another reason why my head is so far below the parapet. Am I too close to The Man? Too dazzled by his undoubted brilliance? It is not as though I am dependent on his patronage. Or am I? Do I secretly, improbably, foolishly nurture hopes of a return to office? Has ambition finally triumphed over principle? Or is it just that I think that he may, just possibly, be right?

  Polly Toynbee has a brilliant piece about the tabloids and asylum in today’s Guardian in which I am quoted and described as ‘a good and humane man’. I hope she’s right. The phone rings. It is Simon Walters of the Mail on Sunday. His editor has seen the piece in the Guardian and wants to know if I would write a piece for his loathsome rag about asylum seekers in Sunderland. He must be joking.

  Monday, 3 February

  Peter Hain (quoting Sally Morgan, who was present at the meeting with Bush) says The Man had a hard time in Washington. George and the boys aren’t making any secret of their contempt for the UN and they are reluctant to make even a nod in that direction, despite The Man’s pleading.

  Tuesday, 4 February

  The long-awaited vote on the Lords. We didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory, voting down all seven options. The Man, hotfoot from a summit with Chirac at Le Touquet, made a rare appearance in support of an all-appointed chamber. Jack Straw, also just back from Le Touquet, said he doesn’t think the French will veto a UN resolution on Iraq. ‘They need a way out,’ he said. Then, grabbing my arm and falling about with laughter, he added, ‘So do we.’

  Most of this evening’s Channel Four news was devoted to Tony Benn’s interview with Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t very rigorous. Just a series of statements, mainly interesting because it was the first time in years that anyone from the West has come face to face with the tyrant. For a man facing oblivion Saddam seemed remarkably relaxed. He spoke slowly, calmly, without notes, occasionally fidgeting with a pen. Perhaps he has no idea of the trouble he is in. The problem with shooting people who give you disagreeable advice is that people tend to stop telling you things you don’t want to hear.

  Wednesday, 5 February

  For the first time in ages, my name came up at Prime Minister’s Questions. I decided it was time to get something on the record about Iraq. Nothing sensational. Short and to the point. I would not support a war, I said, without a second resolution. I tried to lighten it with a self-deprecating reference to not being a Blair Babe, but I could tell he was exasperated
. ‘I have set out my position for my honourable friend on many previous occasions …’ he began. As soon as I left the chamber, I was pounced upon by a couple of New Labour women, both ministers. It wasn’t my point about Iraq that upset them, but my reference to Blair Babes. ‘A sense of humour is very dangerous in politics,’ remarked David Taylor, to whom I recounted the exchange afterwards. ‘In the last Parliament there were only three ministers who displayed a sense of humour at the Dispatch Box. Keith Hill, yourself and Denis MacShane. Keith has been kicked upstairs, you’ve gone and I daily await the demise of Denis.’

  At the parliamentary committee, Gordon Prentice asserted that the party was losing members faster than at any time he could remember. Before The Man could respond John Reid cut in, insisting that there had been no recent rise in resignations as a result of Iraq. Dave Triesman backed him up, saying that numbers hadn’t dipped as a result of the Afghan war either. The trend was down, but the main problem was lapses.

  ‘No one in my constituency has protested about our stand on Iraq,’ said John Prescott. ‘The working class don’t write. It’s only if you’ve got a university that you get a lot of letters.’

  ‘There is no university in Pendle,’ replied Gordon.

  I said, ‘Perhaps we should stop encouraging the working classes to go to university. Otherwise they’ll all start writing.’