by Chris Mullin
I whiled away the afternoon trying to amend the Criminal Justice Bill and as a result missed the parliamentary committee. Jean reported The Man as saying there were four tests of the success of our policy in Iraq: (1) that Iraqis must be better off; (2) that they must be in charge; (3) that there must be a role for the UN; and (4) that we must make progress on peace in the Middle East.
‘By this time next year?’ asked Helen Jackson.
‘Sooner,’ he replied.
According to Jean, The Man seems supremely untroubled. ‘He doesn’t seem beset by any of the doubts that give the rest of us sleepless nights.’
Thursday, 3 April
Signs that the Iraqi regime may be crumbling. There are reports this evening that 60 coachloads of soldiers and civilians, waving white flags, crossed the American lines south of Baghdad. The interesting point is that no one seems to have tried to stop them. There has been no sign of Saddam Hussein for more than a week and our side are putting it about that he may be dead, but I don’t believe that for a moment. If he was, the regime would already have imploded. Ann Clwyd has just spoken to Barham Saleh, who is back home in northern Iraq. He told her that an ominous message was read out on Iraqi television yesterday warning the Kurds not to advance a step nearer Baghdad. Ann interprets that as a threat to use chemical weapons. If the regime has them, this is the moment when they will be used.
Wednesday, 9 April
As we filed into The Man’s room for the parliamentary committee, the television in the outer office was showing crowds in Baghdad toppling a giant statue of Saddam Hussein. The regime, it seems, has fallen.
‘I hope there will be no triumphalism,’ said Helen, ‘thousands have died.’
The Man displayed not a glimmer of triumphalism (although the same could not be said of John Reid and Hilary Armstrong, who are already dreaming of clothing George Galloway and Tam Dalyell in orange jump suits and dispatching them, bound hand and foot, to Guantanamo). The Man merely remarked that he expected public opinion to swing solidly behind the government ‘as the nature of the regime becomes apparent’.
Someone mentioned our two most wanted men. ‘Tam can say what he likes about me, I don’t care’, replied The Man, ‘but George,’ he said ominously, ‘is another matter.’
‘What happens if Saddam fetches up in Syria?’ I asked innocently, immediately triggering a great explosion from JP about the irresponsibility of even raising so delicate a matter in public.
‘I only asked a little question, just six or seven words,’ I said.
‘We don’t want to open another front,’ huffed JP.
‘I have no plans to open another front.’
The Man, much amused, said, ‘Nobody I’ve ever talked to has talked about invading Syria.’
Doug Hoyle mentioned that the Communications Bill was going to run into trouble in the Lords over the possibility that it would open up Channel Five to Murdoch.
‘It’s a competition issue,’ said The Man. ‘I’ve dealt with them all and I don’t believe that some [proprietors] are better than others. I’ve yet to find a cuddly one.’
‘Murdoch is a competition issue,’ I said. ‘He has four national newspapers, a satellite channel which can reach 40 per cent of homes, and, if he gets his hands on Channel Five – and David Puttnam believes he will – he will ruthlessly cross-promote and before long Channel Five could overtake Channel Four and even ITV.’
The Man’s eyes showed signs of glazing over. He thinks we are all obsessed with Murdoch. ‘I’ll look at it,’ he said quietly, but it was obvious that he won’t – unless the Lords force him to.
Later, while I was scouring the Lords in search of David Puttnam, I ran into Bernard Donoughue, who invited me to tea. ‘I enjoy our little talks,’ he said. In truth, he does most of the talking, which is fine by me since I find him an engaging companion. Despite appearances, Bernard’s origins are impeccably working class. ‘All the instincts of the working class are Tory,’ he says. ‘On race, patriotism, you name it. It’s just that they happen to vote Labour. Murdoch understands that, which is why the Sun has been so successful.’ He added, ‘And that is also why, unless we get a grip on asylum, it will do us a lot of damage.’
Thursday, 10 April
Grim news from Iraq. Mayhem has broken out in Baghdad. Even the hospitals and the museums are being looted and the Americans are just standing on the sidelines pretending it has nothing to do with them. Jack made a statement, but there was no euphoria. He was heard mainly in silence; such hear-hearing as there was came mainly from the military wing of the Tory Party. Michael Ancram received a big cheer from his own side when he bashed the French and Jack, as ever, reserved his harshest words for the Lib Dems rather than the Ba’ath party.
I had a cup of tea with Mike O’Brien, who is being sent to Syria and Iran at the weekend. ‘Syria has got some hard decisions to make very fast,’ he said.
Monday, 14 April
A stern letter from Keith Hill pointing out that I had failed to support the government in the votes on the Criminal Justice Bill about bad character evidence and demanding to know why I had not given written notice of my intention to rebel, to the Chief Whip – as the standing orders of the parliamentary party apparently require. I sought out Keith in the Tea Room and pointed out that I had gone one better than writing to Hilary. I had announced in the Second Reading debate, as long ago as 4 December, that I would not be supporting the Bill if the clauses on the admission of previous convictions were not amended – and the select committee had unanimously backed me. Moreover, I had proposed half a dozen alternative modifications to Charlie Falconer, all of which he had rejected. For good measure I added that, if the Bill were to be returned from the Lords without the bad character clauses deleted or amended, I would be voting against the government again. Keith agreed that, in the circumstances, a formal meeting would not after all be necessary. I agreed to drop Hilary a note, the first sentence of which would contain the word ‘apology’ for failing to notify her in writing and the rest of which would be an unrepentant résumé of my exchange with Keith. It was only after I had posted my note to Hilary that it occurred to me to check standing orders and, sure enough, they say nothing about notice of a rebellion having to be in writing.
17. Minister Mullin, staff and family – on the steps of his grand apartment in the Foreign Office.
18. Our Man in Africa: above, in Ghana; below, with Aids orphans in Mozambique.
19. Attending upon the Queen in Nigeria.
20. Alongside The Man on the government front bench. At the time it looked as though I was riding high. Looking back, however, it may have been the moment my fortunes peaked. ‘What’s the answer to that?’ he whispered. I was so busy soaking up atmosphere that I hadn’t even heard the question.
21. My last appearance at the Dispatch Box, 5 April 2005.
22. With the Dalai Lama who I have known for more than thirty years. ‘Tibetans need to have more children,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he chuckled, ‘and less monks.’
23. One blurred photograph. The only souvenir of my meeting with the great Mandela (see entry for November 4, 2003).
24. On the road again: above, addressing refugees from the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda; below, Liberia, a glimpse of Armageddon.
25. Above, arriving in Somaliland, the first minister to visit in almost fifty years. I received the full treatment; a hundred metres of red carpet, a police band and almost the entire government lined up to shake hands. Crowds lined the street from the airport into the city. Below, in the Nuba mountains, Sudan. We were accompanied by a British army officer called Nigel who talked incessantly about fox hunting and school fees.
26. Re-elected in a record forty-two minutes – for more than half an hour the only MP in the country. I could have formed my own government… Given what happened four days later that might have been a good idea.
Wednesday, 23 April
The newspapers are full of allegations that money from t
he Iraqi regime had found its way into the pockets of George Galloway. All based on documents which the Daily Telegraph’s man in Baghdad claims to have unearthed in the ruins of the foreign ministry. Needless to say, George is denying all and threatening the Mother of All Libel Suits.
Friday, 25 April
Sunderland
A call from Ludo Kennedy. He and Moira, recognising that they are growing frail, have moved out of their lovely house in Avebury into a sheltered apartment near Oxford, where they continue to live independently in beautiful surroundings without the responsibility of maintaining their own property and where help is on hand as and when they need it. The move went smoothly because the children had booked them into a hotel for the duration. They moved into their new home to find everything in place. Brilliant. If only Dad and Mum would let us do the same for them.
Customers at the surgery this evening included a mother of two who complained that there was no sign of Gordon’s promised tax credit and as a result she was struggling to feed her children and pay her rent. She had spent hours on the phone trying to access the help-line, but it had proved impenetrable. Graham says he has received several such complaints in the last few days. So far it is only a trickle but he fears an avalanche. Oh dear, this is not how it was supposed to be. Once again New Labour is in the process of alienating the very people it boasts of helping.
She was followed by a hospital porter, upset because he and his colleagues believe that (contrary to the official line) they will be financially worse off because of Alan Milburn’s much vaunted ‘Agenda for Change’. He had worked at the hospital for 23 years and claimed that morale was lower than at any time he could recall. What was the cause of all this gloom, I inquired. ‘Targets,’ he said. Interestingly, he placed the blame firmly on the government, not on the hospital management. Everywhere the story seems to be the same – teachers, students, doctors all up in arms against reform. All – or just about all – claiming to be worse off. All complaining that they are stressed out of their minds by New Labour and its obsession with targets. Surely we must have made someone, somewhere happy?
Monday, 28 April
Dawn Primarolo made a statement about the new Child Tax Credit and was assailed from all sides. She seemed to be describing a parallel, New Labour universe full of happy, contented citizens. The chink in her armour was the admission that two million people had tried to phone the hotline. If everything was so rosy, why would two million people need to ring for help?
Tuesday, 29 April
To the annual meeting of the all-party Saudi group. Not my normal territory, but I wanted to hear what the Saudi ambassador, Prince Turki Al Faisal, had to say about recent events in Iraq. An intelligent, civilised, sophisticated man whose modest, unpompous manner belies the fact that he comes from the Saudi top drawer (he was formerly the head of the Saudi intelligence service) and represents one of the world’s most absolute tyrannies. The Saudis are taking their relations with Europe more seriously now that they have fallen out with Washington. ‘The view of the Arab world is that this is an exercise in empire building,’ he said. Al-Qaida posed a bigger threat than Iraq, ‘because it is a small group that can be imitated’. Like Mrs Manningham-Buller, he was firmly of the view that the war had made the threat from terrorism worse, not better. To be credible, a new regime in Iraq would have to be seen to have power; there must be no under-the-table deals and above all the military must not make deals with Iraqi factions on the basis of ethnicity. ‘Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the long-term outcome?’ I asked.
‘Pessimistic,’ he replied.
Friday, 2 May
Sunderland
Lunch with Peter Candler, who says that 65 per cent of the new apartments on the Newcastle quayside have been purchased by investors and many of them are empty. ‘A house of cards which could come tumbling down at any moment,’ he says.
Sunday, 4 May
Bright sunshine. Sarah and I cycled from the seafront at South Shields along the Tyne to Newcastle. We arrived home to find a message from Jeremy, our upstairs neighbour at Brixton Road, to say that our flat has been burgled. A woman broke in through the kitchen window in broad daylight, triggering the alarm; once in she found she couldn’t get out and the police found her under my bed.
Wednesday, 7 May
‘Where does the idea of Foundation hospitals come from?’ Malcolm Savidge asked as we waited for a lift. ‘It wasn’t in the manifesto.’
‘Like top-up fees,’ I replied.
‘No, they were in the manifesto. We said we wouldn’t have them.’ These days, he said, policy was announced from on high and we are bullied into line. The Man, he said, despite being a practising Christian, doesn’t even listen to God. Witness the war in Iraq, which was opposed by both the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
At seven we voted on Foundation hospitals. The rebels, about 65 in number, were fewer than predicted, but the unhappiness is widespread. Alan Milburn was not happy either. ‘Gordon’s friends have done their best to stop this,’ he said when I saw him in the lobby. ‘They’ve used the media to run it down and they’ve succeeded in emasculating it. People are saying, “You can’t have a party within a party.”’ By ‘people’ I presume Alan means himself. What can this mean? A purge of Gordon and friends? A high-risk strategy, if ever there was. The tension at the top is greater than I’d imagined. It can only be a question of time before the poison in the body politic spills out into the open, to the disadvantage of us all.
Thursday, 8 May
The Home Affairs Committee’s report on asylum removals, published this morning, has stirred a hornets’ nest. The tabloids have seized on a sentence in the first paragraph – warning of social unrest if the flow of illegal migrants isn’t checked – as a vindication of the poisonous campaign they have been running. The Express is raging about ‘Asylum chaos’, although there is nothing in the report to justify such a headline. Interview requests poured in and I spent much of the day trying to douse the flames.
The Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, was on the train going home.
She confirmed that The Friends of Gordon had behaved badly over Foundation hospitals. Could it be that Gordon didn’t know? Inconceivable, she thought. She even quoted one of our colleagues as having been encouraged to rebel by Gordon’s agents on the promise that they would be looked after in due course. Gordon, she said (as if we didn’t know), was paranoid about losing the succession and ruthless about disposing of rivals. ‘He is convinced that Alan is being set up to succeed Tony and once said to me, “I’ve sorted David [Blunkett] and I’ll sort Alan.” However,’ said Hilary, ‘he has been “brilliant”
during the war.’ Apparently, she put it to Gordon that The Man was more likely to anoint him if he co-operated than if he didn’t and once that point had been grasped Gordon played his part to perfection.
I floated the idea of a comeback, remarking that DFID would be my ideal job, but she offered no encouragement, saying only that ‘a lot of people are after that’. Who, I wonder? On the other hand she didn’t rule out a return.
Friday, 9 May
Charlie Falconer rang to say that he is going to propose that suspected terrorists can be detained for up to 14 days, instead of the present seven. Really, there seems to be no end to the repressive measures pouring out of the Home Office, all without time for proper scrutiny. On Wednesday David Blunkett announced that he is proposing a 30-year minimum for the murder of policemen, prison officers and that life should mean life for most child murderers. Charlie also mentioned there is a leader in today’s Independent comparing our asylum report to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech. For goodness’ sake.
Monday, 12 May
To London on the 10.42. Just after Doncaster, the Scarborough MP, Lawrie Quinn, passed by and said he had heard on the radio that Clare Short had resigned. Damn, I thought, it’s happened before I could buttonhole Jack. Later, I heard that Valerie Amos had been appointed and that the announcement had
been made within half an hour of Clare making the call, so it was obviously all sorted well in advance. Jack and the Foreign Office have staged a coup. Valerie was only a Lords whip when I was at DFID and, until today, one of Jack’s junior ministers. The contrast with Clare couldn’t be more blatant and having a secretary of state who is beyond the reach of scrutiny by the elected House is not at all satisfactory. As soon as I arrived at the Commons I rang Jack’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Colin Pickthall, and arranged to see Jack immediately after Clare’s statement.
Clare rose as soon as Jack had finished his statement on Iraq. She was seated a couple of rows back from the Speaker, between Tom Clarke and Dennis Turner, who, after the twists and turns of the last few weeks, are just about her only friends in this place. I was standing a couple of yards away, waiting to pounce as Jack left the chamber.
Clare was heard, for the most part, in dead silence. Only when she broadened her attack, away from Iraq and on to The Man personally, was there a certain amount of mumbling and when she sat down there was no hear-hearing, not even from those who share her view on the handling of the war. She has alienated everybody. A sad end.
Until two months ago, Clare was arguably one of our most successful ministers. It is down to her, and the battles she fought in the early days, that aid policy has been prised free of trade and foreign policy and no one can take that away from her. If she’d gone, alongside Robin (and with his dignity), she would have retained the respect of everyone and would probably have had a future running a UN agency or even the IMF or World Bank. As it is she has blown every bridge.
