A View From The Foothills

by Chris Mullin

  Thursday, 16 December

  A lift back to the office with Jack after seeing President Kagame in the Four Seasons Hotel at Park Lane.

  ‘You don’t have a car, do you, Chris?’

  I gave my usual line about the numbers 3 and 159 buses continuing to run past my door, even though I am a minister.

  ‘So how do you manage with boxes?’

  An alarm bell rang.

  ‘I remain at the office until the paperwork is finished; until midnight if necessary.’

  ‘And how do you manage at weekends?’

  Oh, oh, dangerous territory. On no account mention that in nearly four years in government, no red box has ever reached my home. Or that life in the foothills of government isn’t quite the same as life at the top.

  ‘The office ring or fax; in recesses they send up boxes to my office in Sunderland.’

  That seemed to satisfy him, but one can never be sure. Jack has very good antennae.

  A call to the top person at the Landmark Trust to try and interest him in Chillingham. ‘Very sorry, we only take on buildings in decay; the house doesn’t need us.’

  ‘No, but the walled garden does.’

  ‘Yes, but we only take on buildings.’

  Slam goes another door.

  Saturday, 25 December

  Christmas Day

  We opened the presents by the tree, then drove up into the hills to see our friends Malcolm, Helen and family. Snow, brilliant sunshine. Malcolm, who teaches in the village primary school, recounted how he found himself teaching a class of six children watched over by three OFSTED inspectors who were, in turn, watched over, by three of Her Majesty’s Inspectors. You couldn’t make it up.

  Monday, 27 December

  There has been a huge, apocalyptic disaster around the shores of the Indian Ocean – an earthquake, followed by a vast tidal wave. Unknown thousands have been washed away, including many tourists.

  Wednesday, 29 December

  This afternoon we returned Mum to the nursing home. Desperately sad, leaving her there, but what can we do? You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped and Mum stoically refuses to co-operate with allcomers, refusing help with bathing and insisting on cutting her own hair (of which she has made a mess) even though there is a hairdresser on the premises. Above all, she refuses to contemplate a move.

  Thursday, 30 December

  The death toll from the tsunami is now said to exceed 120,000, and is rising.

  Friday, 31 December

  Brixton Road

  When we arrived last night, I parked in the ‘Residents only’ section on Groveway, intending to move before the 08.30 witching hour. Alas, however, I arrived ten minutes late to find that not only had I been issued with a £60 ticket but that the car was shackled and on the point of being hoisted onto the back of a ‘parking enforcement’ truck; had I arrived a minute later it would have cost a minimum of £250 to retrieve. This is at 08.40 on New Year’s Eve in a half-deserted street, for goodness’ sake. How can this be justified for an offence specified on the ticket as being illegally parked between 08.36 and 08.38? Surely, a decent interval is supposed to elapse between ticketing and removal, indeed that used to be the case. Now, it seems, the newly privatised traffic wardens and the driver of the tow-away truck operate in tandem. ‘This is Lambeth,’ remarked the truck driver as he cheerfully removed the shackles from the car; the traffic warden, on the other hand, was surly. We had the following exchange.

  ‘Are you on a percentage?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘I am only making a polite inquiry, brother.’

  ‘That’s a harsh question.’

  ‘What is the answer?’

  By now the car had been released. Without another word the wretched warden climbed into the passenger seat, ignoring my New Year good wishes, and off they went in search of another kill.

  In the evening we went for a drink with Richard and Patricia Moberly in Wincott Street. Frank Field was there. He said he had told The Man that he needed more bright, young, attractive people in his Cabinet. The last thing we need, in my view. What we need is people of depth and integrity, with rather more experience of the world than a year or two as a special adviser. Talking of bright, attractive people: Frank agreed with my view that Hilary Benn is a potential leader.

  Later, we walked down to Lambeth Bridge and watched the midnight fireworks, returning to Brixton Road to find a man lying sound asleep in the front garden.

  * The BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan had suggested that the Prime Minister had deliberately misled Parliament over a claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. Lord Hutton’s inquiry concluded that his claim was unfounded, following which Davies and Dyke, Chairman and Director-General of the BBC, resigned.

  * Robin Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary, had been asked to review the intelligence evidence for the suggestion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction – the principal justification for Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq. This followed allegations that the evidence had been ‘sexed-up’ by the Prime Minister and his advisers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  2005

  Saturday, 1 January 2005

  Brixton Road

  Awoke around eight and suddenly remembered the man asleep in the front garden. Peered gingerly through a gap in the kitchen curtains, fearing that he might be dead. Happily, however, he had disappeared, an indent in the leaves where his body had been.

  Sunday, 2 January

  St Bede’s Terrace, Sunderland

  An answerphone message from Sir Humphry. The walled garden has gone. So that’s it, then. The dream is over. A life that might have been extraordinary will now be ordinary.

  Monday, 3 January

  My New Year’s resolution (the first for years) is to reduce my possessions. A step change, as they say in New Labour, is called for. Our house is choc-a-bloc. Cupboards bursting, chattels stuffed under every bed. The back staircase is so crammed that it is barely passable. And still unwanted, unneeded goods flow in. We all accumulate far too much in our lives and it all has to be thrown out when we die by relatives who have little or no feel for what is important and what is not.

  The clearing of Mum and Dad’s house has brought that home forcefully.

  Wednesday, 5 January

  The Foreign Office

  An envelope marked ‘personal’ – from the Permanent Secretary, Sir Michael Jay (to whom, just before Christmas, I gave a copy of A Very British Coup) – appeared in my in-tray. Inside a spoof letter addressed to Harry Perkins, purportedly from Cedric Snow, FCO Permanent Secretary in the late eighties – expressing regret at (and denying knowledge of) the manner of Perkins’s overthrow. It is elegantly written (Michael has obviously gone to some trouble) and would make an amusing appendix, were there to be another edition.

  Friday, 7 January Up at 4 a.m. to see Ngoc off to Vietnam in a howling gale.

  Saturday, 8 January

  Gale force winds for the third night running. Half of the chimney stack on the house behind us has been brought crashing down the roof; the other half hangs precariously. Our back gate has also been blown open and twisted beyond repair.

  Sunday, 9 January

  A new Blair–Brown crisis is being organised. Briefers in both camps are hard at work, egged on enthusiastically by hacks from the Mail and the Telegraph who can hardly believe their luck. And, blow me down, we have yet another interim biography; this one of Gordon, by a Sunday Telegraph journalist who has obviously had high-level access. According to the Friends of Gordon, in late ’03 there was a dinner hosted by JP in his apartment at Admiralty House at which The Man again promised to stand down the following spring. Should we believe this? My guess is that there were a few caveats which Gordon omitted from his account of the conversation, but there is no doubt something happened around that time. I remember Jeff Rooker saying in December ’03 that the Friends of Gordon were putting it about that
a deal had been done and that The Man would go in the spring. Anyway, it’s all deeply destabilising.

  Monday, 10 January

  To a crowded meeting of the parliamentary party, where Gordon and The Man were given a bollocking the like of which I have never previously witnessed over the damaging revelations in the weekend press about their rift. Clive Solely fired the first shot, talking of ‘anger and frustration’ at the apparent warfare between the two camps and warning of impending disaster if it wasn’t stopped. Of the anonymous briefers, he said, ‘They are not as anonymous as they seem to think. Journalists gossip, too. If they don’t stop, I will name them.’ He sat down to prolonged applause. Angela Eagle called for discipline at the top and said we could still lose. Dale Campbell Savours told Gordon to his face that he had either to deny or withdraw his widely quoted remark attributed to him about the integrity of The Man (‘there is nothing you can say to me now that I could ever believe’). ‘We can’t go into the next election with that still on the record.’ Barry Sheerman said, ‘You two are brilliant when you work together, the party owes you so much, but you won’t be forgiven if you make a mess of it.’ Claire Ward, whose seat is marginal, said that the current infighting was disheartening for those in the front line. ‘We expect better and demand better.’

  Then, of all people, Tam Dalyell came to the rescue. ‘Forgive me for changing the subject,’ he said to general hilarity. It is not every day that Tam and Iraq offer light relief.

  The Man was visibly shaken. ‘I hear what you say,’ he said. Then, no doubt hoping that he was speaking for Gordon, seated not three feet away, he added, ‘We all have, and we will act on it.’ Will they? It takes two to tango and the fact is that most of this is Gordon’s doing. Bloody Gordon. He has no God-given right to inherit. The only reason he didn’t run in 1994 was because he correctly calculated that he would have been smashed out of sight, if he had. It would have been better for everyone had he run, then the matter would be resolved once and for all.

  Afterwards I dined at the Adjournment with Jean Corston. She agrees that Hilary Benn would be the most desirable successor and says she will look for an opportunity to raise the subject with The Man. She also said that she told him that he would have to stand down in two and a half years and not go on until the autumn of 2008, which seems to be his intention. How did he react? ‘He was very cross with me.’

  Tuesday, 11 January

  Tommy McAvoy remarked regarding the impending vote on the change to sitting hours for which he wants me to do some canvassing, ‘If you do a good job, I’ll get you out of Limbo. You know where that is, Chris? I thought you would.’

  How very odd. I hadn’t realised I was in Limbo.

  Wednesday, 12 January

  Tea in the Pugin Room with Bruce Grocott. Bruce thinks it inevitable that Gordon will be the next leader whenever the moment comes, but he agrees that Hilary would make an attractive candidate, subject to the caveat that he hasn’t yet been seriously tested (‘DFID is the easiest job in the Cabinet’). He thinks, whatever The Man says publicly, that the changeover is likely to be around the ten-year mark – ie two years into the next term. ‘The Americans got it about right, limiting their Presidents to two terms, any more than that and you begin to go mad. Look what happened to Thatcher.’

  ‘Have you said that to The Man?’

  ‘More or less.’

  Bruce says that Gordon has never got over the fact that TB was his junior partner during the years in opposition and agrees that it might have been better if Gordon had stood and been beaten in 1994.

  The Cabinet, says Bruce (who has been a fly on the wall at Cabinet meetings for eight years), is composed mainly of people who are average. I challenged this on the grounds (a) that he and I are average and (b) that the world is for ever being screwed up by brilliant people. He immediately conceded. ‘What I mean is that so many of them have no discernible politics.’ Those Bruce rates include Margaret Beckett, David Blunkett, Alan Johnson, John Prescott, John Reid and Jack Straw. The rest he dismisses as ‘managerial types – capable, efficient, but without an ideological anchor’.

  We discussed Iraq. Bruce said, ‘Tony’s experience of the Labour Party was Hackney in the 1980s. He, therefore, tends to assume the party is out of touch with the real world, but on this occasion the dear old Labour Party was in the mainstream of public opinion – along with the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.’ The Man, says Bruce, has no understanding of the seriously bad people he is mixed up with in America because he wasn’t politically active at the time of My Lai or the death squads in El Salvador. He is also blissfully – and perhaps wilfully – unaware that his friend George W. Bush and his brother came to power in Texas and Florida signing death warrants.

  Sunday, 16 January

  Not feeling too good lately. My knees have swollen up again, making it hard to kneel or bend; also a sharp pain at the back of my skull, on the inside.

  Thursday, 20 January

  A depressing little clip on the Today programme this morning: interviews with a group of mature women in Watford, a key marginal, who had all voted Labour in the last two elections. They all claimed to loathe The Man (one using almost exactly the sentence attributed to Gordon – ‘I no longer believe a word he says’), none of them liked Howard either; they liked Charles Kennedy, but doubted his ability to govern. When asked what mattered to them, none mentioned the economy or the public services; no one was bothered about Iraq, except for the cost; immigration and asylum was the big issue. Reluctantly, I am coming to the conclusion that I don’t like the electorate any more than they like us. Time to go?

  This afternoon the Sudanese Ambassador came in and I had the pleasure of telling him that he could forget any talk of debt relief until there was progress in Darfur.

  Monday, 24 January

  A bad night, pains behind my eyes and at the back of my head. Set out for London stuffed with paracetamol. From the train I rang the Council’s chief executive, Ged Fitzgerald, about the plastic bags in trees all over Sunderland.

  At the House I ran into Tam Dalyell, who said, ‘Chris, what are we going to do about Iraq?’

  ‘I think we are stuck. What would you do?’ I replied.

  ‘Declare victory and end the occupation.’

  ‘What do you think would happen if we did?’

  ‘I think there would then be a period of calm.’ He quoted one of his Iraqi contacts in support of the proposition.

  ‘How many refugees do you think there would be?’

  He cited his Iraqi contact again, ‘No more than 1,000 of those who have collaborated with occupation.’

  A very optimistic scenario but, who knows, it may come to that eventually.

  Michael Howard has played the immigration card with a speech of outrageous cynicism: ‘People will face a clear choice at the next election: unlimited immigration under Mr Blair or limited, controlled immigration under the Conservatives.’ As he well knows, this is an outright lie. Immigration has never been so tightly controlled. The number of new asylum seekers has fallen by 70 per cent in the last two years, removals are up from 7,000 a year in 1997 to 17,000 last year and 80 per cent of new asylum applications are now processed in about two months, as opposed to an average of 22 months in the last days of the Tory regime. Nevertheless, as Howard well knows, the poison is impossible to counter. If he can keep it up, he will strike deep behind our lines.

  In the evening, at the Protection Squad party at Scotland Yard, I had a friendly chat with John Major. He came out with his usual line: ‘What are you doing supporting a reactionary government like this, clamping down on asylum seekers, abolishing jury trial …?’

  And I came out with mine: ‘I am an establishment figure now, John.’

  ‘I was always too left-wing for my party. I am getting more left-wing.’

  Maybe, but he’s still as cautious as ever. I bearded him about Howard’s disgraceful asylum speech.

  ‘I’m not going to comment on that.’


  A pity. It needs a Tory of his stature to speak up.

  We were interrupted by Cherie Blair, who waltzed in, ignoring me, and started conversation about the difficulties of life in the stratosphere: ‘We’ve all been there … scars on our back …’ etc. Amazing, she has a golden life and yet she thinks of herself as a victim.

  Tuesday, 25 January

  Still the pains in the back of my head, kept at bay with regular doses of ibuprofen.

  Wednesday, 26 January

  Up at 5.30 a.m. and off to Nigeria; still taking tablets for the pains in my head.

  Thursday, 27 January

  The Residence, Lagos

  Breakfast with HE and deputy in the pavilion at the end of the garden; a blue kingfisher dipping in the pool. Afterwards we set off in the High Commission’s little boat across the lagoon, through shoals of drifting rubbish, to inspect the visa section. When I last visited 18 months ago there were crowds laying siege day and night to the building. Since then the collection of applications has been outsourced to 30 different locations around the city and so the crowds have gone, but the pressure on staff remains enormous. Lagos is our biggest visa operation, attracting more applicants even than Islamabad. As in Pakistan the scale of the fraud is awesome: ‘students’ applying for courses that don’t exist in colleges that don’t exist, sponsored by sponsors who are either non-existent or unrelated, supported by documents that are forged; stolen passports that have been expertly ‘washed’ enabling new identities to be inserted; genuine passports that have had false visas and date stamps inserted to establish a false pattern of travel; British passports that have had two or three owners. So great is the fraud and perjury that about 80 per cent of applications from first-time visitors aged 30 and under are rejected. To make matters worse, in the six months since outsourcing made the system more efficient the number of applications has increased by a staggering 80 per cent. What are we going to do?