A View From The Foothills
Chris Mullin
Profile Books
590pp
£20.00
Chris Mullin’s diaries deserve to become a central text for understanding the Blair years, and their impact on the Labour party. It is precisely because he did not sit round the cabinet table and never, to his regret, rose above the lowest rung on the ministerial ladder in his two spells as a parliamentary under-secretary that his account is so revealing.
The 558 pages cover just six years from 1999 until 2005. But Mullin writes vividly, capturing both personalities and places, notably during his many visits to Africa. He can be superior and a touch priggish in his dismissal of a ministerial car, mobile phone and pager. But he is not tribal or particularly partisan.
The interest lies not primarily in what was serialised: his stories about the chaotic John Prescott; his suspicions about the manoeuvrings of the Friends of Gordon Brown; or his contacts with The Man, as he calls Tony Blair. What is so arresting is what he writes self-deprecatingly about his life as a minister, backbencher and constituency MP.
Any aspiring minister should study his account of life as minister for deckchairs, as he describes his frustrating year as a junior minister in Prescott’s jumbo Environment, Transport and the Regions department. Just four months after being appointed, he notes: ‘My existence is now almost entirely pointless. This week I have, among many other things, replied to two adjournment debates and made speeches to the British Geological Society, the Institute of Management Agents and the Association of Residential Management Agents. In between I have worked my way through red boxes piled with letters to sign and papers, almost all of which are marked ‘To See’ rather than ‘To Decide’ …. With hand on heart, I can say that I have less influence now over government policy than at any time in the last eight years. The only possible excuse for doing this is the hope that it will lead to something better.’ It didn’t.
In a tone similar to the classic television series Yes Minister, Mullin writes about his frustrations shifting from subject to subject (‘no wonder barristers flourish in this environment’) and tussles with the civil service over night flights and high hedges. The advantage lies with the civil service since they are permanent while ministers, especially junior ones like him, come and go at a rapid rate. One lesson for any prime minister is to leave ministers in place for a long time.
Several times, Mullin contrasts his marginal role as a junior minister with the high profile he enjoyed on the backbenches, as the chairman (twice) of the home affairs select committee and as a member of the parliamentary committee. In his red box life, he hardly appeared in the media (and occasional requests for interviews were at times sat upon by Prescott) and seldom talked to the powerful. But, as a backbencher, his views were often sought by both the Today programme (the ultimate accolade) and he regularly met Blair and other senior ministers.
Mullin provides the first full account of the parliamentary committee, which meets every Wednesday after prime minister’s questions and consists of senior ministers, including the prime minister, and MPs elected by the parliamentary Labour party. This ensured that Blair was not out of touch with his critics, not least because of the frequent sardonic interventions by Gordon Prentice.
Mullin, an unashamed Bennite in its early 1980s heyday, records the ambiguous views of many Labour MPs towards Blair, a mixture of admiration and respect, increasingly tinged by worry over The Man’s closeness to George W Bush. He is appropriately scathing about much of New Labour’s managerial jargon – rollouts, win-win, stakeholders etc.
He is also frank about his life as a constituency MP for Sunderland South. The Blair government did a lot for this socially deprived area, but the problems of disaffected, alienated and disorderly youth remain. Mullin is no romantic about the failings of many of his constituents, or their lack of gratitude. And he is similarly blunt about the problems of corruption and inertia in much of Africa.
A running question throughout the diaries is whether Mullin made more impact on the home affairs committee or as a junior minister. As his own career shows, it is possible to combine both. But what is revealing is that, after his first mixed period as a minister, he was so keen to return: at first just a month after voting against the Iraq war (though this was seen as too soon by the chief whip), though this did not happen until three months later. Moreover, it was clearly a big blow when he was finally dropped by The Man in May 2005, ‘leaving me to complete oblivion’. Fortunately, his diaries – with two more volumes promised – show that this verdict was wrong. He will be remembered: if not as a minister, then at least for his campaign on behalf of the Birmingham Six and for this candid account of life with The Man.