Tuesday, 2 January 1996
A big thaw, pipes bursting all over the place. The water companies can’t cope and are threatening to cut off most of the North East, Sunderland included.
I dragged myself to the office and wrote a letter to Environment Secretary John Gummer asking for an inquiry and put out a statement saying that we were used to severe winters in the north, but none had ever resulted in water cut-offs on the scale now contemplated. I stopped short of alleging it was all the fault of privatisation, but wondered whether there was any connection. The result was a sound bite on World at One and a mention on BBC radio news bulletins for most of the day. I went home and filled the bath and a five-gallon plastic barrel borrowed from a neighbour.
Tuesday, 9 January
Lunch with Adam Raphael of the Economist at a restaurant in St James’s. He thinks we will win by up to thirty seats. I am less optimistic – between plus and minus ten. Adam says we will stand or fall on what we do about unemployment. That we have to look for new ways of raising tax – road taxes, VAT on newspapers (they will squeal, but they can afford it). He added that Labour must overcome its hostility to VAT and agreed that a minimum wage must be set initially at a disappointingly low level and updated annually. We must do something about the powers of the Monopolies Commission, which, he says, are woefully inadequate. On media ownership he was surprisingly radical. Why not a residence qualification for proprietors? Why not indeed?
Like others, he fears we are in danger of becoming bogged down in constitutional reforms. He asked which left-wingers were likely to be in government. I said, ‘None of my generation. We carry too much baggage.’ I did tell him to watch out for Steve Byers, though.
Wednesday, 10 January
We debated the security services. The government is introducing a Bill to allow MI5 to become involved in fighting organised crime. A lot of talk about evil drugs barons, but the plain truth is that MI5 has run out of threats and so a new one has been invented in order to head off embarrassing questions about its bloated budget. This ought to be one area where we could safely call for public spending cuts. Jack Straw, however, wants to go along with the Bill. He confined himself to proposing a few amendments. The definition of organised crime is breathtakingly wide – any offence which is likely to attract a sentence of three years or more. The thin end of a very big wedge. We had a little pre-meeting before the debate at which Jack explained his strategy. I will say one thing for Jack. He is very good about consulting colleagues. As I feared, however, he is wobbly on accountability. I asked whether we were still intending to make the security services accountable to Parliament. ‘I haven’t talked to Tony about it.’ I warned that I would intervene during the debate. When I did, he gave a noncommittal reply. ‘Does that mean “no”?’ asked Michael Howard. ‘It means “maybe”,’ said Jack. Afterwards he sent me a note saying he hoped his assurance was ‘bankable’. I wrote my bank account number on the bottom and returned it to him.
I counted eight MI5 employees in the gallery and there were several more in the officials’ box. Most of them looked quite ordinary, but there was one well-scrubbed young public-school boy, blond with a pink striped shirt and cuffs that stuck out a mile. A Son of Somebody, no doubt.
A brief chat with Mark Fisher in the Tea Room. He said we have thirty more frontbenchers than there are places in the government, so there are going to be a lot of disappointments ahead. He clearly thinks he may be a casualty, but seemed relaxed about it. ‘I shall have been an old has-been before I’ve finished being a young hopeful,’ he said. Mark is fifty-one.
Thursday, 11 January
Derek and Anne Foster were on the train. We chatted about Blair’s ‘stakeholder’ speech. Needless to say there was no discussion of it at the Shadow Cabinet until after the event. Now they are all scuttling around trying to explain, with varying degrees of credibility, what it means. Derek said he was surprised that no one had yet suggested a stakeholder Labour Party, rather than one that was run by diktat from the Leader’s office. He said he had advised Blair repeatedly to adopt a more inclusive leadership, but although he had used the word ‘inclusive’ several times, it was just a word. Derek added, ‘I’d be happy if just one person was removed from the leadership team.’ No prizes for guessing who.
Derek said he was worried that Tony may be all words and no substance. He remarked on Tony’s growing isolation. ‘I haven’t seen him in the Tea Room since he was elected, in stark contrast to John Smith who went out of his way to mix with the troops.’ He agreed that Michael Meacher’s treatment was disgraceful and confirmed that Jack Cunningham is still attending Shadow Cabinet meetings despite having been voted out. This sort of arrogance can only get worse when we are in government.
I slept with Emma to give poor Ngoc a night off, managing only three hours’ sleep, between just after midnight and 3.20 a.m. Ngoc relieved me at 5.30 and I went upstairs for another three hours.
Saturday, 13 January
Awoke to hear Donald Dewar on the Today programme trying to explain what is meant by a ‘stakeholder society’. He did his best, but he was clearly struggling. The sad truth is that it is all meaningless claptrap.
Sunday, 14 January
A call from the Today programme to ask if I would take part in a discussion tomorrow about MPs’ salaries. The Tories are starting to demand that salaries be increased drastically in exchange for their cooperation with Nolan. I agreed, but only after extracting a cast-iron guarantee that the Sunderland BBC studio would be open. Several times recently I have turned up for prearranged interviews only to find it hermetically sealed.
Monday, 15 January
Up at 6.30 for the Today interview only to find a series of messages on the answerphone – from an Isobel, a Tim and a Lucy – saying the time of the interview had been changed to 8.30 a.m. I rang to ask if the person charged with opening the Sunderland studio – a Neil – had been informed. Yes, he had. Arrived to find that the building was locked. I persuaded a man unloading a van at the rear to let me in, but the studio, too, was locked. In the end the caretaker let me use the phone in reception. The discussion was cut short, but not before I had said enough to ensure enduring unpopularity with most of my colleagues. I emerged from the caretaker’s office to be greeted by the young man who was supposed to be opening up the studio. He had come from Newcastle and, predictably, had been caught in a traffic jam. Incredibly, the BBC has no one working for it based in Sunderland.
Ngoc, who had only a couple of hours’ sleep last night, had gone to bed. I am in charge of the Tiny Tyrant, who sits in her bouncing chair making good-natured blowing noises interspersed with occasional bouts of hysteria, as she does for much of the day and night. For how much longer will this go on?
All the little Blairites are rushing around talking about a stakeholder economy as though they have been familiar with the concept all their lives, whereas in truth none of them had ever heard of it before Tony made his speech in Singapore last week. Ken Purchase said to me, ‘If stakeholding is such a good idea, why have we had nothing to say about the destruction of “mutuality” in the building societies? – surely the very essence of stakeholding.’ Quite so. The reason is, of course, because the societies are handing out big dollops of money to their members in exchange for their acquiescence and we dare not offend the middle classes by uttering home truths about greed and short-termism.
Wednesday, 17 January
Tony Blair addressed the party meeting. Brilliant as usual. Without a doubt the Great Communicator. As to substance, the jury is still out but I am not entirely pessimistic. Three themes – stakeholding, his so-called ‘big idea’; a welfare state to be matched by social responsibility; and the devolution of power. All good stuff in theory, but where is the beef? If someone were to say to me, ‘Relax, Chris. Don’t keep on about it. There is a plan. Our finest minds are working on it even as we sit here,’ I would shut up. But I strongly suspect that most of our masters don’t have a clue about what they want to achieve in government. Witness the difficulty Ann Taylor is having obtaining details of their bids for a place in the legislative timetable. We have been in opposition so long that we have lost the habit of thinking positively. Victory has come to be defined in terms of when we get the jobs. My definition of victory is when something changes for the better.
John Reid rather spoiled the effect of Tony’s speech by getting up and demanding that this year’s Shadow Cabinet elections be dispensed with in the interests of unity. He earned a sharp riposte from Andrew Mackinlay. It is the thin end of a wedge, of course. As John told me afterwards, he is in favour of doing away with Shadow Cabinet elections altogether. Not if I have anything to do with it. The Leader already has quite enough power as it is.
Afterwards I buttonholed Tony in the corridor and said that if he wanted to avoid a repeat of what happened in the late seventies and early eighties, he should bear in mind that it was caused by the huge gulf which opened up between the leaders and the led. I said there were several occasions – the fiasco at Newham North East for example – when the judgement of the led proved superior to that of the leaders. He listened carefully and seemed to take it in the spirit in which it was intended.
Later, Giles Radice, who must have overheard my exchange with Tony, said that there were lessons for all of us from that period. He added unwisely, ‘I remember your pamphlet.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘What was it called?’
‘“How to Deselect Your MP”,’ he replied without hesitation.*
The mythology of the seventies is still deeply engrained.
A long chat with Peter Shore at the Welsh table in the Tea Room. When I was at Tribune we said some harsh things about Peter, but I have long realised that he is a decent and substantial figure. He thinks we will win the election by a big margin, but that we risk being blown off-course by trying to defend sterling at an unrealistic rate within a single currency. If there is one lesson from the experience of previous Labour governments, it is that we shouldn’t chuck everything overboard trying to defend sterling. Peter is on the Nolan commission and so I bent his ear on the Masons. I said, ‘If you are serious about cleaning up public life, you can’t avoid looking at the Masons. You might investigate and decide there is nothing to worry about, but you can’t avoid it.’ I think I made some headway. He said, ‘I am glad we had this conversation. The subject has been in the back of my mind for some time, but it is now in the front.’
Tony Blair was spotted in the Tea Room this afternoon. The first recorded sighting (of which I am aware) since he became leader.
A little triumph at PMQs. I offered John Major some light-hearted advice about how to deal with plotters in his ranks. It went down well with all sides. Home on the 16.30 train feeling pleased with myself.
Friday, 19 January
Three people at this evening’s surgery remarked that they had seen my intervention at PM’s Questions yesterday. Probably the most useful thing I have done in weeks. What a silly world.
Saturday, 20 January
A grey day. Kevin Marquis, my agent, called round. We talked about what a Labour government might bring. About challenging benefit culture, extending compulsory education or job training, a minimum wage, and realised that we have both, to a surprising degree, bought the New Labour package. Kevin, even more than I, sees the terrible damage to the social fabric wrought by the rampant free market and realises that, if we are ever to repair the damage, we must abandon a lot of old shibboleths.
Monday, 22 January
Everyone is talking about Harriet Harman’s decision to send her son to a selective school in Bromley. We were supposed to be discussing the Tories’ lunatic scheme for nursery vouchers, but the debate was eclipsed by the row over Harriet. This is going to do us a lot of damage.
At the division this evening John Major commented on our exchange last Thursday. He asked, as he always does, whether I am writing and I told him I wasn’t. He said, ‘I thought you’d write a kiss-and-tell story,’ which was an odd thing to say. ‘That’s Edwina’s department,’ I replied. A Tory asked me later, ‘Do you and the Prime Minister have a special relationship? He always seems to take questions from you in good part.’
As I was leaving I ran into a Labour veteran in the Upper Corridor who teased me, as he often does about my voting for Blair. ‘Well, Chris, do you regret voting for him yet?’
‘Ask me two years after the election,’ I said.
‘Two years? We’ll be hanging on by our fingertips within twelve months, whatever the majority.’ He went on, ‘We’ve got no economic policy. None whatsoever. I remarked on this to Tony and he said, “I know. I’m working on it.” At first I thought, “Great, he’s realised,” but after a while I realised he was just talking about presentation.’
He was in a very black mood. ‘Mark my words, in twenty years’ time, when I am in my grave, fascism will start coming back. The Single Market is what started it. A single currency follows as night follows day. What’s going to happen when people find they can’t legislate to solve their own problems? Fascism will come back if politicians fail.’
Somewhere in the course of our exchange he said, ‘I like Tony, but he’s got no substance.’
Tuesday, 23 January
Everyone is seething about Harriet. It isn’t just the fact that she’s chosen a selective school, but the effrontery with which she defends her decision. Why couldn’t she have sent the boy to the Oratory, where her other one goes, along with Tony’s son? At least we’ve already weathered that storm. Most people think she should go, and quickly, but I don’t think she will. She’s part of the charmed circle. The party has been taken over by a sort of Metropolitan elite who believe that the rules that govern everyone else don’t apply to them. It started, of course, with Tony’s decision to send his son to the Oratory, although this is worse since it involves selection. The trouble is, Tony can’t very well drop Harriet, because the Tories would go for him next. Sure enough, the subject dominated PM’s Questions. Tony put up a brave fight, but it was a walkover. John Major made sarky remarks about being tough on hypocrisy and tough on the causes of hypocrisy. Tony, unwisely, made clear that he would stick up for Harriet come what may. Prescott’s face, neatly caught in the frame on the news bulletins, was a picture of misery. He is said to be spitting feathers. The Tories are cock-a-hoop. They are going to play this for all it’s worth. It’s going to haunt us all the way through the election. I overheard Brian Sedgemore say, ‘If our electoral fortunes change, we can date our decline from today.’
I asked Chris Smith when he first heard of stakeholding (a question I put to every Shadow Cabinet member I come across). He replied, ‘Sitting in the High Commissioner’s residence in Singapore, in the company of a number of bemused Singaporean businessmen.’
Wednesday, 24 January
A riveting meeting of the parliamentary party. Harriet sat up front, trying to look suitably penitent, but she obviously isn’t. She was on the radio this morning robustly defending her decision. The mood was overwhelmingly hostile, but several people spoke up for her. One of the London yuppies made a perfectly awful speech and succeeded in alienating just about everybody, but the most surprising contribution came from Bernie Grant. He said he had three sons and felt he had let them down badly by sending them to local schools. He has a point, of course. Many of the schools in inner London are dreadful, particularly since the Tories abolished the Inner London Education Authority (a point which, oddly, no one has made), but that doesn’t explain why Harriet had to choose a selective school.
Paul Flynn made a brave speech directed straight at Tony. He talked of ‘a golden circle of beautiful people bound together by mutual admiration and remote from ordinary people’. He went on, ‘Tony, you don’t seem to understand. You are pushing us off the moral high ground, stealing our most precious possession – our idealism.’ Clive Solely made the best speech. He said, ‘This story won’t go away, however loyal we are. It’s not about education any more. It’s about trust. About saying one thing and doing another. Harriet, for your own sake and for the party’s sake, please resign.’ Roy Hattersley stopped short of calling on her to resign, but hinted strongly that she should. He did say that she should stop going on the media to defend her decision, ‘otherwise some of us will be provoked beyond endurance’. After everyone had spoken Harriet got up and stumbled through a pathetic little statement, every word of which was written out, and which actually contained the word ‘apologise’.
Finally, Tony Blair gave a brilliant performance. I have never seen him speak with such passion. He threw his full weight behind Harriet. He said he wasn’t going to let the Tories crucify a member of his Shadow Cabinet. As he was speaking, it occurred to me that there must be several members of the Shadow Cabinet – Michael Meacher, for example – who must wish they enjoyed the confidence of the Leader to the same degree as Harriet. (Ann Clwyd got the chop from the front bench for missing a single, non-essential, vote.) Tony got the headline he wanted in the Standard: ‘Blair Crushes Revolt’. True, but he has used up a lot of goodwill. And what’s he going to do when the Shadow Cabinet elections come round? She hasn’t a hope in hell of being re-elected.
Chatted to Derek Foster in the Tea Room. He said, ‘I have worked for four leaders. What struck me most about Neil Kinnock’s office was the contempt his staff had, not only for the parliamentary party, but for half the Shadow Cabinet. The attitude of Blair’s staff is exactly the same.’
Later, The Man himself came in and sat down at my table. That’s the third Tea Room sighting in the last ten days. Obviously, the penny’s dropping. I told him I was an eleven-plus failure and he seemed surprised.
Thursday, 25 January
Just when we hoped it had gone away, back it came. Blair unwisely raised education at Prime Minister’s Questions and received yet another hammering about Harriet. I heard someone say, ‘The magic’s gone.’ Too early to say yet, of course, but for the first time since he was elected we have glimpsed the possibility of defeat. Mick Clapham said to me afterwards, ‘We are on the slippery slope.’ Ken Purchase said, ‘We are in deep shit.’ If only John Smith were still with us.
Emma awoke every two hours, demanding attention. She has got very devious. She knows that if she screams loud enough she will get her way. Every so often she pauses to see whether her crying is having the desired effect. We have taken to calling her Civilised Baby, so-called by Ngoc after she had a deceptively easy night a few days ago.
Monday, 29 January
Sunderland
A couple of hours with Jules Preston, chief executive of the local Training and Enterprise Council, the quango charged with providing job training for the young unemployed. As TECs go, it appears to be very successful, but, as Jules said, nothing he can do will make up for the thousands of skilled jobs that once existed in the shipyards. One interesting fact: I asked what the definition was of a successful transition from training to a real job. The answer: two pay packets in six months. No wonder the claimed rate of success is so high.
To London just in time for a meeting on the Security Services Bill, about which there is a strong, and not entirely healthy, whiff of consensus in the air.
Tuesday, 30 January
The Security Services Bill, the purpose of which is to extend the functions of MI5 into investigations of serious crime. In theory MI5 is supposed to be assisting the police, but in practice, I am sure it will do as it pleases. The government is putting it about that only twenty or thirty personnel will be involved, but it is clearly the thin end of a very big wedge. Alun Michael, who leads for our side, is a likeable Stakhanovite with absolutely no eye for the big picture. No serious opposition is planned. Just a lot of probing amendments which are then withdrawn without a vote. The minister, David Maclean, who is usually very combative, was uncharacteristically reasonable. There was none of the usual nonsense to the effect that opposition to whatever foolishness is being proposed equates with sympathy for the villains. Alun has been invited to the Home Office for background meetings with officials. We have all been circulated with background notes. There is even talk of new amendments to accommodate Opposition concerns. The reason for this sudden outbreak of reasonableness is not hard to discern. Namely, that – with the exception of the security services – just about everyone who has been consulted is deeply unhappy with the Bill as it stands. Even the tame committee who are supposed to oversee the work of the security services has registered its unhappiness. The police are furious because it fails to make clear who will be in charge. The definition of what constitutes serious crime is extremely wide. In practice, MI5 will be a law unto itself, as it has always been.
Chris Smith came to the What’s Left group in the evening to talk about his plans for pensions and social security. He said that old-age pensions had fallen from 20 per cent of average earnings in 1979 to 14 per cent today. He would like to restore the link with earnings, but Gordon was ‘intractable’. He hoped at least to link pensions to inflation, but Gordon would need to be persuaded on this, too. Chris also said he was looking for a way of helping the poorest three million pensioners, but this was difficult given that means testing was politically impossible. He was hoping to restore some sort of benefit for sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, but only as part of a welfare-to-work scheme. He also wanted to create incentives to tempt people out of welfare dependency. He would like to tax child benefit, which would enable us to pay a big increase for those who really needed it, but there was a danger of alienating Middle Britain. That, of course, is the nub of the problem. The greed and myopia of a large section of the middle classes, their constant baying for tax cuts and the eagerness with which they lapped up shares in the utilities is what has got us into this mess. We are terrified of alienating them so we have to go around pretending that they are the real victims of the Thatcher Decade when in fact many of them did extremely well out of it.
Chris said he was trying to close down talk of Singapore as a role model because it was of little relevance to our situation. In Singapore most people were in work and the family was still intact. In the entire country there were only 2,500 people on benefit. He did talk approvingly, however, of the JET scheme in Australia which has apparently had some success enticing single parents back to work.
Wednesday, 31 January
George Mudie, one of the whips, was working his way round the division lobby in the evening collecting signatures on what, at first sight, appeared to be a harmless little motion calling for MPs’ pay to be referred to the Nolan Committee. He had a list of all Labour members and was ticking off those who signed, so it was well organised and appeared to have semi-official backing. At first I refused to sign, then relented on the grounds that the issue needs at all cost to be got out of our hands. Ten minutes later I received a call from a BBC journalist who asked if I had signed the motion for MPs’ salaries to be doubled. In a blinding flash I realised what was going on. The Tories behind the motion are using Labour members as cover. Knowing they can’t get Labour signatures for a motion calling for salaries to be doubled they have come up with a bland little formula designed to maximise the signatures while, simultaneously, giving an entirely different spin to the media. I went straight to the Table Office and removed my name before it appears on the Order Paper. The clerk said I was not the only member to withdraw, so several people have worked out what is going on. I am absolutely, utterly opposed to any increase over the rate of inflation and I shan’t hesitate to say so no matter how unpopular it makes me.
Friday, 2 February
Sunderland
I called on Joe Mills, the chairman designate of the local health authority, who told an amusing story about Tony Blair’s receipt of an honorary degree from the University of Newcastle. Apparently Blair’s staff arrogantly decided that their master would pick up the degree and depart without sitting through the speeches. Ted Short took offence at this and called at Blair’s office to make clear that he thought Tony should stay for the full ceremony. The youth who managed the diary gave him the brush-off, saying, ‘It’s all been cleared with the Chancellor’.
To which Ted Short replied, ‘I am the Chancellor.’
Blair stayed for the entire ceremony.
Sunday, 4 February
We let Civilised Baby cry last night. She carried on for fifty-five minutes before falling asleep. Hard, but it’s the only way. Otherwise she will drive us all potty.
This evening Civilised began howling at 9.30 p.m., soon after Ngoc had gone to bed early to store up energy for the night ahead. I let her carry on for more than an hour. A pitiful little sound, pausing at every creak on the stairs, to see if help was on the way. Eventually I was overruled. Ngoc came down and picked her up. The howling stopped immediately, as if at the touch of a button. Civilised looked over Ngoc’s shoulder and gave me a little smile as if to say, ‘I won, Dad, so there.’
Monday, 5 February
I wrote to Tony Blair about the proposed increase in our salaries. I said that this was an issue on which there ought to be clear water between us and the Tories and yet we seemed bent on demonstrating that, when it comes to self-enrichment, there was no real difference. The fact that our whips were touting around a motion that implied a large increase made it look as though the campaign had official backing. In government we would have to take some harsh decisions about public sector pay and awarding ourselves a whacking great rise will surely come back to haunt us. I said he should make clear that there is no case for an increase in MPs’ wages above the rate of inflation and that if we wanted to link future pay increases to anyone, it should be a cross-section of our constituents’ incomes rather than to some mythical civil servant. I copied the letter to Ann Taylor, Bruce Grocott and Doug Hoyle, all of whom will disagree. I am afraid this is going to make me unpopular, but I don’t care. It is outrageous.
Joe Rogaly of the Financial Times came to see me at Brixton Road. He wants to write a profile for the Weekend section. Why me? ‘We wanted to talk to a sane left-winger.’ I said that I was flattered to be certified sane by the Financial Times. He replied, ‘It was only the suggestion of one man. We didn’t take a vote on it.’ We chatted for a couple of hours. His heart didn’t really seem to be in it and I sense I was a disappointment. He kept asking where I stood in the political spectrum. Was I ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ left? I said labels were meaningless. How would he like to be labelled? He replied, ‘Jaded hack.’
Wednesday, 7 February
A handwritten note, marked private and confidential, from Tony Blair in reply to the letter I sent him on Monday. The speed of his response suggests I have touched a raw nerve. He said he agrees. The motion had been circulated before he was aware of it. He was keeping a very (underlined) close eye on the situation.
Jean Corston told me that one of the whips touting for signatures on the wages motion had told her that he wasn’t party to any campaign to double our pay. Then he added, ‘But we might get £20,000.’
Thursday, 8 February
I travelled home with Derek and Anne Foster. Derek said that at last week’s Shadow Cabinet, Tony had announced that Peter Mandelson was to head the new election unit in Millbank Tower. Frank Dobson had said, ‘I think I speak for a number of colleagues, when I say that I don’t like it but, if it has to be, I hope that the unit will serve everyone equally and not operate in first gear for some, second gear for others and in reverse for the rest.’ Tony had said, ‘Look, if there are any problems, just come to me.’
Derek says nothing will happen. ‘With the best will in the world, Tony hasn’t got the time to go sorting out disputes between colleagues when he’s supposed to be fronting an election campaign.’
A huge bomb exploded in Docklands last night, clearly the work of the IRA. Monstrous, but hardly surprising. Major has had eighteen months to start talking and all he has done is fiddle. Whatever the outcome of the election, he might have gone down in history as the Prime Minister who ended the war. Now he’s blown it. In the end I guess the Tories decided that, given their shrinking majority, keeping the Unionists sweet was more important than peace.
Wednesday, 14 February
Peter Mandelson asked to speak to me after the meeting of the parliamentary party. He said Tony was worried about reports that Michael Green wants to take over MAI, a media conglomerate with stakes in several regional TV companies. He wants me to keep an eye on it and, if necessary, organise a fuss. Peter also said that there were signs that the Sun was reverting to type and the Express and the Mail were turning increasingly nasty. Cherie was being trailed around the courts by hacks from the tabloids who were looking for trouble. Murdoch was upset about the vote on sports rights in the Lords and was blaming us. Peter said that for the time being he was just monitoring the Tory relationship with the media. When we have enough to go on we will make an issue of it, but it was important not to be seen to be whingeing.
The Security Services Bill had its final stages today. I hadn’t intended to say anything, but – prompted by a contribution from Rupert Allason – I got up and said I was unhappy about the whole thing. I thought I ought to put down a little marker, just in case in ten years’ time it all goes horribly wrong and someone says, ‘Where were you?’
Liz Forgan came to dinner. Afterwards we wandered around the House of Lords and in the Royal Gallery we ran into Bernard Donoughue, who was feeling very pleased with himself for having moved the amendment prohibiting Murdoch from getting his hands on the eight listed sporting events. The first serious resistance Murdoch has ever encountered. Bernard, who was sacked from The Times by Murdoch, said ‘Revenge, a dish best served cold. I have waited fourteen years.’ Does Murdoch know? ‘He does. David Elstein said to me, “We know why, but there’s no need to go over the top, Bernard.”
‘The beauty of it is,’ he said, ‘I never once referred to Murdoch when introducing my amendment.’ He really was a very happy man.
Bernard alleged, citing a Tory source, that Thatcher had sent a draft of the 1990 Broadcasting Bill to Murdoch’s lawyers and allowed them to make deletions as they saw fit.
Thursday, 15 February
The report by Lord Justice Scott on the sale of arms to Iraq was published today with a great fanfare. The Trade Secretary, Ian Lang, made a statement, the gist of which was that everyone was in the clear and no one will be resigning. William Waldegrave and Nicholas Lyell were seated on the front bench looking unhappy. They obviously knew they were in far deeper trouble than Lang was admitting to. He quoted very selectively from the report, safe in the knowledge that no one else had seen it, except Robin Cook who had three hours to digest 1,800 pages and who responded brilliantly. Even the Scot Nats sitting next to me were impressed.
Friday, 16 February
Sunderland
The surgery lasted until after eight. The last customer was an obsessive who was convicted of beating up his girlfriend and believes he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. He’s been on at me for months. I told him I can’t help, but he won’t take no for an answer. He wouldn’t go so in the end Jacky and I packed up our papers, put on our coats and locked the office while he continued to harangue us. I was afraid he would follow me home and find out where I lived, but fortunately he got tired about 100 yards short.
Civilised Baby is unwell. She whinged for half the night and much of the day. She never seems to sleep for more than thirty minutes. We put her in the buggy and took her for a walk around Mowbray Park in the morning, which kept her quiet for a while, but she resumed her wailing as soon as we were home. In the afternoon we put her in the car and went for a drive up the coast road to South Shields, which brought some relief, but she howled all evening and is still howling as I write (at 10.20 p.m.). Hanh, Ngoc and I have divided the night into three-hour shifts. My watch is from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m.
Tuesday, 20 February
To London on the 10.50. The only other first-class passenger to board at Durham was a sour elderly woman who, despite wearing what appeared to be a red tracksuit bottom, was unmistakeably grand. A large coat with fur cuffs was draped over her shoulders. She tottered along beside a railway employee who pushed an empty wheelchair. A chauffeur with a blanket over his arm hovered. When the train arrived another BR person materialised to help load her bags. I heard her complain about ‘rotten service’. In fairness, I suspect she was referring to the fact that the train was running ten minutes late rather than to the attention she was receiving. I sidled up to her luggage and read the label: ‘Viscountess Lambton’.*
Thursday, 22 February
One of the upwardly mobile female members bent my ear in the Tea Room about MPs’ wages. She went on about her £100,000 mortgage, the cost of her nanny, her cleaner. She said, ‘It cost me ten pounds in taxi fares just to get to the hairdresser and back this morning.’ How my heart bled.
The debate on the Scott report. Ian Lang was hopeless, but then he had a rotten case. Robin was wonderful. He displayed total mastery and, after initial barracking, most of the Tories listened to him in gloomy silence. Those who did raise their heads above the parapet were knocked for six. Robin even managed to get under Heseltine’s skin by praising him for being the only minister to refuse to sign one of Nick Lyell’s bits of paper. One can always tell when Hezza is upset because a nerve starts to twitch in the right hand side of his face. Alex Carlile said to me afterwards that Cook’s was one of the best performances he had seen in years. I had expected the result to be a foregone conclusion since Paisley’s men had already said they were abstaining. The other Unionists were in and out of Downing Street all afternoon and eventually voted with us. In the end, there was only one vote in it. Not that anyone would have resigned, had they lost. They really are unembarrassable.
Wednesday, 28 February
We had a little debate on the Carl Bridgewater case. Dennis Turner, who knows nothing about it, came up in the ballot so Paul Foot drafted a speech which Dennis delivered with great aplomb. Roy Hattersley spoke well. He has taken this one on board, unlike the Birmingham Six. There were even a couple of Tories who spoke in favour of reopening the case. The minister, Tim Kirkhope, was dismal. I am certain we will win this one, but not until it is out of the hands of the Home Office.
Tuesday, 5 March
I was number seven at PM’s Questions, which were taken by Heseltine. Couldn’t think of anything to ask until someone suggested I ask Hezza if on reflection he regretted his refusal to sign a Public Immunity Certificate, given that we now knew (from Scott) that the Attorney General had been right all along? It went down a treat. Hezza, who has absolutely no sense of humour, just stood glaring at me, apparently lost for something to say. In the end he gave a more or less sensible reply. It won’t look much when it’s written down in Hansard, but it did go down well with the troops. All sorts of people remarked on it afterwards. Pathetic really, that we derive so much satisfaction from such a piddling little sound bite, but such is life on the Opposition back benches.
Wednesday, 6 March
Hugh MacPherson, Tribune’s lobby correspondent, berated the left in general and me in particular for not standing up to Blair and co. ‘If you were still at Tribune, you’d have something to say. You MPs are all the same,’ he said, ‘once you get in here all you care about is your seats.’ In vain did I protest that what I cared about was winning the election and I didn’t think anyone would thank me for starting a civil war. Not that I could, even if I wanted to. There aren’t enough takers. Dissenters, I argued, would have more influence after the election, when we have only a small majority. ‘But supposing Labour has a big majority?’ he said, ‘Blair won’t need you.’
Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans, and her husband Jon Halliday came to dinner. They are working on a biography of Mao and Jon is going to Vietnam in search of people who had dealings with him, which is why he contacted me. The Mao project will take three years and they are interviewing everyone who has ever met him including Heath, Bush and Kissinger. Jon said Kissinger was trying to distance himself from his earlier enthusiasm for Mao. Although banned in China, Wild Swans has opened a lot of doors including those of the wife of the former President Liu Shao-chi; the daughter of Lin Biao, the former defence minister who disappeared in that mysterious plane crash in Mongolia in 1971; and Mao’s last mistress. None of these people have ever spoken out before. We talked about political heroes. Jon reckons that Chou En-lai is the greatest political figure of the century. Jung is understandably wary of heroes, given her experience of China, but she suggested Václav Havel and Gandhi. Mandela we all agreed on. Jon suggested the Dalai Lama, who certainly has my vote. I suggested Ho Chi Minh and Pope John XXIII, both of whom remained humble to the end of their lives. I suspect, however, that a frank account of Uncle Ho’s life would reveal that he, too, has feet of clay. History, we agreed, will be kind to Gorbachev but he, of course, is seriously flawed by his neglect of the home front.
Friday, 8 March
Awoke to hear a Labour peer, Meghnad Desai on the Today programme saying that the economy is in good shape and that Labour ought to concentrate on something else. I do wish he would keep his mouth shut. He is supposed to be on our side. The Tories – helped by their usual good fortune – are organising an economic miracle to coincide with the election and they might just get away with it. If they win a fifth term, only a world war or an environmental catastrophe will shift them. Even then the election would have to come soon afterwards, so short is the public memory. It is too depressing even to think about.
Wednesday, 13 March
A madman has gunned down fifteen primary-school children and a teacher in Dunblane.
Thursday, 14 March
A school photograph of the children murdered in Dunblane dominates most of today’s newspapers. I wept when I saw it. Fifteen beautiful little people, their faces full of hope and innocence, whose lives have been cut short by an inexplicable act of madness. I think of all the years of love and care invested in the bringing up of one small person, wiped out in a single moment.
I ran into George Robertson in the Members’ Lobby. He lives in Dunblane and his children went to the primary school. He and Michael Forsyth were at the school yesterday, a few hours after the massacre. George has behaved with great dignity. He said that Thomas Hamilton, the killer, had actually been in his house.
Prime Minister’s Questions was given over entirely to Dunblane. Tony Blair was almost in tears as he read his statement. Both he and John Major were heard in absolute silence.
In the evening we debated renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Having opposed it for the last fifteen years, we are now instructed to abstain. A wholly untenable position. Michael Howard made mincemeat of Jack’s attempt to explain this latest volte face. If the object was to make us appear more voter friendly, it has entirely failed. All we have succeeded in doing is alienating many of the chattering classes while failing to appease the Sun-reading end of the working class. Twenty-five of us, by no means all on the left, defied the whip and voted against.
Friday, 15 March
Predictably, tonight’s Echo, for the second time in ten days, carries a page lead headed, ‘City’s MPs defy Blair over Terrorism Act’. As far as most of my constituents are concerned, it will be yet more evidence that I am a tool of the IRA.
Saturday, 16 March
Today’s Financial Times carries a profile based on my interview last month with Joe Rogaly. He has tried hard to be fair, but he’s too mired in his own prejudices to succeed. A great deal of space is devoted to Ireland and whether or not I think it is right to plant bombs and shoot at British soldiers. When have I ever suggested it was? I am labelled ‘obsessive’ – by someone who has only ever spent an hour in my company. Even my views on taxation are quoted out of context with the result that they appear to be opposite to those I actually hold. Not that it matters much. Hardly anyone in Sunderland reads the FT. Lily at the paper shop doesn’t stock it, but she loaned me the one she reserves for the press office at the Civic Centre on condition I let her have it back before Monday.
This afternoon, a guided tour of the party’s new Media Centre in Mill-bank Tower (which, ironically, stands on the site of Tony Benn’s birthplace). Here Mandelson is king. He gave an amusing little introduction and then we were shown the slogans that will form the basis of our campaign.
ONE NATION
YOUNG COUNTRY
STAKEHOLDER ECONOMY
NEW LABOUR
NEW BRITAIN
Ugh. One has visions of rows of glassy-eyed young zealots chanting ‘New Labour, New Britain’ cf. China, circa 1966.
Upstairs sixty (rising in due course to a hundred) enthusiastic young spinners are beavering away on state-of-the-art software. The boxes in which their new computers arrived are stacked in piles in every corner. They are divided into units with names like, Rebuttal, Projection and so on. Total cost is said to be about £2 million but I suspect it will be considerably more in the end. If only we had a message worthy of such an expensive delivery system.
Thursday, 21 March
George Robertson told me that more than 600 bullets were found on Thomas Hamilton. I have seen no mention of this in the papers. The suspicion is that he intended to wipe out the entire school while they were at assembly but arrived a few minutes too late. ‘So in a sense we must thank God for our good luck,’ one of George’s neighbours had said. Funerals have been taking place all week. One by one the little white coffins lowered into the Silence. I can’t stop thinking about it.
A long chat with Ann Whelan, who says that the lawyer who represented the Director of Public Prosecutions at the Bridgewater trial has written to the Home Office arguing that the case should be sent back to the Appeal Court. Incredibly, the Home Office are still resisting, so in the end he copied the correspondence to the defence solicitor, Jim Nichol. However much the Home Office wriggles, they will have to give way in the end. It’s only a matter of time.
Friday, 22 March
I sent a carefully worded letter to Barbara Mills, the Director of Public Prosecutions, asking what her plans were re the Carl Bridgewater case. I didn’t let on that I knew about the letter from the lawyer. This is the moment to turn the screws. Amazing how little they have learned from past disasters.
This evening a Tory Party political broadcast, the drift of which was that the British economy was ahead of Europe in just about every respect. ‘Ask our competitors,’ the commentator kept saying and then the camera cut to an actor posing as a French, German or Dutch businessman who would duly confirm that they were outclassed by Britain. The effect was somewhat spoiled by News at Ten, which followed immediately. ‘Europe bans British beef’ was the lead. One by one our competitors – this time not actors – were shown demanding an end to exports of British meat – a result of the BSE crisis.
Saturday, 23 March
Sunderland
To the Civic Centre to hear John Prescott open a political education conference. There was standing room only in the council chamber and getting on for half of those present were new members. The chairwoman, a member of the National Executive Committee, started the meeting, saying that under New Labour political meetings did not consist of politicians talking at people. On the contrary New Labour wanted dialogue with its members. Everyone had a part to play. ‘Do you believe that?’ I whispered to Derek Foster who was sitting beside me and he offered a discreet smile. Whereupon Prescott got up, talked for an uninterrupted forty minutes, and left as soon as the applause had died down without taking a single question.
BSE is turning into a big disaster for the Tories. There is talk of having to slaughter at least four million cattle. Needless to say we are shamelessly exploiting the situation. I feel a little uneasy every time I hear one of our spokesman going on about how incompetent and indecisive the government is. (Actually, the Health Secretary, Stephen Dorrell, has handled the situation well.) Then I imagine what they would do to us if our roles were reversed and I feel happier.
For the first time I begin to think we might have a serious majority at the Election.
Tuesday, 26 March
When I rang home this morning Ngoc told me the following story: Last week the Woodcraft Folk sent a form to be filled in with examples of Sarah’s good behaviour and helpfulness. For a week Sarah was on best behaviour. The form was duly completed and dispatched. This morning Ngoc said to her, ‘Fold your pyjamas and put them away to show how good you are.’ To which Sarah replied, ‘But Mum, you’ve already sent in the paper.’
According to Jack Straw, Michael Howard is being uncharacteristically friendly over the review of gun legislation in the wake of Dunblane. Jack has been invited to the Home Office, his every suggestion treated with respect. ‘He wants cover,’ Jack says. I only hope we extract a high price.
David Elstein, head of programming at BSkyB, addressed the all-party Media Group in advance of the Broadcasting Bill. To hear him talk you’d think Sky is a philanthropic organisation concerned solely with the improvement of British culture. He claimed they are spending £160 million on original programming. When I asked for a breakdown this turned out to be 50 per cent on sport and 25 per cent on news, virtually nothing on drama or documentaries. What’s more they are undermining everybody else; just as the Sun forced the Mirror to plunge downmarket, so the same is happening to television. He went on about how generous Sky is in allowing other companies access to their channels via the set-top box. ‘We would hate to have a war,’ he said. Why, I asked, is Sky such an apparently gentlemanly organisation when other parts of the Murdoch empire are so ruthless? The answer – which he didn’t offer – is, of course, that they are anxious to do nothing to provoke the regulators. In ten years’ time, when they dominate the market, it could be a different story.
Thursday, 28 March
I managed to get in a little shot at Agriculture questions. Some of us, I said, welcomed the collapse of the odious trade in live animals brought about by the BSE crisis. There was a big audience because it was immediately before Prime Minister’s Questions. The Tories jeered loudly and a Liberal MP, Charles Kennedy, said, ‘You’ll get a lot of letters about that.’
Thursday, 11 April
Blair is in New York. He was pictured on the news last night shaking hands with Henry Kissinger. Really, this is too much. What has rubbing shoulders with a clapped-out war criminal got to do with getting us elected?
Friday, 12 April
This morning’s news bulletins are full of our leader’s speech in New York last night hinting, but not actually saying, that we might cut taxes for the middle classes. I do wish we would stop pandering. We ought to be appealing to the best rather than the worst instincts of the middle class. In any case, we can never outbid the Tories over tax. In the last analysis they will just lie.
Saturday, 20 April
Sarah and I spent a couple of hours distributing local election leaflets in the smarter part of my constituency – 1930s houses and bungalows, neat gardens full of daffodils, tulips and purple aubretia; new and almost-new cars in the drives; two Tory votes in every home, or at least there would have been five years ago. Now, who knows? After lunch we drove to Farndale where the daffodils were in full bloom.
Sunday, 21 April
With Sarah I leafleted in Hendon, Harrogate and Amberley streets where the social fabric has collapsed. A stark contrast to yesterday. What nonsense to talk of a North–South divide. I have only to travel a mile across the constituency to pass from one world to another. Three or four houses were burned out, a dozen others abandoned and unsaleable. Pavements strewn with rubble, litter and dog dirt. Most of the remaining houses have fallen into the hands of absentee landlords. Every so often one comes to net curtains and dried flowers in the front window, a home where decent people, unable to escape, are clinging on by their fingertips. And only a couple of hundred yards from where we live. How close we are to the abyss.
Monday, 29 April
An hour or more with Tony Blair in the Shadow Cabinet Room. Part of a consultation he is doing with backbenchers in groups of about fifteen. I can’t recall any previous Labour leader undertaking such an exercise. Morale among the troops is not high. People feel irrelevant and angry at learning from the media about New Labour’s dramatic policy changes. The latest is Gordon Brown’s suggestion that child benefit for over-sixteens in higher education should be reviewed. People are very pissed off about that.
Tony opened by saying we could still be brought down by money-in-the-pocket issues. The press was now back in the Tory fold. Tax was the single biggest obstacle to victory. Gordon’s child benefit speech had, he said, been misconstrued. Then we had a little briefing from party pollster Greg Cook, who said that we were still vulnerable on the economy. So far we had done little more than neutralise Tory propaganda. The electorate still didn’t trust us.
We went round the table and everyone chipped in. Tony sat there in his shirtsleeves carefully taking notes. He knew everyone’s name, which was impressive. Dave Hinchliffe complained that we didn’t appear to be offering any alternative vision. No one was sure what we are offering. Alice Mahon weighed in on child benefit, saying she had brought two kids through A levels on a low income and she wouldn’t have been able to manage without child benefit. Several others endorsed this. Bernie Grant complained about policy being made on the hoof – the change of line on the Prevention of Terrorism Act, for example. Mike Gapes made some trenchant comments about the negative spin-doctoring coming from Blair’s office and the damage it was doing.
When my turn came I said the Rebuttal Unit appeared to be targeted against our own side rather than the enemy. On tax, I said we shouldn’t pander to middle-class greed but rather we should appeal to their decent instincts. I added that one of the most damaging allegations made against us was that all politicians are the same. There was no better illustration for that proposition than the row over MPs’ wages. I was of the view that there ought to be clear blue water between us and the Tories on this issue. As things stood, the only difference was an argument about how much.
Ken Purchase said we must be doing some things right because we were so far ahead in the polls and this was in large measure due to Tony. This was almost the only positive comment anyone made. He added, to some amusement, that he didn’t believe in all this modernising and stakeholding ‘crap’, but it was clearly working so keep at it, Tony.
There were some amusing moments. Tommy Graham announced (not, I suspect, for the first time) that he was giving up smoking and intended to lose eight stone.
Diane Abbott, who waltzed in twenty minutes late, began by referring to Brian Donohoe as ‘comrade’.
‘Do you mean Brian?’ said Tony.
Diane pulled no punches, ‘You get the feeling from New Labour that you are being talked at rather than listened to.’ She went on, ‘I feel like a disreputable single-parent black mother from Hackney being lectured at by someone from the better part of Islington.’
Tony said quietly, ‘I used to live in Hackney.’
We had to give hope to our people, Diane went on. We were losing sight of those who traditionally voted for us. Several others made the same point, but rather less provocatively.
There were barbed comments from one or two surprising sources. Eddie O’Hara said people in his constituency were ‘incandescent’ at the choice of school some senior members of the party made for their children. Tony just looked at the table.
Finally, there was a contribution from Brian Jenkins, the victor of the South East Staffs by-election, who is obviously still on a high following a staggering 22 per cent swing to Labour. People, he said, wanted hope, a dream. They didn’t want detail. He reported overwhelming enthusiasm for the Labour message. The public, it seems, is far keener on New Labour than most party members.
We were interrupted by a division and when we reassembled Tony responded. ‘Tax is the thing that could kill us stone dead. Believe me, this is a dangerous area. Discipline and self-control are essential.’ On child benefit, all Gordon had proposed was a review. It was a fact that child benefit was not paid to people on the dole, but if you had a son at Eton, you would qualify.
At this point Ken Purchase interrupted. ‘That won’t wash.’
‘My argument can be justified intellectually.’
‘Your argument is spurious.’
‘I can justify my argument, whether or not it is politically possible to do anything about it.’
At which point Diane intervened. ‘The spin was coming out of your office.’
‘Diane, not everything is centrally controlled. All I ask is for people to distinguish between fact and fiction.’
Diane and Ken kept it up for several minutes. Kinnock would have gone bananas, but Tony handled it with good humour. He will have got the message that feelings are running high, but I am not sure he will have heard much to change his mind. ‘I make no apology for trying to broaden our appeal. Labour is the least successful political party in modern history.’ He concluded by listing five tests of a Labour government: (1) a significant improvement in education; (2) reform of the welfare state; (3) partnership with industry; (4) decentralisation of government; (5) improved relations with Europe.
No mention of unemployment, which, I would have thought, was the single greatest test of a Labour government, even one that wanted to reduce taxes. No mention either of the power structure. I dropped Tony a note afterwards saying that, if we leave the power structure intact, we won’t win a second term.
Tuesday, 30 April
Gordon Brown has made another speech, this time to the Manchester Business School, all but ruling out tax increases for anyone. Full of talk about New Labour’s fiscal rectitude. ‘We will save money before we spend money.’ There is talk of ‘across the board efficiency reviews’. If there was any further money to be squeezed out of the public sector I am sure the Tories would have found it by now. What makes Gordon think he will succeed where they have failed? The plain truth is – and I entirely understand why we can’t say it – that it is not the highest rates of tax that are too low, although they may be. It is the basic rate. The middle classes are paying too little, given the rate of unemployment we have to sustain. The only way to reduce tax is to cut unemployment. A sad comment on our arid little world, that any politician admitting the truth would become instantly unelectable.
Wednesday, 1 May
Most of the day was spent at the select committee. Judicial appointments in the morning. Dangerous dogs in the afternoon. I overheard two Tories in the Tea Room talking about free lunches. One had just been lunched at Shepherd’s, an expensive restaurant in Marsham Street, by the cable TV lobby and had been spotted by the other who was being lunched by a Granada lobbyist. One said, ‘I’m in Shepherd’s every three months or so and I can honestly say that I have never yet paid for a lunch.’
The select committee took evidence on guns. Jerry Wiggin gave evidence for the gun lobby. His line was basically that most gun-related crime involved unregistered weapons and that, therefore, little or nothing could be done about anything. I asked whether it worried him that there were more than 700,000 shotguns in circulation, but it didn’t. Neither was he concerned by the fact that it was as easy to acquire a shotgun licence in urban Sunderland as it is in rural North Yorkshire. In the end, I suspect Dunblane is going to make very little difference.
One interesting little New Labour vignette: Paul Flynn proposed a motion at this morning’s meeting of the parliamentary party calling for Shadow Cabinet elections to be transferred from October to July. The aim was to ensure that they can’t be cancelled in the autumn on the grounds that they are too divisive. I was unable to attend because I was in the select committee, but at about 12.15 p.m. Nick Brown and George Mudie put their heads round the committee room door and beckoned to John Hutton, who disappeared for about ten minutes. When I asked where he’d been, he said he’d been told to go to Committee Room 14 and vote against Paul. Even party meetings are whipped.
Thursday, 9 May
Lunch with Ed Pearce, a lobby journalist; his political instincts are moderate Labour but even he is concerned that Blair and Brown have gone too far. He said, ‘We should be talking to the middle classes in the language of Ian Gilmour, not that of Norman Lamont.’
This evening, a free vote on allowing gays into the armed forces. A very British debate. Everyone knows that sooner or later we shall be forced by the Europeans (another stick for the Tories to beat them with) to admit gays, but nobody (including some New Labourites) wants to upset the bigots in the military. Not that there was any suggestion that gays should be excluded from the armed forces when there was a world war to be fought or when there was conscription. Needless to say, the proposition was comfortably defeated. Lucky the armed forces aren’t allowed to choose whether they will admit women and blacks.
Monday, 13 May
To the Senior Salaries Review Body to discuss MPs’ remuneration. Sir Michael Perry, a former chairman of Unilever, presided, flanked by a large lady who asked the occasional question and another woman who said nothing. Mine, he said, was the only submission based on principle. I had argued that it was unhealthy in a democracy for too wide a gap to grow between the electorate and their representatives and that it was possible to live comfortably on £34,000 a year. All the arguments in favour of a large increase were bogus. All parties were oversubscribed for candidates. We had no great responsibilities. Most of us would not be earning significantly more if we had remained outside Parliament and many of those shouting loudest for more money contributed least to the day-to-day operation of Parliament. He asked how future increases should be calculated and I suggested they should be linked to the average increase in a cross-section of our constituents’ incomes – and not to the income of ‘some invisible civil servant’. He was courteous and not at all pompous. He asked if I had given any thought to what the Prime Minister should earn. I said it was not a subject I lay awake worrying about, but perhaps he could take an average of EC prime ministers and link it to a multiple of MPs’ salaries. We also discussed the mileage allowance, which, I said, was a racket and, if he was looking to save some public money, there was ample scope. I was with them a little more than half an hour. I don’t suppose my contribution will make the blindest bit of difference, but somebody has to speak up.
In the evening I went to dinner with James and Margaret Curran in Wimbledon. James said, ‘Give me a reason to believe there is a serious difference between us and the Tories.’ I gave him several, but it is depressing how widespread this sentiment is becoming.
Half an hour with Barbara Castle, who is fuming about New Labour’s plans to do away with SERPS, the state earnings-related pension scheme, which was her brainchild. Vintage Barbara. There she sat, an aged queen, seething with magnificent indignation, not a hair out of place. Her colours, a subdued yellow, matched perfectly – even her hair. Oh for such energy when I am eighty-five. Or even, indeed, when I am fifty. ‘I am as loyal as anyone in this party, but if I am to be rode roughshod over, then the balloon will go up,’ she said. As she spoke she banged the table. She had tried to obtain a list of delegates to the National Policy Forum and been told that none was available. She had telephoned the general secretary, Tom Sawyer, to try to discover the timetable for the pensions policy document, but he had not returned her calls. She had talked both to Gordon and Chris Smith. ‘No one will put a figure on the cost.’ Instead of agreeing to restore the link between earnings and pensions they were looking at every single means-tested alternative. ‘I told Gordon I will not go quietly, even if some of us are driven to keep our mouths shut this side of a general election.’
Saturday, 18 May
To Manchester City Hall for the National Policy Forum. In a very surly frame of mind. How I resent giving up a weekend to listen to hours of claptrap. ‘Dad, why are you always going to meetings?’ asked Sarah. Why, indeed?
I read the documents on the train (they arrived only two days ago). Clare’s transport paper and Robin’s on foreign affairs were good. Chris Smith’s very thin. Just a copy of a recent speech and a consultation paper, asking questions. Barbara need not have worried. Clearly nothing has been decided on pensions. Or if it has, we are not being told. Blair opened with his usual warning against complacency. As ever, he demanded discipline. We weren’t going to set out our Budget in advance of the election. ‘We’d be certifiable if we did.’ He was unapologetic about the proposed review of child benefit for the over-sixteens, but he added that no one was suggesting that we take it away from those who need it. He ended by promising the most radical government since 1945. Despite everything, I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. We have never, in my time at least, had a leader so clear about where he wants to take us.
Gordon Brown was much in evidence, exuding artificial bonhomie. What a contrast to Blair who is so relaxed, confident and above all capable of listening. Gordon is constantly wringing his hands and unable to sit or stand still for longer than a sound bite. He made an unscheduled address to the plenary session in an attempt to damp down the outrage at his review of child benefit, but he was received without enthusiasm. There was the usual talk of not shrinking from tough choices. To be fair, he did say firmly that he was going ahead with his windfall tax on the utilities. A couple of people were allowed questions. Someone asked if we couldn’t consider some other tough choices, such as progressive taxation? There is no doubt that Gordon – and Tony (who is obviously in this up to his neck) – have blundered. All that assiduous wooing of the middle classes squandered in a single act of foolishness. At the workshop on foreign affairs I suggested we say something about our alleged commitment to amend the Treaty of Rome to have farm animals treated as sentient beings rather than agricultural products. It beats me why we never make more of this, given the strong feelings about animal welfare among the better elements of the middle classes. Precisely the vote we are anxious to attract. It also has the advantage of being morally right.
The workshop on pensions was dominated by child benefit. There was no sign of Gordon so Chris Smith had to carry the can.
Tuesday, 21 May
To the Home Office to see Lord Lloyd* who is conducting a review of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The first time I have seen him without his wig. A handsome man with a fine head of white hair, a light tan and a benign, affable demeanour. We spent the first twenty minutes discussing the Birmingham bombings case. I remarked that it was possible to be very intelligent and stupid at the same time. By way of example I cited the trial judge, Lord Bridge. To my surprise, he agreed.
We then discussed the PTA. He said I was pushing at an open door as regards applying the rules in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and exclusion orders. In any case, he said, the present arrangements won’t get past the European Court of Human Rights. Out of the blue he asked for my view of the EC. Generally positive, I said, but before we sign up to a single currency I would want to know about the likely effect on employment.
He said, ‘You are one of the most reasonable politicians I have met.’
On that note we parted.
Back at the House I got into the lift with John Patten and mentioned that I had just been with Lord Lloyd.
‘How did you find him?’
‘He seems a decent fellow; a one-nation Tory, I would guess.’
‘Judges these days are all raving lefties. They all want lesbian clerks.’
I ventured that I didn’t think it was quite like that. His eyes began to swivel. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I know.’
Maria Fyfe, also a delegate to the Policy Forum, told me that at the report back on Sunday morning there was an uprising over child benefit. The convener of the first social security workshop reported that ‘concern’ had been expressed about Gordon’s plans. Whereupon one of those who had attended intervened to say that concern was the wrong word, unanimous opposition had been expressed and he wanted it minuted. At this point people from the other two workshops shouted that they, too, were opposed. So Robin Cook, who was in the chair, formally asked for their opposition to be minuted.
No word of this has reached the outside world.
Wednesday, 22 May
I told one of the committee clerks that I was unhappy with the stand being taken by our front bench on the Criminal Investigations and Procedure Bill. We discussed the possibility of an amendment at report stage. He said that Home Office civil servants of his acquaintance were surprised that Labour went along with it. ‘They are wondering if there is any Bill that this Home Secretary could produce to which Labour will object.’
Sunday, 26 May
Sunderland
A dreadful night with the Tiny Tyrant. She awoke at three-hourly intervals before rising at 5.40 a.m. We are exhausted and bad tempered. How much longer can this go on?
Tuesday, 28 May
Baby Mullin woke at midnight, 3.54 a.m. and 6.40 a.m. Ngoc produced a book entitled Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. Chapter 6, night feeding, seems exactly to describe our problems with Emma. Beginning tonight there will be a new regime: she must be weaned off the bottle, however long the screaming lasts.
Tuesday, 4 June
This evening as I was leaving for Durham to catch the train Sarah came to the door in a bad mood. ‘Dad, Dad, come here. Mum says I have to kiss you.’
When I didn’t respond fast enough, she stamped her little foot. ‘You’re wasting my time. I’m supposed to be watching Sooty.’
Friday, 7 June
Steve Byers came in the evening. We had dinner in the garden and then went across to the Civic Centre where he addressed my general committee. I like Steve. He is immensely capable and yet entirely without self-importance. It wouldn’t surprise me to see him in the Cabinet within three years, assuming of course that we win. I had asked him to talk about the next Labour government. He was surprisingly cautious and stuck closely to the official line. ‘Until we have reduced the welfare burden, we will only be able to start spending on health and education when we begin to create wealth.’ Work, a minimum wage, devolution of power and regulation of the utilities were his priorities.
Tuesday, 11 June
Brixton Road
A man came to give the boiler its annual check-up. A former employee of British Gas, he was a victim of privatisation. He now worked for a sub-contractor. No holiday pay. No sick pay. He was paid only by the job. If no one was at home, he got nothing. I asked what training the new masters provided. None. There was still a plentiful supply of employees trained by the public sector. What would happen when they ran out? Who knows? He said that the billing people were all temps, employed only two months out of three. No job security. No pensions. No nothing. They live in fear. In fairness, he did say there had been a lot of abuses under public ownership. Take meters, for example. When he worked in the public sector he rarely installed more than five a day. Now he was expected to install up to forty. He lived in Islington, where much of the old nonsense still went on. There was a saying among the Islington workforce, he said: ‘One week’s work, six months’ sick pay.’ That’s one thing we never face up to on the left. To a large extent the public sector workers are the authors of their own misfortune. I have heard ex-shipyard workers in Sunderland say the same.
Monday, 17 June
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing we finally managed to persuade Derry Irvine to visit the Civil Liberties Group. He talked at length about incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. He said very clearly that it should be regarded as a floor, not a ceiling. He spoke up for a security service accountable to Parliament, non-lawyers appointed to the European Court, judicial authorisation for phone taps, freedom of information, a public interest defence for whistleblowers. All good liberal measures. On judicial appointments, he favours an appointments commission to advise the Lord Chancellor. He has already talked to the civil servants about this and says they are resolutely opposed. I bet they are. He said, ‘We should not miss the opportunity to alter the attitude and quality of senior judges.’
I was pleasantly surprised by Derry. Contrary to reports, he came across as lucid, radical and amiable. One can’t help wondering, however, if someone who has done so well out of the existing system is best placed to take on the legal establishment.
I asked a junior member of our Treasury team what we were proposing to say about our tax plans before the election. ‘As little as possible.’
Tuesday, 18 June
In the evening I attended a talk by a New Zealand academic, Jane Kelsey, on the collapse of the New Zealand Labour Party following their total surrender to the market. ‘The left abdicated economics to those who understood the subject – who were mainly neo-liberals.’ New Zealand has also switched to a PR system which has fragmented the vote and led to the rise of an unpleasant nationalist party. Now Labour are down to 15 per cent in the polls (from 50 per cent ten years ago). According to Dr Kelsey the rifts in the party are irreconcilable and the public no longer trusts Labour because it is indistinguishable from the National Party. The parallels with our situation are not precise. There are, however, enough similarities to ring the odd alarm bell.
Thursday, 20 June
An amusing lunch with Ray Powell, who regaled Audrey Wise and me with tales of his triumphs as the accommodation whip. His greatest was the discovery of three floors of rooms above the Speaker’s House which had not been visited since the end of the war. They were sealed at the end of Upper Corridor North, behind a door which Ray insisted be removed from its hinges. The extra space has now been converted into seventeen large offices.
Tuesday, 25 June
The Tories announced the return of the grammar school today. Blunkett responded robustly, but was continually baited about Harriet’s and Tony’s choice of schools.
Thursday, 27 June
I was drawn fifth at PM’s Questions, the third time my name has come up this month. Hezza presided since Major is in Florence. As usual I went along to the little pre-meeting in the Shadow Cabinet Room to find out what the line was. John McFall, who was number one, had an excellent question: ‘Was the PM aware that last night’s European Football Championship – which had an audience of twenty-eight million – may be the last to be shown on terrestrial TV? What guarantee could he give that the next European Championships would not be kidnapped by pay-TV – audience one million?’ To everyone’s surprise, Alastair Campbell rejected this. Instead, he said that John must go on devolution. I shook my head and Alastair said, ‘I can’t see why Chris is shaking his head. It’s obvious. If the number two in our Scottish front-bench team doesn’t go on devolution, the media will want to know why.’ In the end we deferred to Alastair’s judgement. So poor John was saddled with a referendum question and I took the one on football. Result – disaster. Hezza – who was on top form – hit John for six. I got smashed, too. Foolishly I inserted a reference to Murdoch at the last minute. ‘At least I didn’t fly halfway round the world to pay homage to Mr Murdoch …’ roared Hezza. Not a good day.
I travelled home with Steve Byers. What does he think Blair would do if we lost the election? Steve says he would go. He has heard Tony say that he only has one chance. What if we only lost by a handful and there was a prospect of another election within a year or two? Steve reckons he would still go. It’s all or nothing.
Everyone is talking about a report on the front page of the Observer suggesting that our New Labour masters are contemplating a cull of candidates to remove the – quote – disloyal and the substandard – unquote. The report is remarkably free of substance, but it hasn’t been denied. I don’t think anything will happen this side of an election. After that, who knows? Perhaps they will set up a New Labour cloning factory. The puzzling thing is, given that the back benches are increasingly expected to be seen and not heard, I would have thought they will want more substandard candidates, not less.
Paul Flynn has gone public with his dissatisfaction over the proposed referendum on devolution. I didn’t hear, but I gather he was on the Today programme this morning and went a bit over the top. Needless to say, the media are lapping it up. I had a message to call Michael Brunson at ITN and when I returned his call the woman who answered the phone shouted across the room to him, ‘Michael, are we still looking for people who are attacking the Labour Party …’
The front bench have adopted the new clause I tabled inserting a quality threshold into the Broadcasting Bill. As a result the Order Paper contained my name followed by those of Mr Tony Blair, Mr John Prescott, Mr Jack Cunningham etc. Worth framing, since I am sure it won’t happen very often. Since the territory is unfamiliar, I typed out my speech triple spaced and simply read it out, as ministers do. Although we are supposed to be legislators, we do remarkably little legislating and I am unfamiliar with the procedure. So when the time came for me to reply to the debate I remained in my seat, expecting to hear my name called. Instead the Deputy Speaker simply moved straight to the vote. Not that it mattered. We lost. Home by taxi at about 12.30 a.m.
Tuesday, 2 July
Internal security at the Palace of Westminster appears to have been privatised. Each morning the TV monitors contain a ‘Security Thought for Today’ straight out of paranoia gulch. Today’s fatuous offering is, ‘The only way to be safe is never to be secure.’
I showed around a party of about twenty A-level students. Their ignorance and indifference were terrifying. I took them to the Royal Gallery and pointed out Charles I’s death warrant and other highlights. Some couldn’t even be bothered to look. In the ‘No’ Lobby, I showed them the page from the official record on the day the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. Again, some didn’t even glance, although the teachers kept saying how fascinating it all was. When we went out on the terrace, they all with one exception refused to have their picture taken with me. I confess to feeling a little hurt, although I don’t think it was anything personal. A girl asked whether the outside of the building was cleaned every day and that was that. A teacher said that many of them were more interested in shopping. Is this the future?
In the evening, another foray into the Broadcasting Bill. This time on cross-media ownership. The Bill proposes that any national newspaper company with more than 20 per cent of the market should not be allowed to buy into television. Incredibly, Jack Cunningham and Lewis Moonie are arguing that all restrictions should be removed and the market should be allowed to rip, subject to a public interest test to be enforced either by the Monopolies Commission (which so far has proved utterly useless) or the Independent Television Commission. This appears to be a piece of opportunism devised on the spur of the moment in committee when a couple of Tories rebelled against the government. The trouble is the rebellion was defeated and we are now saddled with a policy utterly at odds with everything for which we have previously stood. I chatted to Lewis, an intelligent, easygoing fellow. He seems genuinely to believe in the new line. It has a certain logic, even if it does imply a touching faith in the ability of regulators to police some of the mightiest vested interests in the land. I put down an amendment excluding all the tabloids on the grounds that those who have given us junk journalism ought not to be allowed to give us junk TV. After a lot of agonising I decided to press it to a vote in defiance of the official line. Jack asked me – gently, it has to be said – to withdraw. I declined. The whips stood in the lobby telling everyone not to vote for it and I stood beside them urging people to vote. In the event, we attracted about seventy-five members (including half a dozen nationalists).
A chat with a Labour veteran in the Tea Room. ‘In government,’ he said, ‘backbenchers are treated like shit. Until they rebel. Then they get respect.’ Moral of story: get your rebellion in early.
Wednesday, 3 July
To a press conference at Millbank to launch my Animal Husbandry (Review) Bill, which aims to phase out factory farming. While I was there news came in that the Senior Salaries Review Body was recommending a truly outrageous £9,000 increase for members’ pay and I was asked to do interviews for the lunchtime TV news and the World at One. Later, when I returned to Millbank to record an interview on my Bill for Farming Today, I was intercepted outside on the pavement by John Sergeant and recorded another sound bite on pay which I gather was used on both the six and nine o’clock bulletins. Meanwhile, my speech on the welfare of farm animals was delivered – at the not inconvenient time of four o’clock – to an almost empty Chamber and an entirely empty press gallery. I doubt whether a single word will reach the outside world. The entire centre of gravity has shifted away from the Chamber to Millbank. I would stand a far better chance of smuggling a message to the nation if I stayed out of the Chamber altogether and hung around outside Four Millbank offering my services as a rent-a-quote.
Thursday, 4 July
Sure enough, today’s papers contain not a word about my Animal Husbandry Bill. Not even a mention on Today in Parliament. I have spoken three days running, each time on fairly weighty issues, and so far as I am aware not a word has reached the outside world. In the last couple of weeks the Independent has scrapped its parliamentary column, the last national newspaper to bother with one. Now all we are left with is sketch writers and the BBC and, as one of the clerks in the Public Bill Office remarked to me this morning, even the BBC is succumbing. Editorialising is on the increase and PM’s Questions often occupy five or six minutes on Today in Parliament while major debates pass virtually unreported.
The government has decided to recommend a rise of only 3 per cent for MPs – which will save me having to put down an amendment to that effect. People have been badgering me all day about my views on the subject, including one old-timer who sits in the Tea Room going on about his pension (as he has done for much of the last decade – when not asleep in the Library). Several people made snide references to my books, as though they represent some vast source of extra wealth (less than £750 last year). Alex Salmond told me he’d be earning £80,000 if he had stayed at the Royal Bank of Scotland (where he was the chief economist). Someone else gave me a breakdown of his mileage (he reckons he’ll lose several thousand if the mileage allowance is reduced as the Review Body have recommended). Why an earth he needs to drive everywhere I can’t imagine. This afternoon, a call from Hilary Coffman in Tony Blair’s office. She said Tony would also be urging 3 per cent and had requested that I ‘put myself about’ on the subject. I had only half an hour to spare, but I went over to Millbank and did interviews for ITN and the BBC. None of this is going to do my Shadow Cabinet vote much good, but who cares?
Monday, 8 July
I came across Andrew Mackinlay in the Tea Room, mightily exercised by the proposed cancellation of the Shadow Cabinet elections. He had just been in to see Blair and was not well received. ‘He reminded me of my headmaster, in his shirtsleeves, looking disapproving. I was scared of my headmaster, but I’m not scared of him.’
Blair’s public position is that he is relaxed about whether or not the elections go ahead, but it is quite clear that he is up to his neck in the attempt to stop them. Andrew said to him, ‘If you are relaxed, then be relaxed,’ to which Blair apparently replied, ‘If they go ahead we will lose the general election.’ If that’s what he really thinks, he has totally lost his sense of proportion.
Andrew also told Tony to stop the whips pressing everyone for nominations in this year’s leadership election in which, of course, he is the only candidate. ‘You are behaving like Enver Hoxha,’ he said. ‘Some of those who have nominated you don’t actually like you.’
Tuesday, 9 July
Gordon Brown made a rare appearance in the Tea Room. He has moved office from Millbank to the Cloisters. Word has obviously reached him that he was too remote. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I can be criticised to my face.’ Was that remark aimed at me? He has been told that he will have to vacate his office when the Queen Mum dies, since the Cloisters will be needed as an ante-chamber for the Lying in State.
Wednesday, 10 July
This evening, the long-awaited debate on pay. Mine was the only back-bench speech against. There was great deal of barracking from the Tories, but our side behaved reasonably (although I was told afterwards that there was a good deal of sotto voce heckling). It was clear from the outset that there was a big majority in favour of the full whack. When I got into the ‘Aye’ Lobby (in favour of 3 per cent) it was almost deserted apart from the Prime Minister who was chatting to Nicholas Soames. Soames was saying that his salary (as a minister of defence) was about the equivalent of his brother’s annual bonus. ‘Mind you, he works jolly hard.’ His brother, needless to say, is a banker.
Major was looking anxiously around. ‘There don’t seem to be many of us here,’ I said.
‘They’ll be along in a minute,’ he said uncertainly. Eventually, people began to dribble in.
It was an odd combination. The leaders of all three parties, a handful of left-wingers and a lot of ministers – but by no means all – most of whom were hoping to be defeated so that they could pocket the full 26 per cent and the credit for having voted the right way.
I said to Major, ‘You are in government, we aspire to government – that’s why we are in the same lobby.’
He said, ‘That’s a very cynical remark.’ What I meant was no government can afford to be seen encouraging huge public sector wage increases. Alastair Goodlad, the Tory Chief Whip, came along and I remarked, referring to the government members in the 26 per cent lobby, ‘There are going to be some kneecaps broken tomorrow.’
‘Not tomorrow,’ he replied. ‘Tonight.’
The big rises went through overwhelmingly, of course. A black day for the reputation of politics and politicians. This will be quoted back at us for years to come.
I shall give away everything over 3 per cent. That’s the only way I can retain my self-respect.
Thursday, 11 July
A visit from Nelson Mandela. You have to hand it to our ruling class. They do a wonderful line in state visits. Mandela got the full treatment. State trumpeters, Yeomen of the Guard, Gentlemen at Arms … The Lord Chancellor’s procession included species that are all but extinct – the Purse-bearer and the Fourth Clerk of the Table (Judicial). Some magnificent ruling-class specimens on display. The Honourable Corps of Gentlemen, led up the central aisle by a character straight out of central casting with a ramrod back and a hat overflowing with feathers. The Band of the Grenadier Guards playing the South African national anthem.
Wonderfully satisfying to watch all those Tories paying homage to one of ours. Even Thatcher was there, appropriately seated level with the great man’s ankles. The Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, rubbed salt, saying how proud she was to have taken part in demonstrations outside South Africa House. I overheard a few Tory wives tut-tutting about her speech, but it was spot on.
Much fallout in the media from last night’s vote on pay. I passed Tony Blair’s press spokesman, Dave Hill, in the corridor and we agreed it will discredit us far more than the Tories. He said, ‘People will say, “You are all the same – but you hold yourselves up as better.”’
The Echo has gone to town on my opposition to the pay rise. Last night they led on my promise to give away the rise and the leader page was dominated by a feature headed ‘Mullin – Voice in the Wilderness’.
The surgery lasted nearly four hours. Customers included several victims of the tightening benefit regulations and a youth who had taken a place on a training scheme only to give it up for the prospect of a permanent job. The job disappeared after two weeks and when he tried to sign on again he was told he must wait six months because he had abandoned his place on a training scheme. Also, an old lady from Plains Farm who was looking after her husband who had chronic emphysema. She had made the mistake of buying her council house and then discovered that she didn’t qualify for help with a chairlift, so the old boy was confined to the living room. They had a wheelchair, but she couldn’t get it up and down the steps so he hadn’t been out of the house for a year, except to hospital. The poor old soul was at her wits’ end and broke down in tears.
Home at 9.15 p.m. My earliest night this week.
Saturday, 13 July
To Durham for the Miners’ Gala. Sarah and I marched in with the Wearmouth band from the New Inn. Outside the prison, just as we were entering the County Cricket Ground, the bandmaster dropped dead in front of us. We told Sarah that he had fainted and she seemed to accept that. What a way to go.
Monday, 15 July
Blair has backed down over the Shadow Cabinet elections. Instead of being held in October, they are to be brought forward to next week. New Labour’s first ever defeat at the hands of the poor bloody infantry.
To Westminster to receive the Dalai Lama. It is twenty-four years this month since our first meeting in Dharamsala. We began with a well-attended press conference in the Jubilee Room, during which he remarked that he was ‘to some extent a socialist …’ Not often one hears that word used in the Palace of Westminster these days. He added, ‘… or even half Marxist’. No thunderbolt came from heaven. Hardly an eyebrow was raised. Wonderful not to have to depend on votes for a living.
After the press conference he addressed a meeting of MPs, peers and diplomats in the Grand Committee Room, which was full, but not overflowing. ‘Good to see you are on the side of the angels this time,’ Ken Baker whispered as I walked up the aisle behind HH. Jack Weatherill, a former Speaker, presided. HH spoke without notes. He talked of compassion, what he called inner disarmament and reducing hatred. His English remains as imperfect as it was when we first met. Every so often he lapses into Tibetan until an interpreter who stands just behind him supplies the missing word. Asked how we could help, he said simply, ‘Encourage the Chinese to negotiate.’ There was a Chinese diplomat in the audience so no doubt the message went home. How foolish the Chinese are not to deal with this man. He is the best they are ever going to get. What’s more he is the only Tibetan leader with the moral authority to make a compromise stick. As he said when I took him to see Robin Cook later, ‘My people follow me with a blind faith.’
In the evening I went to Jack Straw’s room for an end-of-term drink. We talked about TB’s habit of constantly rewriting key policy statements up until the last moment. Jack gave a hilarious account of the new Clause IV, with Tony in Blackpool scrabbling through his briefcase for a bit of paper containing the latest version. Drafting ‘Paths to the Future’, the latest polling document, had, said Jack, been a nightmare.
At the select committee in the evening we debated the chairman’s draft report on handguns. Apart from a bit of tinkering it proposes to do nothing about anything, despite Dunblane. I am beginning to realise the extent to which the Tories are in hock to the gun lobby. It is becoming clear that Michael Howard wants to use our report as a cover for inaction. We can’t let them get away with it. I stayed behind after the meeting and discussed with the clerks an amendment which should put some clear blue water between the Tories and ourselves.
This evening to Church House, where Tony Blair was addressing a reception for animal welfare organisations, something I first urged on him a year or more ago. When I asked our animal welfare spokesman, Elliot Morley, if the media was being invited he said, ‘Tony’s office want to keep it quiet.’ Why? Who are we afraid offending? Surely not the farmers? Most of them don’t vote for us anyway. It can’t be that it would cost too much money, because it would cost little or nothing. Having heard the speech, however, I can well see why we should want to keep quiet. It was Blair at his most bland. Halfway through he lapsed into his familiar refrain about rights and responsibilities, which seemed to be of little relevance to animal welfare. It seemed to be all about creating the illusion of concern while promising nothing.
Thursday, 18 July
It is becoming clear that although the Shadow Cabinet elections are going ahead, they are not going to be free. All those who stand a chance of unseating Harriet Harman are being leaned upon not to stand. It has been made clear that their careers will suffer if they break ranks. The whips are coming on very heavy. ‘Why don’t you show some loyalty?’ one said to Mike Gapes. Dale Campbell-Savours, who is running Ann Clwyd’s campaign, says, ‘I have heard things that would make your hair curl.’ People are being offered next week off, on condition they sign proxy forms and hand them to the whips. Ken Purchase told me that he asked the whips for the night off on Monday and was told that he needn’t come in at all next week, providing he authorises one of them to vote on his behalf. All the old corruption is resurfacing. It’s all about saving Harriet. New Labour is beginning to look remarkably like Old Labour.
Friday, 19 July
Sunderland
Called on a constituent whose wife was burned alive by a gas leak on New Year’s Day. The leak came from 100-year-old pipes under the pavement outside. She went into the kitchen, switched on the oven and was turned into a fireball in front of her family. The poor woman lived for three days after the accident. The children are traumatised, the house was destroyed. The family were left with only the clothes they stood up in. They didn’t even have clothes for the funeral. Friends and neighbours rallied round, but not a word was heard from British Gas until, unbelievably, they received a bill for gas – in the wife’s name. No sooner had that been sorted out than another came. The inquest was this week and apparently, even after seven months, the Transco engineer was remarkably ill-informed about the causes of the leak and what had been done to prevent a repetition. If I don’t get satisfaction, I shall organise a debate.
Monday, 22 July
Everyone is talking about the Shadow Cabinet elections. Irene Adams, who on Thursday was insisting that she would stand regardless, has suddenly withdrawn. What’s more, she is nowhere to be seen. One can only guess at what persuaded her not to run.
This evening, sitting in a nearly empty Tea Room, I saw a mouse. It didn’t seem at all shy and ran around happily in the middle of the floor for several minutes.
I came across Michael Foot sitting on a bench by St Stephen’s entrance and spent a while chatting to him. Frail, unshaven, skeletal, long snow-white hair and wearing a pair of dirty old trainers. A lovely old gent. He remarked on my stand on members’ pay. ‘If the party had followed your lead, the whole country would have cheered.’
Wednesday, 24 July
At the party meeting, a debate about child benefit, on a motion from Jeremy Corbyn. At the end the vote was four to one in favour of Gordon’s review. What a supine lot we are. In the current climate, if the regime suggested bombing Vietnam, the parliamentary party would probably vote for it.
At the select committee this afternoon we finalised our report on guns. We divided along party lines. My amendment, calling for a ban on handguns, an end to shotgun licences in urban areas and for airguns to be brought within the licensing system, was lost 6–5. It will, however, stop Howard using the select committee report as an excuse for doing nothing.
The Shadow Cabinet election results are a triumph for the regime. Everyone re-elected by a record margin. Jack Cunningham has taken the vacancy created by Joan Lestor’s departure. More than fifty votes separate Harriet from Ann Clwyd, the runner-up. I collected sixty-six, my usual quota. We deserve everything we get from now on.
Thursday, 25 July
First day of the recess. John Prescott was on the Today programme denying that any pressure had been applied on the Shadow Cabinet elections.
Later, we heard that Harriet has been swapped with Chris Smith, presumably because she can be relied upon not to offer the slightest resistance to Gordon’s plans over child benefit. Clare Short has been moved from Transport to Overseas Development, thereby maintaining the tradition of having a different Overseas Development spokesman every year.
Monday, 29 July
The regime is after Ken Livingstone for claiming that the Shadow Cabinet elections were rigged. He’s right, of course, but unfortunately he chose to unburden himself to readers of the Mail on Sunday. Irene Adams has been wheeled out to deny that she was leaned upon to stand down. Everywhere the sound of cocks crowing. If Ken is to be deselected, a show trial will have to be organised. Witnesses will have to be intimidated. Perjury will have to be concocted. I foresee months of warfare ahead. The Tories must be relishing the prospect. Is Blair really as insecure and petty as Kinnock, after all?
Friday, 2 August
Rang the Fees Office to find out how much I must transfer to my donations account in order to dispose of the recent salary increase. The answer – £371 a month, after tax.
Friday, 9 August
Chillingham
Jorgen* and I rose early and walked up Ros Hill, from where, it is alleged, five castles can be seen. We managed to spot only four – Dunstanburgh, Banburgh, Lindisfarne and Chillingham. Jorgen recounted the wonderful story of his uncle who telephoned Stalin. The uncle was a communist student in Copenhagen in the 1930s. One evening he and a group of friends were heatedly disagreeing over some fine point of ideology when someone had a bright idea. ‘Why don’t we ask Stalin?’ So they telephoned the Kremlin and asked in a confident tone to be put through to Stalin. The Kremlin switchboard operator, no doubt too terrified to argue, put them straight through. Whereupon, speaking slowly in German, which apparently Stalin understood, the youth explained that he was one of a group of Danish students and they wanted the Great Leader and Wise Teacher to resolve an argument. There was a silence followed by laughter as Stalin realised what had happened. Then, ‘Sie konnen sagen sie haben Stalin lacheln gehort.’ (‘You can say that you have heard Stalin laugh.’) After which the line went dead. History does not record the fate of the operator who put through the call.
Tuesday, 13 August
Our much-leaked handguns report is published today. The Tories have dug themselves into a great big pit. No doubt Ivan Lawrence thought he was doing Howard a favour by concluding that nothing could be done about anything only to find that the Home Office is rapidly back-pedalling, leaving Ivan and friends gently swinging in the wind.
The day began at 6.30 a.m. with a trip to Broadcasting House for the Today programme and ended with Newsnight at Television Centre. During the morning I spent an hour touring the studios at Millbank and then to New Labour’s Media Centre for a press conference, chaired by Prescott. I haven’t had so much attention since the Birmingham Six were released. In the afternoon I did the Jimmy Young Show, a clutch of local radio interviews and wrote an op-ed piece for the Guardian which I faxed over at about six.
Earlier this evening, a call from a slightly embarrassed Jon Hibbs, the Telegraph’s lobby correspondent. His masters, he said, were drafting a leader on the handgun report which, needless to say, will be sympathetic to the gun lobby and were looking for some way of discrediting me. They wanted to know my view on IRA decommissioning. I replied, ‘Tell the bastards to do their worst.’
The papers are full of the handgun report. The Telegraph seems to have had second thoughts about an IRA smear. There are several articles by Dunblane relatives. For the second time the Sun has printed pictures and telephone numbers of the six Tories on the committee. Being monstered by the Sun is a new experience for the Tories. They must be cursing Ivan for getting them into this.
Friday, 30 August
Customers at the surgery in the evening included two women complaining about a neighbour who, they said, was threatening to burn them out. Also, a man who had been awarded £1,900 in a routine industrial injury claim. The Unemployed Centre would have handled his claim for a flat fee of £100. However, he had made the mistake of going through a lawyer who had taken him for just about all of it. He showed me the solicitor’s statement. It said ‘We have pleasure in enclosing £22 …’ and then, adding insult to injury, ‘… please note this is subject to tax.’ I shall threaten this thieving lawyer with publicity unless he drastically reduces his fee.
Friday, 6 September
The vice chairman of Chelsea Football Club, Matthew Harding, has donated £1 million to New Labour. We are starting to attract exactly the sort of people who went for Thatcher in the early eighties. I fear it will end badly.
Friday, 13 September
To Pennywell for a chat with Dave Wilkinson, the embattled headmaster of the local comprehensive. He has taught in inner-city schools all his life. Previous postings include Moss Side and Chapeltown, but this is by far his toughest assignment. As ever he is upbeat, but this time I detect a certain weariness. Although he would never concede it, I suspect that for the first time that he is beginning to wonder whether or not he is fighting a losing battle. Sixty-three per cent of his 1,000 pupils are on the special needs register. Just over half on free school meals. Under 10 per cent leave with five A to C grades at GCSE. There is chronic truancy. He recently wrote to every parent whose child had been absent for one day or more in four consecutive weeks – nearly 400 letters. Beyond the school gates mayhem reigns. Two or three times a week he has to confront intruders. The day after the London headmaster Philip Lawrence was murdered Dave was threatened by a knife-wielding youth who actually referred to the previous day’s killing. In June he arrived for work – at the usual time, 7 a.m. – to find the school sealed off by armed police. They were raiding the home of one his pupils for guns and drugs – both were found.
Yet in the midst of chaos there are triumphs. Only yesterday an ex-pupil called in to tell him she had just graduated from the University of Sunderland with a 2.1 in psychology. Several of his school’s kids have even made it to university at Durham. Morale among his teachers is, he says, good. Staff turnover is low. Everything is clean and in order. A haven of tranquillity in the midst of a disintegrating social fabric. Every year the ratchet turns a little tighter. Two years ago the school employed the services of two social workers to follow up truants. Since then the problem has got worse, but now there is only one – budget cuts. In the outside world the climate grows increasingly hostile. ‘If you’ve got committed staff, it hurts to be constantly battered by league tables, OFSTED, Woodhead and co. …’ The school has just been ‘OFSTEDed’. The inspectors came from Buckinghamshire, another planet. The lay inspector, a former university professor, fell asleep during a meeting with staff. To be fair, however, the report was good. And so it damn well should be. Dave Wilkinson and his team are heroes. Like so many others around here, he clings on desperately, praying for a change of government, hoping it will make a difference, but at the back of his mind suspecting it might not.
This afternoon my annual visit to Vaux Brewery. The managing director, Frank Nicholson, a thoroughly decent one-nation Tory with a real interest in the welfare of his workforce, recounted an exchange with a friend who said, ‘I’ve sold my shares in your company.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my stockbroker told me that you care more about your employees than you do about your shareholders.’
Saturday, 14 September
Steve Byers has triggered a row at the Trades Union Congress where he dined with four journalists who afterwards reported that, after the election, New Labour is planning to ‘dump’ the unions. I am sure he didn’t use that word, but I am equally sure that Blair plans to use state funding as a way of breaking loose. And why not? Only about a third of the workforce are union members and of those only a little over half even vote for us. I could live with a new relationship. What worries me, however, is that our masters are spending a lot of time sucking up to big business. What is the point of exchanging dependence on one mighty vested interest for dependence on another?
Sunday, 15 September
Kim Howells has written a piece in the Sunday Times saying Labour should dump ‘socialism’. Coming hard on the heels of the Byers row at the TUC, we need this like a hole in the head. His timing is impeccable – just as people are beginning to realise that the market doesn’t offer the solution to all our problems.
Monday, 16 September
This evening to St Chad’s branch. By no means full of left-wingers, but people were angry about Byers and Howells. Someone asked angrily whether the discipline that our leaders keep demanding from the members applied to the leaders? Also, a feeling that the leaders view the party as a troublesome pressure group that hinders their pursuit of power. Rightly or wrongly, the impression we are giving is that we don’t believe in anything.
To the Civic Centre to meet with the senior officers group. I addressed the big picture. So far as I am able to judge my talk went down fairly well. The one thing everyone agrees about is that the principal threat to the social fabric comes from young, unskilled males who, with the collapse of the shipyards and the mines, are useless either as fathers or providers. Twenty years ago they would have gone into apprenticeships, started mixing with adults and moderated their behaviour accordingly. Now they just wander the streets causing mayhem. To be fair to New Labour, this is a point that has been firmly grasped. Whether we can raise the means to make a difference is another matter. The genie is out of the bottle. Putting it back is going to be difficult. To start with, of course, it means spending some public money and the middle classes simply may not stand for that. Maybe we just have to write off a generation – Thatcher’s generation – many of whom wouldn’t be capable of work if it became available tomorrow. Instead we must concentrate on making sure that the next generation don’t disappear down the same plughole. The alternative is a steady slide into chaos and endless baying for greater and greater retribution, which won’t make the slightest difference.
Afterwards, the chief executive, Colin Sinclair said he was opposed to regional government. If there was a referendum, he thought we would lose. ‘No one is going to vote for an extra tier of government.’ What we had to do was restore democratic control over the Development Agency and other quangos. We might even like to think about giving local authorities control over the purchasing of health care. Finally, he said, local authorities weren’t looking to a Labour government to write out big cheques. Just for an end to the relentless downward pressure on services and the removal of the first C from Compulsory Competitive Tendering.
Sunday, 22 September
To Bishopwearmouth cemetery, where I have never been before. We came across the tomb of John Doxford ‘of St Bede’s Terrace’ and his wife Mary, who died in 1899 and 1912 respectively. The original occupants of my house.
Tuesday, 1 October
Labour Party Conference, Blackpool
The big news today is that Neil Hamilton has abandoned his libel action, with the result that the Guardian has declared open season. Today’s front page is dominated by a large picture of Hamilton, under the heading, ‘A Liar and a Cheat’.
I had intended to watch The Speech from my hotel room to avoid the embarrassment of being ambushed by television cameras demanding instant reaction. However, I fell in with Bruce Grocott and Bryan Davies on their way in and sat with them. Some bright spark has cut the seating for MPs and candidates by two-thirds so we queued for half an hour (in front of a sign which said ‘Labour will reduce waiting lists’) and only just found seats. The Speech was preceded by a five-minute film so vulgar as to make Kinnock’s Sheffield extravaganza seem tasteful. Neil and Glenys, sitting one row in front, looked uneasy. The Speech, for the first fifty minutes or so, was good, addressed entirely to the nation rather than to the party and including substantial commitments. The last ten minutes, however, was truly awful – Sheffield going on Nuremberg. A Union Jack was projected onto the backdrop. The Man then delivered himself of a series of carefully worded ‘vows’, hostages to fortune some of which are bound to feature in Tory Party broadcasts a few years hence (‘Read my lips’). There was then a good deal of meaningless claptrap about Labour ‘coming home’. Cherie, who had been sitting in the audience with Tony’s father (a former chairman of the Durham Conservative Association), rushed up to the platform and planted an awkward kiss on The Man’s cheek. There was then a standing ovation, during which the royal couple went walkabout. The ovation went on far too long and reeked of triumphalism. And sure enough, as soon as it was over I was caught by not one, but two camera crews. Of course, I said it was wonderful. Anything less effusive would have been deemed treachery. Next year I shall watch on TV.
Bruce Grocott, incidentally, asked whether I had received a call from Tony at the time of the last reshuffle. I didn’t, as it happens, but he said they had talked of giving me Overseas Development. Grateful though I am for the thought, what I am really after is the chairmanship of the Home Affairs Committee. My fear is that some disappointed office-holder or privy councillor at a loose end will, at the last moment, be parachuted in over my head.
In the evening I addressed a fringe meeting organised by the Law Society. Afterwards I was approached by a lawyer who had once been Clerk to the Justices in Portsmouth. He had also worked in the clerks department at Birmingham magistrates court when the Birmingham Six came up on remand. He told me three interesting things: (1) Within weeks of the bombing rumours were circulating among local lawyers that the police had caught the wrong people. (2) Lord Lane had told him twice, once before and once after the convictions were quashed, that they were guilty. (3) When he worked in Portsmouth in 1979, it was discovered that thirty-five of the ninety-six magistrates were Masons. This was considered to be unhealthy and the local Masonic hierarchy was persuaded to agree a five-year moratorium on the appointment of Masons. Despite this, however, more magistrates were Masons by the end than at the beginning – the brotherhood had simply waited until they were recruited before signing them up.
Phil Kelly told me he overheard a delegate chatting up a policeman outside the Imperial. The policeman said, ‘Sorry, sir, we are not allowed to talk about politics.’
To which the delegate replied, ‘Neither are we.’
Wednesday, 2 October
Another BBC reception. Another talk with Bob Phillis. He remarked, apropos of Neil Hamilton, that only once in his career had someone attempted to bribe him – and that was a former Labour MP. Robert Maxwell, of course. At the time Phillis was managing director of ITN Publications and Maxwell had just bought a printing company. Bob was summoned to Maxwell’s suite at Claridge’s. The dialogue was as follows:
‘Twenty-five – do you want it in used notes or American Express?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’ve bought the printing company …’
‘… and I need your contract. We both know how the world works, so how do you want it, cash or American Express?’
On the way into the Mirror reception I passed Steve Richards who used to work for the BBC and is now political correspondent at the New Statesman. He said he is constantly harassed by our spin doctors. ‘If I write something they don’t like, I get a call within an hour or two of publication – from Alastair Campbell or Peter Mandelson. “You don’t understand …,” they say. It’s very effective, I’m afraid. After a while you ask yourself how they will react every time you type a paragraph.’
David Montgomery approached me at the Mirror reception and asked if I had seen Polly Toynbee’s piece about Murdoch. He said if something isn’t done about him soon, it will all be over. He added that he had lunched with Tony Blair today and told him so.
Saturday, 12 October
The surgery at Ryhope in the evening lasted three hours. Customers included a man whose wife kicked him out when she opened a letter from the Child Support Agency and learned that he was supporting a child he had fathered with another woman long before he was married. He is now living with his mother and supporting two families. Another life wrecked by the CSA. He was remarkably lacking in bitterness.
Also two security men from the port. They earn £3.87 an hour plus a small shift allowance and have just been told they are to be sacked and the work put out to tender. It has been hinted that, if they were to put in an in-house tender at about £2.60 an hour, they might get their jobs back.
Tuesday, 15 October
Lunch in the Tea Room with Gwyneth Dunwoody, who is very hostile to New Labour. ‘It’s about time they realised that a 3 per cent swing is only a 3 per cent swing if you can count upon the other 35 per cent. I spoke at three meetings last week and everyone is saying the same thing – what’s happening to the party? I find myself saying, “I disagree with this, with that …” I’m surprised someone doesn’t stick up their hand and say, “Mrs Dunwoody, are you sure you’re a Labour candidate?” I hope I’m chucked out a couple of months after the election so that I can sit as Independent Labour.’
Ray Fitzwalter came in for dinner. Afterwards, as we took coffee in the Pugin Room, he remarked, ‘The one thing that even Thatcher must regret is that the profit motive has eclipsed the public service ethic.’ I doubt whether Thatcher regrets it, or has even noticed its disappearance.
Wednesday, 16 October
Lord Cullen’s report on Dunblane was published this afternoon. Michael Howard made a statement saying he will ban most – but by no means all – handguns and weapons storage at home. He managed to make it sound as if this had been his intention all along, but actually it amounts to a total climbdown. He originally intended to do as little as he could get away with. That’s why Ivan Lawrence was put up to write his ridiculous report. He was well and truly set up. Basically Howard has accepted the main plank of our minority report. At this afternoon’s meeting of the select committee Ivan opened by offering his ‘grudging congratulations’. John Greenway did a passable impression of the Vicar of Bray, declaring that he would have no difficulty voting for the new measures. I bet he won’t. What fun it will be seeing all those Tories trooping grimly through the ‘Ban Handguns’ lobby. Jill Knight was upset about the monstering she and her Tory colleagues had received from the Sun for opposing action on handguns. As a result she had been deluged with hate mail and even death threats against her grandchildren. Ivan said he had been sent excreta. They wanted our support for a complaint to the Press Commission. We sympathised and agreed to go along with it (a fat lot of good that it will do). The truth is, of course, that most Tories aren’t used to being on the receiving end of the sort of hate campaign that is usually reserved for the Arthur Scargills and Peter Tatchells of this world.
The start of the committee’s prisons inquiry. We began with a visit to HMP Doncaster, a purpose-built private prison. As prisons go the regime seemed fairly relaxed. The wings were light and airy, about one-third of the staff were women. With the exception of the top grades all staff have been recruited locally from outside the Prison Service and are paid considerably less. We were allowed to mingle freely with prisoners, most of whom had experience of many different prisons and seemed to think that this was the best – Hull, by common consent, being the worst. Then we drove to Full Sutton at which, although only nine years old, the climate was depressingly institutional. Security is obsessive. We had to take off our shoes and empty our pockets before being body searched. They told us with great pride that Ann Widdecombe had received the same treatment when she visited. We went on one of the maximum security wings housing serious criminals. Big surly men with shaved heads, covered in tattoos. You could feel the suppressed violence as they squeezed past in the narrow corridor. There was no natural light. The cells were untidy and the air stale. We were told that the food budget averages out at £1.37 per head per day. It is hard to believe that much good can come of warehousing human beings like this.
By evening we were in Manchester. We are staying at the Palace Hotel, a magnificent conversion from the old Refuge Insurance building. Ivan Lawrence, a talented pianist, played the grand piano in the dining room after dinner – until a leg fell off and we all slunk upstairs to bed.
Friday, 25 October
To HMP Manchester, formerly Strangeways. A lot of money has been spent since the riot and the atmosphere on the wings seemed far less oppressive than at Full Sutton. The management contract was put out to tender and the in-house bid won. The trouble is, the Home Office keep rewriting the contract. First, they want year-on-year cost reductions. Then they demand that Manchester take more prisoners than it is contracted for within more or less the same budget. At the end of the visit we were addressed for five minutes by the chairman of the Prison Officers Association, a real chip off the old block. His theme was ‘we know best how to run a prison’, everything would be okay if the government stopped interfering. He did score one bull’s eye. Ivan asked about morale among his members and he replied, ‘It fell sharply when we were awarded 3 per cent and you got 26 per cent.’ When John Greenway and Walter Sweeney attempted to shake hands he demanded to know which party they were from. ‘What does it matter?’ asked Greenway. ‘It does to me,’ he said.
Finally, to Buckley Hall at Rochdale, a Category C prison run by Group 4 Security. The local MP, Liz Lynne, has been complaining long and loud about it, but with the exception of a couple of incidents early on I could see no real basis for her complaints. A third of the staff were women. Senior staff were recruited from the Prison Service and the officers were all from outside the service. There were unions, but not the Prison Officers Association. We asked the governor what the main difference was between his establishment and those in the state sector. He replied, ‘The absence of cynicism among staff.’ The regime seemed as good as anything we had encountered elsewhere. There was a good library. Most prisoners were gainfully employed during the day. Group 4 were naturally keen to impress, since there is big money to be made out of prisons. Every private prison has a Home Office controller. The one at Buckley Hall was a woman in her fifties. She is responsible for adjudicating disciplinary charges and contract compliance. There is an obvious danger that controllers can go native. Indeed, she told me that the controller at Doncaster had left the Prison Service and signed up with the company running the prison.
The purpose of this inquiry, from Ivan’s point of view, is to produce a report in favour of privatising. Obviously, we have to avoid being taken for a ride, but we are going to have to accept that the private sector has something to offer. Old Labour’s big weakness was to become obsessed with ideologically correct mechanisms of delivering public service. We have to start judging by results.
To Gateshead Civic Centre, in the company of half a dozen colleagues for a meeting with officers of the Tyne and Wear Pensioners Association. I was taken aback by how angry they were. They really tore into us. ‘You have absolutely nothing to offer us. I’ve been a party member all my life, but I’m going to have difficulty giving people a reason to vote Labour. It’s nearly five years since the election and we still don’t know what party policy is.’ Dave Clelland did his best to put the party line: our first priority will be to help the poorest pensioners. This didn’t go down at all well. What they want, of course, is a promise of an across-the-board increase. A woman who owned her own home said she had worked and saved all her life and she didn’t want the feckless to be brought up to her level. In vain did we seek to persuade them that, if we committed ourselves to spending billions – and putting up the basic rate of tax accordingly – on an across-the-board pensions increase, we risked losing the election. They came out with the usual nonsense about how there were eleven million pensioners and we couldn’t afford to ignore them. I pointed out that more pensioners vote Conservative than any other sector of the population and that recent history showed that the more we promised poor pensioners the more the prosperous voted against us. That upset them even more.
Wednesday, 30 October
At the select committee in the afternoon we spent the first hour arguing about dangerous dogs followed by two hours of evidence on prisons. The governors were sensible and undogmatic but, true to form, the representatives of the Prison Officers Association dug themselves into a big pit. Ivan asked if anything had improved. They couldn’t think of a single example. No mention of the abolition of slopping out or the end of three to a cell. No mention of the incentive scheme for good behaviour, which everyone we met last week said had been a success. Just total doom and gloom. Whereupon Ivan put it to them that, given that the private sector was almost universally positive in its outlook and the public sector almost universally negative, why should the government opt for those whose outlook was wholly negative? There was no answer to that. At least none that was credible.
Friday, 1 November
On the train from Newcastle to Sunderland I ran into Ashok Kumar. His is one of the seats we must win to form a government, but he didn’t seem optimistic. He said, ‘The voters like Tony more than they like the party. We must stay above 45 per cent to win Langbaurgh.’ We won’t, of course.* I felt sorry for him.
Sunday, 3 November
The Tiny Tyrant rose at 4.30 a.m.
I took Sarah out for spin on her new roller skates (a birthday present from Ngoc and me). While she was practising in The Oaks I got chatting to an old boy sweeping leaves from his garden. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he said, wiping his brow. ‘Well,’ I said, thinking he was about seventy-five, ‘you look in pretty good shape.’
To which he replied, ‘Not bad, I suppose, for ninety-three.’
Tuesday, 5 November
With the other members of the Northern Group, a meeting with Tony Blair in the Shadow Cabinet Room. It opened with a brief presentation from Greg Cook, the party’s pollster. The gist was that, although we did well out of the conference season, the Don’t Knows were beginning to drift back to the Tories. Major was scoring well ahead of his party and people seemed more optimistic about the economy. We still score well with the under-thirty-fives, but they were less likely to vote than pensioners, where Tory support is strongest. Tony said there was no point in denying that the economy was in better shape than two years ago. We must emphasise fundamental weaknesses. Unemployment, the crumbling social fabric. He said the Tories were planning to spend £7 million on a big negative advertising campaign in January in the hope of frightening the electorate. Their problem was, however, that fear of a fifth Tory government was greater than fear of us. Let’s hope he’s right.
Half a dozen of us chipped in. Dave Clelland, Bill Etherington and I reported on our meeting with the pensioners last week and said we must have something to offer them. Tony acknowledged the problem but said we could not make big spending promises. ‘I am sure that our tax and spending line is right. I remember so clearly in ’87 and ’92 that what started out as cherished commitments suddenly became liabilities.’
Thursday, 7 November
Bill Clinton has been re-elected by a landslide and there are rumours that one of his spin doctors is coming over to advise New Labour.
Tuesday, 12 November
Terry Davis has asked me to join our delegation to the Council of Europe. ‘I don’t think you’ve got much chance of becoming a minister under New Labour,’ was how he put it. I mentioned my real ambition and he replied, ‘I don’t think New Labour is going to want Chris Mullin as chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee.’ I said that I had been doing the job for our side for the last four years. He said, ‘That won’t cut much ice.’ There is no way I am going to join the Council of Europe. All those pointless meetings. All that hanging about at airports. After a decent interval I shall drop Terry a polite note declining.
Saturday, 16 November
Tribune contains an article under the nom de plume Cassandra saying the parliamentary party is deeply disillusioned with the Blair regime and predicting that he will be replaced by Robin Cook, soon after he wins the election. Not a very credible thesis. If we couldn’t bring ourselves to remove obvious losers like Foot or Kinnock, it is not very likely that we would sack a leader who had put us back in government for the first time in nearly twenty years. The article is said to be the work of a senior Labour MP with front-bench experience and, they might have added, poor judgement.
Monday, 18 November
Yesterday’s Sunday Times reported that a clutch of millionaire businessmen were funding Blair’s office through a blind trust. Apparently it’s all right, providing he doesn’t know where the money is coming from. As far as I’m concerned it stinks. How on earth are we going to put clear water between us and the Tories when our arrangements are so similar?
Sandra Sheal, whose husband is serving life for a part he is alleged to have played in a particularly nasty murder in a Belfast club, came to see me. He was convicted almost entirely on the basis of a statement extracted at Castlereagh during three days of unrecorded interviews. Same old story. No solicitor. No tape recorder and, of course, no jury. Incredible, in the light of all that has happened, that the courts in Northern Ireland are still sending people away for life on this basis. There is an appeal pending. I advised her to get as many distinguished observers as possible, to let the judges know they are being watched.
Tuesday, 19 November
Brixton Road
I was number four at PM’s Questions (what a run of luck I have had this year). I asked if it were still Major’s position that there was a moral case for reducing taxation. If so, what was the moral basis for cutting taxes before an election and putting them up as soon as it was over? It seemed to go down well on our side. Lots of people, including Peter Mandelson, patted me on the back. I should have asked about the Rwandan refugee crisis in Zaire really but no one would have been interested.
Rang Ngoc. She says the Tiny Tyrant rose at 4.30 this morning.
Wednesday, 20 November
The Tory Lie Machine swung into full gear this morning with an outrageous claim that Labour’s spending programme will cost £30 billion. Hilarious really, considering that the complaint from most people is that we are promising little or nothing. Public opinion is obviously being softened up for a big poster campaign in the new year alleging that a Labour government will cost the average family £1,000, £2,000, £3,000 – you name it – in extra taxes. A straight repeat of the line that worked so well for them last time round. Will it work twice? Even if no one believes the figures, enough mud may stick. What a depressing business politics is becoming. Just an exchange of slogans dreamed up by rival advertising agencies.
Thursday, 21 November
We debated air weapons and shotguns in the committee on the Firearms Bill this morning. Doug Henderson moved amendments which would have brought airguns within the licensing system and increased the age – presently fourteen – at which children could use them unsupervised. The Tories were having none of it. They couldn’t have been less interested. Mostly they chatted among themselves as our side listed examples of the mayhem caused by out-of-control youths with air weapons. I overheard one Tory regaling his neighbour with an account of his boyhood activities with an airgun. They are determined to do as little as they can get away with and they are seriously out of touch. At last, an issue on which there is clear blue water between us.
Monday, 25 November
I joined Ivan Lawrence in the Pugin Room, where he was entertaining two MPs from Ukraine who wanted to talk about party funding. He went on at length about how our system, while not perfect, had worked well. I let him go on for a while and said, ‘There are two aspects of our system which you won’t want to copy. One, an upper house based mainly on the hereditary principle. Two, a system of funding elections under which no one knows from where the ruling party gets its money.’ With that, I departed.
I spent the rest of the evening watching Alan Bennett’s, The Madness of King George on Channel Four. Talking of madness, on my way out through the Members’ Lobby I noticed what appeared to be a bundle of bags and blankets lying across the entrance to the Chamber. On closer inspection the bundle turned out to contain Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman. She was sleeping, like a dosser in a shop doorway, with her head resting on a mat in the doorkeeper’s box. At first, I thought there was something wrong and went back to the policemen in the Central Lobby. ‘She’s all right, sir,’ one of them, said. ‘She just wants her usual seat for the Budget.’
‘Her last Budget, you see?’ said the other – as though that explained everything. Actually, I don’t see. Not at all.
Tuesday, 26 November
Arrived at the House at 7.45 a.m. By now there was a queue of Tory MPs, headed by Kellett-Bowman, stretching all the way across the Members’ Lobby. Some must have been waiting for hours. Also, several Labour members – Canavan, Skinner, Lewis – but they had just arrived, or so Dennis assured me. A funny place, this.
At 8.15 a.m., with half a dozen others, I boarded a coach at the members’ entrance and set off for BBC Television Centre. Here John Birt and his senior managers – of whom there were many – briefed us. The BBC, far from sticking to what it is good at, has ambitious plans to expand into commercial activity and use the proceeds to subsidise the core business. ‘We intend to be a pioneer of the digital age,’ was how Birt put it. Murdoch and the licence fee were their chief concerns. ‘We are not indulging in hyperbole,’ he said. ‘We believe we are at a critical moment.’ Murdoch had taken extraordinary risks with an untried technology and he had won. He had tied up rights on soccer and movies for years to come. He had a subscription base of four to five million. It was not worth anyone else’s while to invest in a set-top box because no one else had the ‘drivers’ – soccer and movies rights – to make it saleable. Therefore, everyone was going to have to use his system and it was vital that it be properly regulated, particularly the electronic programme guide. Otherwise, how will the consumer find other services in a world where the dominant player controls access? Birt added, ‘Every member of the government now regrets that Murdoch was allowed to get into this position.’
The Budget in the afternoon was an anticlimax since most of it has been leaked. The usual pre-election strategy: a penny off income tax introduced with much fanfare. Then, tomorrow, John Gummer will claw it all back with a local authority settlement that obliges big increases in council tax – which can be blamed on us since we control most of local government. Ken Clarke was on good form for the first hour or so, but suddenly started to flag, just at the point where he should have been building to a climax. Blair responded brilliantly. Not only had he managed to master the details, he managed to combine humour with genuine passion. I don’t regret having voted for him, despite all the tribulations he has put us through.
Elaine Kellett-Bowman, having queued all night for her seat, dozed for the first half of the Chancellor’s speech in full view of the cameras. Foolish woman.
Wednesday, 27 November
To HMP Holloway with the select committee and a BBC television crew. We split into two groups. Ivan, who tends to dominate the proceedings, and John Greenway went one way and the rest of us went the other. Unfortunately the TV crew followed us so it was difficult to strike up much of a dialogue with inmates. I did talk to a woman in the mother-and-baby unit. They are allowed to keep their babies for the first nine months and after that they must part. About a third of the women are of non-European origin and about one-fifth foreign nationals, mostly drug ‘mules’ who will be deported on release. We traipsed around the wings with the camera crew in tow. There were single and double cells and even four-bed ‘dormitories’. Every inmate had a noticeboard by her bed with pictures of children, sometimes – but not often – a picture of a male. Some of the noticeboards were bare. I guess some people have nothing to look forward to outside. There were workshops where women sorted and repaired clothes for charity and some sort of commercial temping service. The woman in charge was reluctant to say what they were paid.
The governor was a clean-cut, liberal man who, like most of the movers and shakers I meet nowadays, is several years younger than me. He has been there less than a year and seems to have turned the place round since the Chief Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham, staged his walkout in protest against conditions at the end of last year.
In the afternoon we took evidence from Ramsbotham and a former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir Stephen Tumim. Both good witnesses. Humane, decent, the very best sort of upper-class English gents. Ivan whispered to me that he had a struggle to get Tumim his knighthood because certain people in high places – he didn’t say who, but it’s not hard to guess – didn’t like him.
To Central Hall for a meeting organised by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom about digital TV. I shared a platform with Polly Toynbee, who has done her best to alert the world to the Murdoch threat with a hard-hitting series of articles in the Independent. She has certainly upset our front bench, accusing them of lacking guts and failing to oppose. The truth is, of course, that neither of the main parties dare take on Murdoch for fear of having his newspapers unleashed against them. No point in going on about it, it’s just an inescapable fact of political life.
Thursday, 28 November
Tony Blair spent PM’s Questions trying to extract an admission from Major that taxes have increased. Tax, tax, tax, that’s all we seem to talk about these days. The trouble is no one believes a word we say on the subject either.
With Ann Clwyd, Tony Benn and several others I walked up Victoria to support a demonstration outside the Department of Trade and Industry against the sale of arms to Indonesia. We were preceded by a couple of Buddhist monks banging a drum. En route Tony was nobbled by an attractive young woman in a denim skirt and a jacket trimmed with artificial fur who engaged him in animated conversation all the way up Victoria. Later, after Tony and Ann had addressed the gathering, the same woman stepped forward and read out, with all the zeal of a recent convert, a three-page statement on the wickedness of the capitalist system. People applauded politely. I assumed she was a stray Trot, but she turned out to be the Marchioness of Worcester. Her name is Tracy. Not every day you come across a marchioness, let alone one called Tracy.
Mr Wang, a First Secretary at the Chinese embassy, came to the Tibet Group in the evening. He had with him two colleagues. One a fat commissar, the other a pale intellectual. Mr Wang was smug and self-assured. He wore a smart suit and cufflinks. He could have been a Hong Kong businessman. What a change from the days of Mao suits and slogans. He began by reading a prepared statement, coherent but contentious. It might have been drafted by Peter Mandelson. Then he answered our questions. No, they did not have political prisoners in Tibet, or anywhere else in China for that matter. They had only criminals, just like Britain. Yes, China was willing to negotiate with the Dalai Lama on condition that he gave up his demand for independence. When we pointed out that he already had, he said that you had to judge by actions rather than words. Tibetan exiles in Delhi were still staging demonstrations calling for independence. The Dalai Lama still maintained his own ‘government’. Mr Wang made only one concession. The Cultural Revolution, he said, had been ‘a nightmare – not only for Tibetans, but for all of us’. I asked if any of them had been to Tibet. Needless to say, none had.
At the party meeting this morning we debated the new code of conduct. There were two controversies. The first was over whether we should be obliged to adhere to the ‘policy’ of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn moved that we delete the word ‘parliamentary’ on the grounds that the PLP wasn’t entitled to a separate existence. Dennis Skinner made a funny speech saying that an announcement on the Today programme didn’t amount to party policy. It was only if it was repeated on the lunchtime and evening news and, finally, on Newsnight, that it could be considered official. Jeremy’s amendment was voted down by a margin of about four to one.
The main debate was about clause 1(d), which creates a new offence of ‘bringing the party into disrepute’. Incredibly, no one had tabled the obvious amendment, ‘delete 1(d)’, so the dispute was about whether the code should be accepted or rejected as a whole. Tony Benn reminded everyone that some of our most distinguished members – Stafford Cripps, Nye Bevan and Michael Foot – had the whip withdrawn for allegedly bringing the party into disrepute. If we went down that road again we would turn in on ourselves and provide our enemies with a field day. He should have stopped there, but instead he went on to tell one of his old jokes about Denis Healey being a tax-and-spend Chancellor and lost the attention of the meeting. Attention span in the parliamentary party is notoriously short at the best of times. Most of those present were payroll or prospective payroll. They just wanted to get the vote over and leave. Whenever someone went on too long or came up with an argument the Blairistas didn’t want to hear, cries of ‘get on with it’ broke out all around.
Gerald Kaufman made an effective but chilling speech. The parliamentary party, he said, was not an adventure playground. Our job was to support Labour governments ‘right or wrong’. He blamed the fact that he had spent most of his career in opposition on backbench indiscipline. Audrey Wise, who followed Gerald, said that the fact that Labour governments had not been re-elected had far more to do with the actions of ministers than humble backbenchers. She then spoiled her argument by regaling the meeting with her life and times supporting, as she put it, workers in struggle on various picket lines. Cue much groaning from loyalists. Jim Cousins, who, like me, opposed the code, leaned across and whispered that the Old Left were a liability.
Donald Dewar wound up, saying that the ultimate sanction would be used only in extraordinary circumstances. A similar offence existed in the party rulebook. Why should MPs be exempt from rules that applied to ordinary members? That drew a cheer. The code was endorsed by 86 votes to 27. What a gutless lot we are. As someone said afterwards, they were sure Donald Dewar would exercise his new powers responsibly, but supposing he were to be succeeded as Chief Whip by Nick Brown?*
Monday, 9 December
Into town for what turned out to be a rather drastic haircut. New Labour, new haircut. I also bought some new shoes. I need a new coat, too. My present one is frayed around the edges. Jacky says it would be all right in Hampstead, but not in Sunderland. I am sure she is right.
To London on the 18.50, feeling cold around the head, where my hair used to be.
Tuesday, 10 December
Brixton Road
A young man came to repair the boiler, the latest in a long line. He worked at it for two hours, but in the end admitted defeat. When he discovered I was an MP he became quite animated. He was surprised when I informed him that the Sun was not a Labour newspaper and seemed to think that one of the reasons for the decline of the NHS was because Indian migrants were buying up our medicine on prescription and sending it to relatives at home. How long had I been in the Labour Party, he wanted to know.
‘Oh, so you really believe in it, then?’
‘Yes.’
He wasn’t stupid or particularly self-centred. He earned £14,000 a year, had a £40,000 mortgage and a wife who probably earned as much as he did (but would have to give up when they started a family). He had no recollection of life under anything but a Tory government and a low opinion of politicians in general (although I don’t suppose he had ever met one before). Exactly the sort of person we must win over, if we are to form a government.
When I got to the House there was a message waiting from Donald Dewar. He showed me a statement about the single currency which he said had been agreed by the Big Four – Blair, Prescott, Brown and Cook. They wanted some ‘sensible’ left-wingers to endorse it. Roger Berry was also being asked. Would I be willing? The BBC is apparently snooping round trying to demonstrate that Labour is as split as the Tories and Donald was looking for something to show how united we all are. I asked for time to think and discussed the matter with Roger. We agreed that, with the possible exception of a couple of phrases, the statement was unobjectionable. The problem was that it was so obviously a put-up job, designed to paper over cracks, that it was bound to arouse suspicions. Besides which, why me? Roger knows all about economics, but no one has ever asked my opinion about the single currency. I went back to Donald and said that, happy as I was to endorse the sentiments, this didn’t seem a very sensible enterprise. The Tories were already doing a good job of self-destructing and we ought to let them get on with it. He seemed to agree and hinted that the idea had come from higher up than him. I left it in his hands and was relieved to hear later that the scheme had been abandoned.
Jack Straw mentioned that he had recently been to see the new head of MI5, Stephen Lander. They had discussed accountability and, needless to say, the new man was against the service being made accountable to Parliament. Among his excuses, the absence of a secure room in the Palace of Westminster which I am sure we could sort out. Jack says he advised him to prepare for the possibility. Everything, of course, depends on our beloved Leader.
A brief exchange with Peter Archer about House of Lords reform, which, he says, could bog us down for months, if not years. He suggests we put Lords reform on the back burner until the Tories give us trouble, preferably over an issue to which our constituents can relate.
Wednesday, 11 December
A cup of tea with Jack Straw, who told a fascinating little tale about the time he was positively vetted. It happened in the late seventies when he was working for Barbara Castle. Jack was summoned to a room in Whitehall. On the desk was his security file which, even at that early stage in his career, was several inches thick. The National Union of Students, of which Jack had been president, was obviously heavily infiltrated. A report was even produced of a pub lunch he had had with a student communist. The information was so detailed that Jack was even able to narrow down the informants to one or two suspects. Years later a Tory MP with close links to the security services remarked out of the blue that the man who had interviewed him had just died. Jack went to the Library, looked up the obituary and recognised him at once. How thick is Jack’s file now, I wonder. Perhaps he will get to see it when he is Home Secretary.
Thursday, 12 December
Brixton Road
I was number eight at PM’s Questions, but since we rarely get beyond four I didn’t spend much time worrying about it. I went off to address law students at Gray’s Inn and returned just in time to hear my name called. I decided to ignore all the pettiness about taxes and went on Murdoch instead, adopting a lofty, statesmanlike posture in the hope of heading off any jibe against Tony for his trip to Australia. Afterwards, in the Tea Room, several Tories came over and said how much they agreed. A raw nerve has been touched.
Caught the 18.30 north. David Clark got on at York. I asked if he was looking forward to becoming Secretary of State for Defence. He looked around to make sure no one else was within earshot and then said he was beginning to suspect that he wasn’t going to be in the Cabinet. He said he had checked standing orders and they clearly required that the Leader offer a Cabinet place to every elected member of the Shadow Cabinet but, if Tony decided not to, there is nothing anyone could do. ‘I know it sounds awful,’ he said. ‘I trusted Neil Kinnock implicitly. I trusted John Smith. But I don’t trust Tony.’
Monday, 16 December
Last night I dreamed that Betty Boothroyd had had a nervous breakdown and leapt from the Speaker’s chair shouting at everyone and pushing them about. It was extraordinarily vivid. At one point I saw two attendants waltzing with each other across a crowded Chamber.
To Parliament Street to see Jack Straw, as John Gilbert has been advising, to stake my claim to the chairmanship of the Home Affairs Committee. To my surprise, he said he had me in mind for the Home Office. Was I interested? I said I couldn’t bear the thought of being an under-secretary. He agreed, I shouldn’t accept anything less than being a Minister of State, adding ‘Tony owes you’ (I have never thought that Tony owes me anything). Jack would speak to him. To be honest, I would much prefer to chair the select committee, but I will have to treat seriously any offer that comes my way because it may be my last chance to achieve anything in politics.
David Clark showed me a newspaper cutting predicting that half a dozen members of the Shadow Cabinet would not make it into the Cabinet. He was one. The others were Michael Meacher, Ron Davies, Tom Clarke, Margaret Beckett and Frank Dobson. The usual anonymous ‘informed’ sources were cited, but there was clearly an element of speculation.
Several more Tories remarked how much they agreed with my question the other day about Murdoch. Among them Tom King. I asked if they were likely to do anything about him if they won. He said they might. It would depend on the size of their majority. The best way, he said, would be to insist that only EC citizens could own a controlling interest in our national media. Now that is radical thinking. I don’t suppose for a moment they would dare, but it does show how worried they are about the monster they have spawned.
Wednesday, 18 December
The Freemasons inquiry finally got off the ground today – after months of prevarication by Ivan and co. Only John Greenway declared an interest (Peter Butler, our other Mason, having left the committee some time ago). Greenway said he had been a Mason twenty years ago, but had long since lapsed. He clearly hoped to get away without mentioning it in public, but Ivan told him that he had to. No big deal, but it does explain why he got so upset when we first discussed the possibility of an inquiry. I noticed Sir Gerard Vaughan, one of the leading Masons in the House, sitting in the public seats. He said to me a couple of years ago, ‘If I have any criticism of freemasonry’ – and he clearly doesn’t have many – ‘it is very difficult to resign.’
Martin Short* was our first witness. On the whole he was good. He didn’t go over the top. He has a nice sense of humour and dealt well with Gerry Bermingham, who behaved appallingly. Although there is no shortage of evidence about misbehaviour by Masonic police, judges and magistrates are more of a problem. Short was weak here. If we want to change anything, we are going to have to come up with some facts. We have the power, but as ever there simply isn’t the will to conduct a serious inquiry. Fortunately, I was able to persuade the committee to let the clerks make some inquiries on our behalf but I’m not hopeful. This is only the opening round of a long struggle.
Monday, 30 December
Chelmsford*
Dad drew my attention to a leader in today’s Telegraph in defence of Freemasons in the guise of ‘defending our traditional liberties’. With touching naivety, the Telegraph declares, ‘Masons devote their time mainly to supporting charities and urging each other to behave better; if a disproportionate number are policemen and lawyers, it is because these professions are naturally attracted by an organisation concerned with civic duty.’ I am referred to as ‘the leader of the parliamentary Mason-baiters’. Nothing like a good denunciation to get things going. My little campaign is taking off at last.