NO, MINISTER

I need a bit of light relief amid the travails of campaigning and Chris Mullin's account of his years in Government is certainly that. Mullin is an odd hybrid who did marvellous stuff in the 1980's and then fell into line with the prevailing winds and swallowed The Project hook, line and sinker. Well, maybe not quite.
Once a Bennite, he eschewed the wilder shores of Parliament's Campaign Group for life as a very junior Minister and clearly hated it. His contempt of "lines to take" and the dire speeches he was forced to recite as a lowly Governmennt Minister make amusing reading for anyone forced to put their head above the parapet and make pronouncements in public. The sense is he regretted selling his soul for the mundane tasks - and discipline - required in Government.
He's pretty scathing also about many of the senior figures in New Labour, including Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould. But he was clearly captivated by the undoubted charisma of Tony Blair, who he rather irritatingly refers to as The Man throughout. Still, I recommend the book for anyone interested in the workings of Government and the last 10 years of Government. There are many lessons to be learned - not least of which is that transparency and honesty, rather than control freakery and the quelling of dissent, is the only way in which Labour can be rescued from its current plight.