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.

2007 - A VERY BRITISH COUP

This blog was originally inspired by the hopes we had of a contest for the leadership of the Labour Party. In 2008, it will continue to support the LRC and its Chair John McDonnell as we continue to campaign for socialist ideas and an end to the New Labour doctrine which I suppose many of us began the year by thinking was about to be ditched or at the very least diluted with the advent of Gordon Brown. Not so.
This was also the year trade union leaders sold us down the river and to a man backed the New Labour leadership, , surrendering voting rights at Party Conference without so much as a murmur. The hopes placed in the "awkward squad" a couple of years ago have, frankly, proved misplaced. All we can do is carry on campaigning and working to change the status quo.....
In Tony Benn's Diaries, he compares AMICUS General Secretary Derek Simpson ( as he then was) to Harry Perkins, the socialist PM in the political drama A Very British Coup . In character, yes. Politically, no. Perkins stood up to the Establishment. Simpson has embraced it. And so sadly has Chris Mullin MP, who back in the 1980's wrote the excellent series about the consequences of a socialist Government.
At this year's Party Conference, Mullin arrived back at his hotel ( he still books in with the lefties) after a gang of us had been out for a meal. A comrade somewhat emboldened by drink asked him when he was going to write the sequel. In 2007, I think we got it........Happy New Year, comrades!