Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent!, 19 Mar 2009
I have to admit that my heart sank a little when this book arrived from Amazon, it's got a rather dull front cover and at 600 pages is something of a brick. Nevertheless, I had read a couple of good reviews in the papers so I thought I would give it a go...and three hours later I was still reading it. It's a truly engrossing account of ministerial life on the lowest rung of the ladder, Mullins upon being promoted to junior minister for transport and environment sets himself just three goals for the duration of his tenure: an end to night flights, greater regulation of leylandi hedges and cancelling his ministerial car. Two years later on leaving his post he reflects that he has failed on the first two counts, and merely reduced the ministerial bill (from £700 to £400 per week) for the third. In the intervening months he catalogues with almost daily despair his lack of any policy influence and how he is slowly ground down by the civil service machine.
There is a real gearchange in the diary after he returns to the back benches after tendering his resignation. It is clear that he finds a new enthusiasm once he escapes from the stifling Whitehall centralised control structures designed to ensure that everyone remains "on message", where every interview and TV appearance has to be approved and prepped to mirror exactly the party line. Now just a humble MP he finds himself with much greater influence through his select committee work.
The second part of the diary therefore progresses much more like a conventional political memoir. We get to hear at first hand government reaction to 911, the political infighting between Gordon and Tony, the divisions over first Afghanistan and then Iraq, the inside reactions to the scandals, the media hysteria, the sackings, the election triumphs. I found it an absolutely fascinating read. The greatest compliment you can pay a autobiography is that it makes you feel like you yourself are living that life. And this book achieved that feat. Want to be a government minister? Want to be an MP? Then read this book and live it through someone else's eyes.
A must read!
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The petty realities of political life, 17 Mar 2009
This is an interesting read, though more to dip into than for a lengthy visit. And that's the thing: it amazes me that ministers find time to think deeply about policies when their lives are so crammed with brief events of intense pressure. Mullin comes over as a dedicated Labour worker trying to express profoundly held values in a hectic, grinding arena. There are interesting insights into "The Man" (Blair), and major policy issues (e.g. Iraq), but his life is always packed with depressing, trivial, sometimes spiteful incidents. All credit to Mullin for keeping at it for as long as he did, but it makes me wonder if such a chaotic system can ever deal effectively with the huge challenges of global warming, banking failures, Islam vs The West, etc. etc.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not "One of Us", more "Diary of a Nobody", 17 May 2009
A finely written diary, long in pages but short in reading time, which reveals more than Chris Mullin probably meant to about Tony Blair's New Labour government. Mullin is do-gooder of the old school and a bit of a grumpy old bloke, but very honest with it. His diary is an amazing through-his-eyes view of the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end, of New Labour.
What's so amazing about it is that it's not an "insider account". Even though Mullin was a senior MP and a junior minister, he was not walking the corridors of power. Indeed, he seems to have been barely more informed than the average newspaper reader. His attempts to read the political tea-leaves and foresee what might happen - when Tony Blair might stand down, for example - are complete guesswork and frequently way off the mark. He seems to have been rather naive and he had absolutely no power. In fact, it reminded me of school, with Mullin and his friends excluded from (and fascinated by) a gang of cool kids they long to join. But good on him for telling it so honestly. This is not an airbrushed version of history.
Mullin might perhaps admit to being an idealist, although he has moments of misanthropy that are nice to see in a left-wing MP. He moans amusingly to his diary about the meaningless speeches he is asked to give and the media-handling, messages and photo-ops demanded by New Labour's spin doctors. A valiant fight, but in vain: he can do nothing about it.
I'm sure he would call himself a man of principle. Yet when it came to the ultimate test - over the final vote on going to war in Iraq, he wavered and very nearly went with Blair. Although Mullin eventually stuck to his guns, he was almost lured to support the case for war and one of his closest allies did cave in. Why? Because of pressure from the whips, who raised the terrible prospect of the government losing the vote. So, faced with a bit of partisanship, principle goes out the window. (Maybe it's me who's naive...)
So this book is a quirkily honest insight into what it's like to be an MP, written by a rather ordinary guy on the sidelines. Not a great politician, but a very good book.
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