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Simon Carr: A good diarist knows himself

Chris Mullin created a great comic character - the one called Chris Mullin

Monday 06 April 2009 00:00 BST
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The memorable aphorism is that all political careers end in failure; but Chris Mullin's engrossing diaries (A View From the Foothills) show that his actually began in failure as well. He failed to achieve his very first goal as a minister – which was to resign.

He had accepted a front bench job from Tony Blair and regretted it. He realised he was trading a position of influence and prominence for a sub-ministerial post with neither and rang to resign the next day. But Blair used a deadly phrase: it would be a "waste to stay on the back benches being a wise man".

What ease, what command Blair had, to be able to push Chris Mullin around by laughing at "wise men". Stop indulging yourself as a critic, an onlooker, Blair implied, come and do something. Against his better nature (and I use the term advisedly) Mullin agreed. To his credit, he never grew into the job.

Mullin, it should be noted, had had a journalistic career in which he got six men released from life-long jail and revolutionised the way police produced evidence. He also headed the Parliamentary Committee (which could push the Labour leader about) and chaired the Home Affairs select committee (which could summon ministers, pull their noses and put them into unfavourable headlines).

To give up the glamorous individualism of the backbenches for the humiliating oblivion of office – it's a mystery. Why did he do it? Curiosity, a colleague thought. Yes, Mullin lacked the essential quality of the politician: an appetite for power. But he kept the essential quality of the journalist: curiosity.

He also realised early on that nothing he could do or say would have the slightest effect on the affairs of state. As a result, he remained more of a human being than a politician (the more of one you are, the less of the other you can be).

I'd written something unkind about him during his Foreign Office incarnation. I think it was that, when he was questioned about African famines, corruption and cruelty, his answers amounted to: "Well, it's all very difficult." It was, I suppose, the only honest answer. My criticism wouldn't have hurt a politician – and shouldn't actually have hurt Chris Mullin because his diaries give a greatly extended account of ministerial impotence, humiliation, and complicity.

We learn that everything we've learnt about the political process from Yes, Minister to The Thick Of It is broadly accurate. But it's well worth relearning that. And there are moments that make you gasp slightly.

"I confined myself to only one intervention: 'What are the implications for the number of live animal experiments? We were elected saying we would reduce them. I imagine this will lead to an increase.' David Sainsbury said, 'Yes, we must reduce the number and types of experiments, but greater numbers of animals will be used.' " I don't think I've recorded anything as cynical as that, in a decade of sketch writing.

Keeping an interesting diary is much harder than it looks. What you do and whom you know is less important than how you see yourself, and how you cope with your inevitable failure. It's why Alastair Campbell's diaries are unreadable.

Chris Mullin will go up somewhere into the first division of diarists because he has created a great comic character (the one called Chris Mullin). But who oh who will they cast for the TV adaptation?

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