Christmas reading - Decline and Fall
In between spending some time with the children over Christmas and tackling some long-overdue tasks around the house, my Christmas reading has been the second volume of the diaries of Chris Mullin, the former Labour MP for Sunderland South, which are called "Decline and Fall."
On the face of it, I should have very little in common with Chris Mullin beyond a common dedication to politics and the fact that we both strongly disagree with the idea of locking people up for three months without trial. We come from very different parts of the political spectrum, and one of the things which marked his tenure as a select committee chairman was an ill-judged attack on an organisation of which I am a member and which I believe does far more good every year by helping those in need than the average M.P. does in his entire career.
Nevertheless, Mullin's diaries are not just entertaining and informative but moving and thought-provoking. And in spite of what I wrote in the previous paragraph, the proportion of time when I found myself agreeing with him was something between astonishing and downright scary.
In his valedictory speech, Chris Mullin predicted that very few of those then occupying the green benches at Westminster would be remembered in twenty years' time, and he did not expect to be among them.
I think there are two things for which Mullin does deserve to be remembered.
The first is the role he played in one of the very few instances during the thirteen years from 1997 to 2010 when the House of Commons did its job of checking the Executive properly, by stopping the 90-day detention proposal which would have taken us way too close to becoming a police state.
The second is these diaries. You can order the first volume, "A view from the foothills" here, and the second volume, "Decline and fall" here.
On the face of it, I should have very little in common with Chris Mullin beyond a common dedication to politics and the fact that we both strongly disagree with the idea of locking people up for three months without trial. We come from very different parts of the political spectrum, and one of the things which marked his tenure as a select committee chairman was an ill-judged attack on an organisation of which I am a member and which I believe does far more good every year by helping those in need than the average M.P. does in his entire career.
Nevertheless, Mullin's diaries are not just entertaining and informative but moving and thought-provoking. And in spite of what I wrote in the previous paragraph, the proportion of time when I found myself agreeing with him was something between astonishing and downright scary.
In his valedictory speech, Chris Mullin predicted that very few of those then occupying the green benches at Westminster would be remembered in twenty years' time, and he did not expect to be among them.
I think there are two things for which Mullin does deserve to be remembered.
The first is the role he played in one of the very few instances during the thirteen years from 1997 to 2010 when the House of Commons did its job of checking the Executive properly, by stopping the 90-day detention proposal which would have taken us way too close to becoming a police state.
The second is these diaries. You can order the first volume, "A view from the foothills" here, and the second volume, "Decline and fall" here.
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