"A View from the Foothills", by Chris Mullin. It was recommended to me by Peli, of this parish, last heard of somewhere in Chile.
I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's certainly very readable and has some strong recommendations as a political diary and quite a lot of it is entertaining. Mullin was appointed by Blair as a Junior Minister, firstly under Prescott at Environment, then Clare Short at International Development, and finally at the Foreign Office under Jack Straw.
This volume covers the period from 1999 to 2005: the last entry in the diary is after the 2005 election in which Blair sacks him from his job and puts someone else in his place. For someone touted as a left-winger, he seems remarkably sycophantic to Blair- but then I suppose in the early days most Labour MPs did. Although Mullin voted against the Iraq War, he still remains loyal to "The Man", as he calls Tony Blair. It's very interesting that he seems to be completely hostile to Gordon Brown throughout. The Decline and Fall (2005 - 2010) is the second volume, and I would think they might be a bit more interesting: I gain the impression from the volume I've read that perhaps Mullin is holding back in his descriptions of Tony Blair.
I'm going to order Decline & Fall now.
