I can’t remember exactly who said it, but it was probably some American clever clogs who quipped that the problem with being British is you’re only allowed to find out about current affairs 30 years after they happened. Recent examples of the political past being illuminated for today’s news junkies contrast in the respect accorded to this country’s venerable 30-year-rule, which is applied to civil service documents. Sometimes it feels the past has been pored over with almost indecent haste. At others, we have been reminded of anachronisms of a bygone age that feel out of kilter with our modern, less deferential politics.
Although somewhat buried as a news story by Tony Blair’s testimony to the Chilcot inquiry, private papers released last weekend by the Thatcher Foundation give an insight into Margaret Thatcher’s early tenure of Number 10 Downing Street and even her diet during the 1979 general election campaign. Apparently, she told President Jimmy Carter in her first post-election telephone call to the White House that her high-octane rate of activity had prevented her from getting any rest and she was prescribed a strict diet of 28 eggs a week, complemented by lettuce and steak.
I am reminded of the famous Spitting Image sketch in which the Iron Lady was dining with Cabinet colleagues and ordering similar fare. When the waiter asked: “And the vegetables?” she replied: “They’ll have the same.” Among the scraps now released for all to see are Thatcher’s handwritten notes to herself in a 1979 diary. The private collection was bequeathed to Churchill College, Cambridge, perhaps partly as a consequence of her snubbing by Oxford University for an honorary degree.
The psyche of another former leader, Tony Blair, was the subject of numerous column inches as he gave his long-awaited evidence to the latest inquiry into the Iraq war. In the 24-hour news culture of what Blair himself described as the “feral media”, television channels had a field day. Even body language experts were called in to interpret the meaning of Blair’s dry-voiced tremors at the start of his testimony and the way he came to hold centre stage as he ended by telling us with his customary unswerving conviction that he was convinced he had done the right thing – and would do it again.
It was all utterly predictable. Some commentators remarked that Fern Britton
got more out of Blair than his Chilcot inquisitors.
People who cry “whitewash” will continue to demand inquiries until they get the result they want. While we should never say never, seven years after the Iraq hostilities began, those who want Blair’s head on a plate with him branded as a war criminal should prepare for disappointment.
What impact Chilcot will have on the outcome of the 2010 general election is debatable. Despite suffering some losses, Labour won in 2005 in the more immediate aftermath of the invasion, so the influence of Iraq now is unlikely to be as great as that of other issues – the economy, for instance.
Possibly more relevant are the damaging utterances of Peter Watt, the former Labour general secretary, who – depending on how you look at it – was either wronged or just plain incompetent.
The ex-party staffer has taken his vengeance publicly all over the news channels with a book published by Tory blogger Iain Dale and serialised by the arch-Conservative Daily Mail group, which is keen to spread anti-Labour poison at any time. There’s no 30- year rule there. Despite Watt’s protestations that he only wants to clear his name, the currency of his claims and presumably the size of his cheque would be substantially devalued after the election. The chance to inflict maximum damage on Labour now is a gift for the Tory press. The unseemly scramble of the dumped and dumped-upon Watt to air his grievances looks to be financially motivated.
Postmodernist sociologists talk of “accelerated time”, where the past catches up with us at a dizzying pace. When Channel 4 fictionalised the friction between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in The Deal, it seemed a bit odd to be dramatising the living. Since then, Stephen Frears’ box office smash The Queen has normalised such portrayals. Last weekend alone saw similar treatments of Winnie Mandela and Mo Mowlam on TV. We live in an age of hyper-reality, where fact and fiction are blurring all the time.
After the media circus surrounding Chilcot, let us hope that lessons are learned in its conclusions, so that past mistakes are not repeated. As for the election, that must come down to the real choices now facing the country: whether or not to chuck away all that has been achieved over the past 12 years for a bunch of Tory airheads who think airbrushing is a proper strategy.
A lot can happen between now and polling day. Harold Wilson famously quipped that a week is a long time in politics. As Macmillan – the other post-war Prime Minister called Harold – observed, the key driver in politics is always “events dear boy, events”.
Rupa Huq is standing as a Labour candidate for Ealing council and has organised a ward canvass for Saturday February 27. For more details email walpole.labour@activist.com or telephone Paul Conlan on 07808 930917 . There is also a here is also a Facebook group called “Winning Walpole for Labour in Ealing 2010“.
