Mark Seddon is a former editor of Tribune, diplomatic correspondent in New York for Al Jazeera English and member of the crazy gang on Tony Blair’s National Executive Committee who fought to the bitter end against the Iraq War. Here, in a series of vignettes, he presents his side of the story. An assiduous traveller on the “axis of evil” circuit – with trips to Iraq, Yemen, Libya and North Korea – his peregrinations reinforced his distrust of the tabloids at home and abroad. Worse, on Iraq, he realised early on he couldn’t trust his own Government.
Seddon saw it as bent from the start, but I think it was more of a desperate desire to believe. I sat in on the fortnightly briefings by Jack Straw of Labour’s foreign policy team throughout this period
with the incessant demands from Parliamentary Labour Party reps for evidence to wave in front of the quizzical troops in the House of Commons. The result was the sexed-up dodgy dossier that resolved the sceptics’ doubts on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
The wheels of war began to trundle as we dutifully followed in the wake of Washington while Seddon and his gang tabled last-ditch resolutions in collusion with residual doubters at the United Nations and around the Cabinet table demanding Security Council approval for military action. They failed, although not for the want of trying. But Seddon’s card was well and truly marked.
Charles Clarke subjected him to a
full-frontal assault when he tried to stand at Ogmore in 2002, declaring his performance in front of the selection panel as “very poor”. Clarke clearly needed to get out more when he decided that the editor of Tribune, a practised public speaker and directly elected representative of party members on the NEC, was not up to muster.
Worse followed eight years on when his “friend” Keith Vaz stabbed him in the back as he tried to get selected for the last minute vacancy in Stoke Central prior to the general election in 2010. Again, he didn’t even make the shortlist. The excuse this time was, apparently, that it was a “Mandelson ask”. The proper response should have been to forgive him before telling him impolitely where to put his request.
Standing for Something is peopled by a kaleidoscope of characters. Seddon approvingly quotes Piers Morgan, “politics is showbiz for ugly people”, but they are divided into good and bad. He has his eclectic likes. He adored Michael Foot – one of his heroes both for his unswerving support for Tribune and his politics – has a great admiration for Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, from his time in New York, and Zhang Zhijun, a Chinese politician he first met as a lowly official at their London embassy, but now both a member of the Communist Party central committee and executive vice foreign minister. He even has a soft spot for Gordon Brown.
His dislikes are more mainstream. The holy trinity of Blair, Campbell and Mandelson, for New Labour and the war in Iraq, are joined by Rupert Murdoch and, surprisingly, John Prescott, whom he describes as always looking as if he was “chewing wasps”.
There are walk on parts for Andrew Neil and Sir James Goldsmith. The first was a friend in New York, the second threatened to sue Seddon and Tribune, apoplectic after an article I wrote that made much of the entryists from the British National Party and National Front burrowing into the Referendum Party. As penance, Seddon was forced to review the Eurosceptics’ version of Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book, Sir James’ tedious tome The Trap, and publish an interview with
the man himself. Glimpsed are Mohammed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, and North Korea’s man in Panmunjom, General Ri Chang Bok.
We also see the fight for Buckingham last year when the Speaker, John Bercow, faced the twin challenges of UKIP’s Nigel Farage and the pro-European Tory Party’s John Stevens. Stevens’ intervention, with Seddon’s assistance in the absence of a Labour candidate, spoiled any chance Farage had of causing an upset.
What we don’t get is his latest role in the People’s Pledge Campaign to get a referendum on leaving the European Union that has so split the Conservative Party at Westminster. But as a keen horticulturalist – who once published an editorial in Tribune saying the best thing for Europe could be for Britain to leave to enable a proper super state to be created so a future government that finally saw sense could rejoin – perhaps he plans to emulate Voltaire’s Candide and – albeit temporarily – retire to cultivate his garden.
Standing for Something is a book that restores a sense of humour to politics while making telling points about how Labour lost its way. It will nestle nicely under any left-leaning Christmas tree and will bring a smile to the lips even as you disagree with some of its premises.
