A Very British Diarist

Chris Mullin is a good egg and, what’s more has a pawky sense of humour. So I imagine his diaries, serialised in the Mail on Sunday this week, will be entertaining stuff. What strikes one above all – apart from the digs at Gordon Brown’s expense – is the sheer and ghastly tedium of being a government minister. It’s almost enough to make one think they deserve their generous expense accounts and lavish pension. Almost, I say.

But then the government reminds you of the extent of its ghastliness. Mullin describes one such event that in some sense seems to ilustrate the gruesome nature of modern politics in general and New Labour in particular:

Among my mail another piece of New Labour vulgarity: an invitation to have my photograph taken with Alistair Darling handing over a giant cheque to celebrate the fact that pensioners are about to start receiving their £100 winter fuel allowance.