Diary – 18 February 2006

The film-maker Michael Cockerell has a priceless ability to persuade politicians to make fools of themselves. His chosen technique is flattery. Cockerell manages to convince them that his gentle fly-on-the-wall documentaries will reveal the human being behind the public image. Once voters see politicians up close and personal, selflessly burning the midnight oil in the national interest, their natural cynicism will melt like a Mivvi in a Miami heatwave. Cockerell’s latest offering, shown on BBC2 last weekend, centred on Britain’s shambolic six-month presidency of the European Union and the horse-trading over Turkey’s application to join the club. Our chief negotiator was Jack Straw, a man whose tiny feet may stride the international stage but whose tiny mind is never far away from his dwindling majority in Blackburn, where Muslims have deserted Labour in droves over the Iraq war. In the early hours of one summit, Cockerell collared Straw in the corridor and asked him if he was confident of clinching a deal over the Turkish accession. ‘God willing,’ said Jack, hastily adding, ‘Inshallah.’ I wasn’t aware our Foreign Secretary had converted to Islam, but it wouldn’t surprise me, given his craven, increasingly desperate efforts to ingratiate himself with his more devout constituents in the mosques and madrasas of the former Lancashire mill town. You can take the boy out of Blackburn….

Cheerful Charlie Clarke thinks the Labour succession should be a contest, not a coronation. It’s a view shared by Cabinet colleagues and backbenchers alike. Jaq al-Straw is among those deluding themselves that Gordon Brown isn’t a shoo-in and they are still in with a shout. In the event of a full-on leadership election, Straw would probably throw his dish-dash into the ring. There’s talk of a Stop Gordon stalking-horse, with John Reid rumoured to be prepared to strap on the suicide belt in the absence of anyone else.