AS YOU MAY know, we don’t do God — at least I don’t. If I did, I would pray to Him every day to keep me free from bitterness. It corrodes the soul. It prevents growth. When it lies in the heart of former Labour ministers, it also benefits the Tories, reason enough to resist the bitterness impulse when the media come calling for comment.
Resentment is not bitterness. I resent the relative success of Blackburn Rovers FC. I resent the fact that for reasons to do with pressure of work and my own tortured psychological make-up I did not enjoy the last three victorious general election nights. But I don’t feel bitter. Bitterness is a negative world-view shaped by negative things that have happened to individuals, and which they cannot come to terms with in a positive way. Again, a gaggle of former Labour ministers comes to mind.
It is important to try to salvage good from bad. It is why I now look back on a nervous breakdown 20 years ago as one of the best things that happened to me. It is why I have used my personal experience of media frenzies to say to others who go through them that they may be ghastly at the time, but a fully rounded political experience requires you to endure this, and they do end, you know.
Which brings me to Tessa Jowell and her husband, David Mills. They and their two children are close family friends of ours. She is a competent minister and a decent and nice person. He is a larger-than-life character who can fill a room with his presence, his varied opinions and experiences.
When Tessa was in political trouble, she knew I would do anything to help her. Personal troubles, ditto. On the political front I did very little. I advised David that mid-evening on a Friday was not a good time to put out a statement that would send the press into minor meltdown. I spoke to no journalists other than to answer their calls by saying I had no desire to speak to them. I spoke to a few MPs to get their feel for the situation and urged them to be supportive. On the personal front, as it happens, I was more in the “stick together” camp, but both had decided which way it was going, at which point we just went into “anything we can do to help, just ask” supportive family mode.
But when it emerged that I had seen them both to discuss these troubles, this had to be made to fit “the prism” that the media had constructed for the story. We all have our assigned parts in these media frenzies. Mine, so that we could have flashbacks to a famous but false story about me “ordering Robin Cook to leave his wife for his mistress”, is as the brute who will order a sweet but ambitious minister to dump her greedy and egregious husband to save her career.
The latest “story” in several Sunday newspapers was based upon an anonymous quote from a Labour MP. For anonymous, in my humble opinion, read at best twisted, at worst invented. It is what the Sundays do, believe me.
While this latest chapter of Frenzygate was being written, I was watching my son race in the under-20s AAAs in Birmingham. I had five hours to kill while he rested between his heat and semi-final. I passed some time counting the number of people in the 1,000 or so audience in possession of newspapers, and the number reading them. It was 14 and 2 respectively. This was the real world going about its business. On the TV outside the warm-up area, a crowd gathered for the football results on Grandstand. The moment the BBC headlines came on, with the story of the Jowell-Mills separation, the crowd evaporated.
The story became, as Margaret Beckett made clear, almost a battle of wills between politics and a media which thought that if they kept the noise at a high level long enough, the minister would have to go. She said Tessa had a duty to see it through, because we could not have good ministers hounded out of office by “trial by ordeal”. She rightly put the ghastly Daily Mail at the front of these witchhunts. I read this week that Paul Dacre, its Editor, has promised that planned job cuts will not affect “the quality of journalism”. How will we notice?
Of course the media do not do it alone. The Sundays can invent and twist the quotes but the broadcasters have to get real voices on there. Again, step in former Labour ministers.
Ministers are treated with something close to contempt by interviewers. Once out of office, whatever the failings had been that led them to the exit, they are introduced on the airwaves as “the respected . . . the experienced”, adjectives normally reserved by journalists for each other.
Reshuffles are difficult. They are an inevitable part of politics. But I have seen for myself the entering of iron into a soul when a minister is suddenly confronted with the reality that the Prime Minister does not share their own view of their abilities.
Politics is all about people and it would be odd if all human emotions did not course through Parliament. But the politicians who make the biggest contribution tend to be those who maintain a positive vision of the future and strive relentlessly to pursue it.
There is a sizeable list of former ministers queueing at the TV and radio studios to condemn, criticise and call upon to leave. Their criticisms are so predictable as to be without any real impact. And just once I wish they were asked about the iron in their souls; perhaps the simple question: “Is your attack in any way, do you think, motivated by bitterness that the Prime Minister dispensed with your services?”
It doesn’t fit the prism, but it is worth bearing in mind the next time you hear “and we’re now joined by . . .” You know who they are. So do they. And if I did God, I would pray to Him to erase their bitterness and help them to enjoy more fruitfully the privileged positions they remain in as MPs.
