Bob Marshall-Andrews - Off Message

Trenchant, mordant and joyful in the space of a single paragraph, Never have New Labours sleek flanks been so wittily and wickedly exposed as by the leading silk of dissent, Bob Marshall-Andrews. He possesses a novelists eye for character, vignette and absurdity, a kind of lefty P. G. Wodehouse. Peter Hennessy

Brilliant, witty and excoriating, the answer to those self-serving autobiographies written by New Labours yesterday men. Too political and principled for contemporary politics Bob Marshall-Andrews was the Attorney General we should have had civil liberties would have been preserved, Iraq would not have been invaded and companies taking bribes would have been prosecuted. Alas. Helena Kennedy, QC

The complete antidote to political humbug

Bob Marshall-Andrews

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
3 A Exmouth House
Pine Street
London ECIR 0JH
www.profilebooks.com

Copyright Bob Marshall-Andrews, 2011

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd
info@macguru.org.uk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays, Bungay, Suffolk

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84668 441 8
eISBN 978 1 84765 465 6

The paper this book is printed on is certified by the 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C. (FSC). It is ancient-forest friendly. The printer holds FSC chain of custody SGS-COC-2061

For Fred

At school I was, briefly, the goalkeeper for the Second XI Hockey. In those days the protective clothing worn by hockey goalkeepers was mainly metal. Starting at the feet, huge iron casts were clamped on to the boots; above these, the thigh-length pads were strongly braced with steel; then came the comparatively light whalebone chest protector; and above it all, a Darth Vader/Hannibal Lecter metal mask through the visor of which one peered into the North London drizzle. The Second XI pitch was a lamentable affair, used for a number of other sports, and thus, by February, had become a sea of mud, particularly in the area of the goal mouth. However much I tried to remain mobile, the weight of the defensive costume assured that after about ten minutes I sank uncontrollably into the mire and became wholly and completely stuck in the middle of the goal. This position was not as hopeless as it sounds. Not infrequently, opposing forwards would break through the outer defence preparing to smash the ball into the net. They, of course, expected the goalkeeper to move swiftly towards them to close the angle and narrow the range of fire. In fact, they were confronted by a totally immobile and heavily armoured opponent, gesticulating wildly from the waist up, but otherwise breaking all the elementary rules of hockey defence. Frequently, this completely threw them. Suspecting some kind of elaborate feint, they often shot wide or, more frequently, shot the ball directly at me, anticipating some form of late movement. This caused injury or concussion but also saved the goal, for which I received wholly undeserved acclaim as I was carried from the field.

I often thought of this analogy as I sank into the metaphoric Westminster mud, contemplating, as I did so, the reason for my existence. However, one has no idea how many goals one may have saved simply by being threateningly inactive. In a valedictory piece on the PM programme, the splendid Eddie Mair asked me this self-same question: Do you think, in your time at Westminster, you have achieved anything? I attempted to give him a short faltering list but added, I hope legitimately, that one had no idea what contribution I and my fellow band of dissidents had made, simply by our immobile presence.

On one occasion, I remember approaching a senior Home Office minister and asking whether it was the Governments intention, yet again, to attempt to remove the right of trial by jury for those charged with serious fraud offences. The Government minister rolled his eyes to the ceiling and back again, and indicated that the present intention of the Home Office was to dispense with the legislation altogether. When I enquired as to the reason for this unusual volte-face, he replied that it wasnt worth the trouble you buggers would cause. Thus, by comparative inaction but a suitably threatening posture, we had, in all probability, saved a considerable Commons battle and defeated the legislation before it was struck at the goal mouth. As I reflected many years ago, they also serve who only stand in mud.

In which we reflect on the motivations of politicians and the sublime happiness of being without ambition Recount the disastrous consequences of a joke told at the River Caf Reflect on the abuse of power and patronage Consider the enduring influence of a wonderful woman Recall an interesting confrontation with the Militant Tendency, and finally arrive at the Mother of Parliaments at a difficult and venerable age.

People enter politics, I believe, for one of two broad reasons. The first is to achieve power; the second is to control it. Both may be honourable, but the first is obviously likely to attract far more rogues than the second. It is a division that may arguably separate the most famous revolutionary double acts of history and of literature. Robespierre, for all his initial purity and vision, was seduced and demented by power to deadly and terrible effect. Danton, his fellow rebel, wished only to control it and died as its victim on the guillotine. Lenin forged the greatest and bloodiest revolution in history in order to achieve power which he did and having done so presided over the murderous death of millions. Trotsky, for all his ruthless acts, abhorred power and ended his life in exile and with an ice pick in his head. Fidel Castro, whilst loathing the corrupt regime of Cuba, desired to replace it and to rule which he did as the longest standing dictator of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Che Guevara, his golf partner and comrade-in-arms, was gunned down in the jungles of Bolivia surrounded by a small group of followers.

Shakespeare himself recognised the dialectic. Cassius, lean and hungry for power, fully justified Caesars reservations as to his dangerous attraction. Brutus, poor, decent, honourable Brutus, friend and murderer, loathed power and, indeed, was seduced by Cassius on precisely that basis. Brutus, noblest Roman of them all, died on his own sword at the Battle of Philippi.

In my short time in British politics I never aspired to power or office which was lucky, as there was never the faintest chance of my achieving or retaining it. The only office to which I felt any ambition was that of Attorney General. That would not have lasted long and, indeed, would barely have survived New Labours first assault on the principle of trial by jury. The only reason why, in moments of fantasy, I regret never achieving that historic role is the effect that it might have had on Britains part in the Iraq conflict but that is indeed mere fantasy. The absence of ambition, whether in the British parliamentary system or any other, and relative old age (fifty-three is now positively geriatric in terms of joining Parliament), at least provides a measure of detachment. This memoir is not intended to be a treatise of the shortcomings (dire as they are) of the present British parliamentary system. Great works have already been produced which distil this unhappy state of affairs. I would direct the reader to Christopher Fosters luminous book