Chris Mullin (politician) - Diaries

Diaries

Mullin published three volumes of widely praised diaries that described the progress of "New Labour" from the death of the party leader John Smith in 1994 to the 2010 general election: A View From the Foothills (2009) (recounting Mullin's ministerial career from 1999–2005), Decline & Fall: Diaries 2005-2010 (2010) and A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999 (2011). Among others things, Mullin recorded his gradual disillusion with the Labour Party's left-wing and his rather reluctant support, after Smith's death, for fellow North-Eastern MP Tony Blair (whom he dubbed "The Man") as the person most likely to lead the party back to power. Peter Riddell of the Times suggested that A View From the Foothills deserved to become "the central text for understanding the Blair years", while Decline & Fall, in which Mullin (by then a backbencher again) expressed wry consternation at the way the government operated under Blair's successor Gordon Brown, were commended for their independence of outlook, revealing, as Jenni Russell put it in the Sunday Times, Mullin's "readiness to like people who don't echo his politics".

The three volumes were adapted for the stage by Michael Chaplin as A Walk on Part. It premiered at the Live Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne in May 2011, and moving to the Soho Theatre in London.