Most MPs who start writing diaries do so in order to prove to themselves how central they are to the political process. But by the time the diaries come to be published, they tend to prove the opposite. The effect is either comic or tragic, depending upon one’s point of view.
Who wrote this, for example? ‘I will have a crack at the leadership as soon as I can, partly because I am in touch with real people, partly because I can offer some leadership.’ The answer? Edwina Currie. It comes in her diary entry of 7 October 1988, when she was a parliamentary under-secretary. ‘I look at rivals like David Mellor’, she adds, ‘and I like me better.’
From the outset, the Labour MP Chris Mullin takes the more cautious, and, as it proves, more far-sighted, view that he is, when all is said and done, a dead loss.
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