On Labour’s side, in addition to the expenses villains, there are the lobbyists, not to mention the plotters. Stephen Byers, who once described himself as a cab for hire, is now out in the big bad world, his light on. I will never have to hear the patronising undulations of Patricia “Patsy” Hewitt’s voice again. Geoff “Buff” Hoon, the man who specialised in never being there when it came to Iraq, now really won’t be there. Despite it all I rather liked his plodding pedestrian ways. Other “hall of shame” retirees include Kitty Ussher, a once rising star, who wrote a two-page letter explaining why her London house needed major repairs: “Most of the ceilings have Artex coverings. Threedimensional swirls. It could be a matter of taste, but this counts as ‘dilapidations’ in my book!” And Kitty, let us remember, was a member of the People’s Party.
So where is the good in the good, the bad and the ugly? Almost everybody else, actually. Of particular note is James Purnell, facial hair fashionista, whose sideburns will be missed by me. His shock resignation from the Cabinet almost brought down Gordon Brown. Mr Purnell was the brave one. It could have all been so different if he had succeeded.
For us sketch writers, John Prescott is simply irreplaceable: but he lives on, in the Twitter-sphere, boldly going where no one would have predicted he would. I will miss the bolshie proclamations of Labour’s Andrew Mackinlay and the snide if somewhat forlorn comments of Chris Mullin, who proved to be a better diarist than politician. Others of note to go include Labour’s Bob Marshall-Andrews, a man more or less permanently in opposition to his own side. In September 1997, commenting on an opinion poll that gave Tony Blair a 93 per cent approval rating, he said: “Seven per cent. We can build on that.”
Others to be missed include
• Tony Wright, the much respected Labour MP who coined the phrase “Manure Parliament”. He headed the eponymous committee on parliamentary reforms with tenacity and, dare I say it, wisdom.
• The Rev Ian Paisley, ancient Galapagos tortoise, who always spoke as if he was sermonising, possibly because he was.
• Michael Howard and Ann Widdecombe, linked forever by her “something of the night” comment about him. He was always worth watching, an astute and clever parliamentarian, and she was the only true reality TV star in the Commons: “I always imagined that when I was making my last speech, I would be sad. Instead I find that my uppermost sentiment is one of profound relief.”
• David Howarth, a thoughtful Liberal Democrat, who returns to teach law at Cambridge. “People talk about standing down. I am standing up!” he told me. He is gloomy about politics, saying that it is no longer a “high trust” profession. Like estate agents, MPs now must always be watched like hawks. Inevitably, he said, the result will be that it attracts less trustworthy people.
• Martin Salter, the Labour MP for Reading West, was larger than life and louder than it too. Before he left, I found him in his chaotic office brandishing a “stress banana”, a gift. “I use my banana for pointing,” he chortled. “People say, ‘Don’t Miliband me!’” His office was plastered with pictures of fish. “I am leaving politics to spend more time with my wife, my camper van and my fish, in that order.”
Last but not least in any way is Sir Patrick Cormack, the Tory grandee who bowed out after 40 years. He was a bit of an old buffer but no one doubts that he loves Parliament (which he pronounced “Parl-i-ament”, with a little wiggle). When I stopped by to see him in his magnificent office, which he was emptying out, there was palpable regret in his voice as he talked of his career ups and downs. He had wanted to be Speaker but, when he stood, received only 13 votes. “You take the rough with the rough!” he noted, his pug face crinkling. “Absolutely!”
So, at 71, he left to spend more time with his weekends. “It will be a terrible wrench. It has been my life for more than half my life. It is a very funny feeling at the moment: it is the last of this, the last of that. I am still behaving as normal but all the time I am sort of signing off.” It is hard to imagine the chamber without Sir Patrick. For 40 years, whenever “Parl-i-ament” was sitting, he spent at least three hours a day seated in his place, the middle aisle seat towards the back. In his last speech, he ended with these words of Catullus: “Ave atque vale”. Hail and farewell, indeed. Ann Treneman is the author of Annus Horribilis: the Worst Year in British Politics (2009)
David Aaronovitch
Times columnist
It was the longest understudy, for one of the shortest performances. A decade of increasingly unquiet waiting for his moment to take over from Tony Blair was followed by just under three years in the long-coveted post. Departing No 10, Gordon Brown left behind a reputation for grumpiness, intellectual brilliance, ambition and, in the end, enduring personal tragedy.
The grey, jowly, plodding figure who left office was scarcely recognisable as the brilliant, Heathcliffian man who entered the Treasury in 1997. In opposition, Mr Brown had shredded his opponents with thunder and wit, which turned to lightning and cleverness early in new Labour’s first term. In the first week of that term he announced the independence of the Bank of England, a reform that was to become accepted by his political rivals, but which was not even put to the Cabinet.
His most deployed political term in the first two years of the Labour Government was the legendary “prudence”, who was invariably accompanied by “with a purpose”. He knew exactly what he was doing; he was the great intellectual of modern politics. His supporters told anyone who would listen that he was the real brains behind new Labour. He was literally unassailable.
When writers use terms such as “paradox”, “enigma” and “contradiction” it is often a sign that they simply do not understand the subject. Gordon Brown has had these words applied to him more often than any other modern British politician. It has been hard, throughout his career in government, to explain how his different characteristics coexisted within the same person.
Mr Brown was, famously, the “son of the manse” – a man built upon the bedrock of religious and social principles as bequeathed to him by his minister father. “Understand this about him,” I was told more than once by Scots, “and you understand everything.” And when he repeatedly used the word “values”, like a mallet on a wooden tent-peg and pronounced with an almost unending first vowel, it sounded convincing and deeply meant.
In his international campaigns to reduce Third World debt and to increase aid to Africa, both hugely successful, it was easy to see high moral principle at work, although such goods are indeed oft interred with the politician’s bones. These were real and important achievements, but ones unlikely to be appreciated by most journalists, let alone most voters.
It could also be that in 30 years the first historians of the 2000s will single out Gordon Brown’s leadership during the banking crisis of 2008-09 as having been central to saving the world from a second full-scale Great Depression. For a year a formerly depressed Prime Minister was transformed into a man full of hectic energy and knowledgeable determination.
But then there was the thin-skinned, jealous, tricksy and occasionally even treacherous Brown, who seemed to stand at 90 degrees to the morals of the manse. This was the Chancellor who