It is election-night tradition that Sunderland South is first to declare its
result. In 2005, the country's swiftest counters broke their own record,
leaving Chris Mullin, the Labour MP who served the constituency for 23 years,
to reflect in his diaries that he was, for 40 minutes, the only elected member
of Parliament in the country: "Perhaps I ought to have considered forming a
government."
You cannot help feeling what a better, more genial place the country might
have been if he had. Despite a distinguished backbench career (not to mention
his impact as a campaigning journalist in support of the Birmingham Six),
Mullin never made it much higher in government than "under-secretary in the
department of folding deckchairs". Yet his diaries, commencing with the death
of John Smith and concluding the day Gordon Brown left office, provide an
unobstructed, ringside view of the rise and fall of New Labour.
Now the diaries have been adapted by Michael Chaplin into a fast-paced and
very funny theatrical entertainment, in which Mullin frequently appears to be
a lone swimmer paddling against a tide of self-interest. Accomplishments are
few, though he takes some pride in banishing speedboats from ...
Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/91316250?client_source=feed&format=rss
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