MUSINGS FROM MULLIN

From A View From The Foothills - the diaries of Chris Mullin, MP for Sunderland and a junior minister during the Blair years. Have been struck that a number of his observations on politics could also be applied (good or bad) to the church... I post them as no more than food for thought.

WESTERN CHURCH LEADERSHIP?
What kind of politician am I? Had I been asked when I first went into Parliament, I might gibly have replied that I saw it as my mission 'to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable'. But over the years I learned that there is a more to politics than that. If you are to stand a chance of changing very much for the better, you have to be capable of forming a government and to do that you have to take with you a swathe of the comfortable. It follows, therefore, than in an age of majority affluence, any serious politician has to spend a fair amount of time attending to the needs of the comfortable. (p.xii)

EXACTLY HOW THE CHURCH FEELS
To Harrow to deliver my 'Why Politics Matters' speech to about 50 sixth-formers.... Most of the questions were depressingly predictable. (Sample: 'Why is New Labour so obsessed with gays and fox hunting? Answer: 'We're not, but you seem to be.') (p.154)

MANAGEMENT SUFFOCATION
A valedictory message from one FCO Ambassador - Perpetual re-examination, renaming and reprioritising take their toll. Too much of our effort has gone into managing and studying ourselves with the result that the tools of our trade have rusted and bilateral relations have been downgraded. Substance is giving way to process. (p.517)

THE COMMITMENT-PHOBIC GENERATION
My agent, Kevin Marquis is quoted: 'When I joined the Labour Party, aged 19, I was one of the youngest members. I am now 41 and still one of the youngest.' (p96)

WHERE DID THE THEOLOGIANS GO?
The Cabinet, say Bruce (who has been a fly on the wall at Cabinet meetings for eight years), is composed mainly of people who are average. I challenged this on the grounds (a) that he and I were average and (b) that the world is forever being screwed up by brilliant people. He immediately conceded. 'What I mean is that so many of them have no discernable politics.' Those Bruce rates include Margaret Beckett, David Blunkett, Alan Johnson, John Prescott, John Reid and Jack Straw. The rest he dismisess as managerial types - capable, efficient, but without an idealogical anchor. (p526)