CHRIS MULLIN A view from the foothills ***(*)

I'm not sure I've read any political diaries before this one, but I enjoyed it.

I've always liked Chris Mullin - a very decent, principled man of the left. And this book shows him to have a lovely self-deprecating wit as well.

It covers the middle years of New Labour.

At the start, Mullin is appointed a Junior Minister in Transport and the Environment. He hates it. He's got far less power than he had as a backbencher, chairing an influential committee. He fights the system that tries to insist he has a ministerial car, when he wants to carry on taking the bus. They let him do that - but the car still has to be paid for! They also try to insist that he takes his red boxes home at the weekend and has a pager so that he can be contacted - but he refuses as weekends are sacrosanct and for his family.

There are lots of fascinating (and horrifying) insights into what life is like in government. He's very funny on the mind-numbing speeches that apparatchiks have written and he's expected to read.

He was the only Labour MP to vote against the Iraq War and subsequently be given a ministerial post by Tony Blair.

I ended up liking him even more and feeling sad that he's no longer an MP.