Paul Flynn is a very colourful Labour MP. He also writes a very good blog. And my company is publishing his memoirs on 4 March. Today they are serialised in the Mail on Sunday's Review section. It's online HERE.
When Paul appraoched me about commissioning the book, I was in two minds. I love political memoirs, but they don't have an excellent sales record, it has to be said. But when I read the manuscript all my doubts were cast aside. It's a cracking read, full of humour, but also laced with tales of personal tragedy. He's also very open and honest about his views of fellow politicians.
You can pre-order the book HERE.
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Note that according to Flynn himself, the Mail headline presentation today is "a travesty". He goes on "Nowhere do I denounce 'most MPs'" as the Mail puts it. As usual, we are getting exaggeration here from the Mail about the Council of Europe, which Flynn praises as an institution.
MPs' memoirs going cheap. Bear market. All selling at once. Buyers tiring.
Cut to the chase - is it juicy or not?
"He also writes a very good blog"
As well as re-writing the comments of others to it when he feels in the mood.
Did he mention being annoyed at having to do the job we pay him for when he wanted to watch Obama's inauguration instead? ;-)
And did he mention taking the taxpayer for £10k in defending himself from a libel charge ... which he lost? ;-)
I was reading the Mail on Sunday today, wondering who they were about to “hang out to dry” today and whether or not I know them. There is a horrible voyeuristic addiction which makes me do this. An addiction which is shared by many people in this country.
No such character assassination today but I then came upon the serialisation of the Paul Flynn memoirs.
Flynn has been on the radar recently for it was he who was put up, presumably by The Labour Party, to suggest that certain defendants should not utilise a possible defence available to them.
In his memoirs he launches into Tony Blair and Harriet Harman (and presumably, by extension ,Diane Abbot) for the great crime of seeking the best education for their children.
Then, to cap it all, he suggests that Quentin Davies is a great hero for taking on a Soviet soldier in the Baltic States.
I have had enough of the generation of politicians who think it is sensible to sacrifice the futures of their own children for the sake of the party or who think that a person should go to prison, instead of relying on defences provided by law, again for the good of the party.
I want to take you back to 1929. Many of the Paul Flynn’s of this world are sitting in Moscow and Leningrad smugly imagining that they have built a new world for all, based on such ascetic “principles” as propounded by Flynn. These “Old Bolsheviks” think of themselves as building a New World Order. A great new age where the old bureaucracies won’t matter. Meanwhile, an insignificant Georgian has quietly seizing control of the bureaucracy and is about to prove that it matters more than anything. The Georgian was Josef Stalin.
Fast forward to 1937 and those smug “Old Bolsheviks” are becoming an endangered species but many still hold to Flynn like views. NKVD interrogators have worked out that some of these people will confess to anything, in order to help build communism. You must sacrifice yourself for the good of the party they are told and many do.
Once Stalin had got rid of the Paul Flynn’s of this world there was none of the ridiculous talk about self sacrifice amongst the Communist Party elite and soon the old military ranks were restored and the chauffeur driven cars were doled out and the children of all good communists (ie the party leaders) went to the best schools. A superpower was built and all was set for Mr Davies confrontation in the Baltic State.
Of course, the analogy is not quite correct. Flynn and his mates are British MPs, so they won’t actually be doing any of the sacrificing themselves, you understand. It will be their children and their fellow MPs who will do it for them.
I have very strong views about this because I was sent to a secondary modern school, despite my father having been to Chaterhouse. The experience was not pleasant and there was relentless peer pressure to conform to the lowest common denominator. I stood out against the pressure and eventually got into a better state school and good university and then into a top profession but the experiences of the past never leaves you.
PS. John Major obviously valued Quentin Davies, as he “coughed up” for Davies to go on a suicide mission to the Baltic States. No wonder Davies eventually left the Conservative Party.
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