As I prepare to drive down to Hay-on-Wye for the first day of the famous literary festival, I am struck by the reports that former Labour ministers are busy hammering their keyboards or dictating to their ghost writers, political biographies which threaten or promise to give us the true story of the New Labour years.
This pre-supposes that such a ‘true story’ actually exists and that it is capable of being told. It also pre-supposes that there is someone, sufficiently articulate and untainted by the thirteen years of sleaze and spin, who is capable of telling it.
However, the prospect of informed insight into the Blair-Brown feud, the successive reincarnations of Peter Mandelson and our international role as George W’s poodle is quite mouth-watering.
Currently, I have a bookcase almost full of political biographies from 1979 –1992 which I really must clear out in order to make room for the latest revisionist histories. Why can’t I wean myself off this never-ending and ultimately pointless desire to understand how this country is governed? I must drop my delusion that reading political biography will eventually lead to some sort of enlightenment. Deep down I know that it won’t, there will simply be ever more contradictions. Yet… somehow I might, just might read one that actually will reveal something that is new and valuable, I will have some Damascene moment that makes me say: ”So that’s why he did it! Now I understand!”
By the way, how does one become a ghost writer? It might suit me in my declining years.
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