[A-List] Tony Benn on New Labour

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Benn in doghouse over memoirs in Mail

Michael White
Friday October 4, 2002
The Guardian

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and their cabinet colleagues have received the
usual hail of abuse from Labour's oldest media enemy this week. But
accusations of shallow and cynical dictatorship have come from an
unlikely contributor to the pages of the Daily Mail - Tony Benn.

The former cabinet minister and hero to sections of the left has allowed
his publishers to auction serialisation rights to the latest volume of
his diaries - Free at Last! Diaries 1999-2001 - to the paper routinely
referred to by Michael Foot as The Forgers Gazette.

Though most delegates and even ministers seem unaware of the strange
alliance and the book has done a roaring trade at conference, it has
resulted in some Labour MPs being bitterly critical and Mr Benn telling
the annual leftwing Tribune rally: "Don't believe everything you read in
the Daily Mail."

The payment involved is likely to have been between £50,000 and
£100,000, insiders say, less than Mo Mowlam's memoirs which the Mail
ran during last year's conference season and much less than Edwina
Currie's diaries for which the Times is said to have paid £300,000.

The result has been a generous spread over four days, two covering what
the Mail labelled The Blair Terror, one day on the death of Mr Benn's
wife, Caroline, and yesterday his relations with Ali G who tricked him
into a spoof interview which Mr Benn handled deftly.

But it was his relentless criticism of Labour colleagues which has
provoked anger. The diaries confirm admiration for John Smith, but
detestation for Neil Kinnock, Mr Blair and the modernisers.

In 1993 Mr Benn records a speech by the future chancellor as so "vacuous
that I wouldn't appoint that man as a research assistant". Peter
Mandelson is called "some sort of Rasputin", Mr Blair manipulative and
insubstantial. Over the years his views intensify.

Questioned this week in Blackpool Mr Benn told inquirers that the
Guardian had not bid, the Times had lost interest and the deal with the
Mail was done by Hutchinsons, his publishers, not him.

Some MPs claimed that, as a result, Mr Foot, a favourite target of Mail
bile, is not speaking to him. Though the Mail also bought damaging
"memoirs" from Martin Sixsmith and Labour veteran Joe Haines for use
this week the Currie affair had blunted their impact too.