A View From the Foothills
by Chris Mullin
590pp, Profile Books, £20

Reading Chris Mullin's diaries of the Blair years it is hard to imagine that the author was once a zealous, Bennite firebrand, editor of Tribune during the turbulent early 1980s and author of a handy guide on how to deselect your MP.

As he observes the idiocies of contemporary political life, the little defeats and victories of the dogsbody in John Prescott's ministerial team, the vanities of the trade (his own included) and the savage cynicism of the 24/7 media, Mullin's tone is mild, ironical, even world-weary. Was this the campaigning journalist who sprang the Birmingham Six? Yet today's Mullin is still discernibly the same man, his disdain for New Labour jargon and double-counting ("Gordon's idea," explains Jack Straw) matched by his contempt for Old Labour platitudes, a wry, humorous detachment sustaining him through perpetual doubt. It is a very attractive worm's-eye view.

The strong beliefs are still there, but Mullin does not wear them on his sleeve. He prefers bikes to Heathrow (expand it? "not if I can help it") and has a comic, private battle with the government car pool over his refusal to have an official car. They get him for it.

When in 2003 he votes against Tony Blair over Iraq ("the spooks are livid about the sixth-form essay on Saddam's chemical arsenal cooked up by No 10"), he does so reluctantly: "I want The Man to be right. In the end that would be best for all of us."

Like many of Blair's grand schemes, it doesn't work out. So Mullin records an often-melancholy tale in which, so he notes, one well-publicised cock-up matters more than a dozen Labour successes. In the background are always his Sunderland South constituents, factories opening (and closing), sad refugees, harassed teachers driven mad by Blunkett's targets, rising teen heroin abuse.

Fortunately this author of a televised novel (A Very British Coup) is a lively writer with a good ear for the telling phrase and a fondness for flowers. As he admits, his uxorious domestic life cannot match Alan Clark's, but he is funnier and shrewder. At times the self-deprecation palls, but these diaries are a pleasure to read, full of gentle humour.

Blair is referred to throughout as The Man, occasionally as Our Great Leader, though Mullin both likes and sees through him. He records Blair's advice to David Miliband when he wins his seat: "Go around smiling at everyone and get other people to shoot them." Cherie's words to Mullin when he quits office in 2001 are: "You're free - and poorer," a revealing reaction. When Peter Mandelson is sacked (again), Michael Meacher, Mullin's selfish and publicity-seeking immediate boss, whispers: "Isn't it wonderful?" Don't gloat, replies our chronicler.

Mullin realises his own weakness: he's incapable of hating anyone for more than half an hour. Add to that a lack of personal ambition and he is doomed to rise no higher (twice) than what he calls "under-secretary for folding deckchairs".

Before 1999, when the published diaries start, he had been the influential chair of the home affairs select committee, independent-minded, regularly consulted by ministers. Snatched reluctantly ("my instinct is to decline") off the street by Blair to work for Prezza, whom he does not like, Mullin spends two years doing largely pointless tasks, including laughing at the chaotic Prescott's jokes ("the court of Boris Yeltsin"), before resigning.

Restored to his committee and to the ranks of the backbench shop stewards, he sees Blair weekly for up to two hours; not what happened when he was a minister. Yet Blair lures him back, this time to a proper job as Africa minister. Again he lasts two years, before the diaries end with his dismissal by the ever-cheerful Blair.

Here then is this book's important insight: that an experienced backbencher with courage and views can do more good than ever-larger armies of dogsbodies on the payroll, bit-part players in Yes Minister. Mullin reports how Prescott overturns one of his understrapper's few decisions, but civil servants proceed as if he hadn't.

During the steep learning process he warms to Prezza (not to Gordon), finally discovers how to send emails and (no irony here) meets the "great Mandela". A pity that Mullin's campaign to curb leylandii hedges is blocked by No 10 busybodies. But Tony was worried about adverse publicity in Middle England.