Something in commons but Benn's is a life less ordinary

Free at Last! Diaries 1991-2001 by Tony Benn(Hutchinson, (pounds) 25) Diaries 1987-1992 by Edwina Currie(Little, Brown, (pounds) 18.99)

NOTHING dates like a diary, especially political diaries. Tony Benn's diaries date back to 1940, since when he has poured over events at Westminster in Pooterish detail. Everything is included, nothing omitted. He is a tape recorder whose batteries are never exhausted. So intoxicated is he with his own take on events that he has a full-time editor, Ruth Winstone, whose job is to trail around after him making notes and knocking his midnight rambles into shape. She selects the material to be included and has "complete independence and integrity". Wisely, she wields her blue pencil savagely, leaving just 20% of the original. Nevertheless this seventh instalment runs to more than 700 pages.

For political anoraks, this is nirvana. Benn revels in the role of the outcast, a prophet who, had he ever become leader, would have led his party into the electoral wilderness. In earlier volumes his bte noir was Michael Foot; here it is Neil Kinnock, whom Benn misses no opportunity to knock in revenge for the expulsion of the hard left from the party. Yet when Labour lose the 1992 election, Benn calls Kinnock to commiserate without a hint of shame. Then he addresses him as Neil. Soon, however, he is reinstated as Kinnock and the backbiting resumes.

No doubt there was much to dislike about Kinnock but he did take the first steps to make Labour electable. His successor, John Smith, was more to Benn's liking and he gives a moving account of his funeral. As if highlighting how quickly things change in politics it was possible in 1994 for Benn to mention Derry Irvine without having a clue who he was. Fast forward three years to the next time his name crops up; Tony Blair is in Downing Street and Irvine is Lord Chancellor.

Benn charts Blair's progress like a weatherman trying to predict if one should carry an umbrella. At the end of 1998, with the resignation of Peter Mandelson after he took a loan from Geoffrey Robinson, he hails the end of New Labour. He donates (pounds) 100 to Ken Livingstone's campaign to become mayor of London, watches Morse, sends countless press releases and attends innumerable meetings. He fights and wins two elections before standing down from parliament in 2001 after 50 years as an MP, "the longest-serving Labour MP there has ever been in the Labour Party". There are worse epitaphs. Overshadowing everything, however, is the death of his wife. Fittingly, the last word is left on his pager from a close friend, saying: "There is life after Parliament."

Not every politician would agree with that, including, Edwina Currie. Her diaries cover five years and would no doubt pass without remark were it not for the disclosure of her four-year affair with John Major. Even then there would be little reason to read them had he not climbed up the greasy beanstalk to become PM. Currie, like Benn, is prone to tears, he being a sentimentalist, she frustrated and lonely. A good week for her is getting her name in the Sunday Times and the Express mentioning a possible recall to government. The furthest up the tree she got was junior minister, after which she fell from grace when she opened her gob and got egg on her face.

She is not a compulsive diarist, like Benn, or entertaining, like Gyles Brandreth. She writes like a teenager seeking attention. She is ambitious but too pushy even for parliamentary circles. She has few friends in the Commons and has to resort to phoning around to find a lunch companion. Her relationship with her husband is unsatisfactory (he is a drinker and unsympathetic to politicians) and she can't connect with her two daughters. She thinks Benn is "dotty" and detects in Jeffrey Archer "a nicer and more serious person" beneath the bullshitter. On her resignation, Thatcher gives her a cuddle before sending her to gulag in Derbyshire.

The affair with Major - or "B" as she inexplicably calls him - is written about largely in retrospect. Currie, it seems, did not keep a diary throughout its passage. She says she seduced him. "I loved him very dearly, and I still do, and always will," she says, like a Georgette Heyer heroine. She sends him a Valentine card and he is "tickled pink". When she is in the bath, he quizzes her on religion. The last mention she makes of "B" is in 1991, when she confesses all to Tony Newton, then secretary of state for social security. That he managed to keep the secret for so long is nothing short of miraculous. The life peerage he received in 1997 was the least he deserved.

Copyright 2002
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