In Britain, Labour's death rattle is being ably abetted by its leading figures with their rush into print, writes Michael Parsons
'Everyone has a book in them" is a popular Irish saying. And it's true. However, most people should keep that book to themselves because it's very rarely worth writing, let alone publishing. But in Britain's post-Diana, vulgar, let-it-all-hang-out, feel-my-pain, look-at-and-listen-to-me culture, all such restraint has been abandoned.
Have you seen the photograph of Cherie Blair on the cover of her autobiography? There's no need to buy the recently-published Speaking for Myself- just pop down to the bargain basement of any bookshop (or check the shelves at Oxfam) to marvel at the power of airbrushing. The overweening vanity is just what you'd expect from the high queen of "New" Labour who's still spinning from beyond the political grave.
The book is further evidence of the astonishing egocentricity and lack of principle which the governing party across the sea has come to represent. It is yet another tiresome genre account of those tedious children of the 1960s who grew up and realised, to their horror, that they were wrong about almost everything but couldn't quite bring themselves to admit it. Faced with the unpalatable truth that their lives mirrored Thatcher's aphorism: "The facts of life do, invariably, turn out to be Tory" - they invented the newspeak of "the Third Way".
Though that didn't stop them from accumulating wealth, status and privilege. And treating the working classes with contempt - like all "socialists" who gain power.
Cherie played Madame Mao as the country was subjected to the Blairite cultural revolution. In one of many anecdotes which unwittingly, but fatally, damage her reputation, Mrs Blair recollects introducing a cabinet member to the late Princess Margaret: "Have you met Chris Smith, our culture secretary, Ma'am? And this is his partner." The princess replied: "Partner for what?" Mrs Blair retorted: "Sex, Ma'am." To Princess Margaret's credit she refrained from slapping Mrs Blair's brazen face.
The tricoteuse-in-chief isn't the only figure of "The Terror" to have rushed into print. Some of the most boring books ever published in Britain have rolled off the presses as a hotchpotch of "New" Labour figures have attempted to cash in before being consigned to the footnotes of history. And their dreary tomes, after a brief sojourn in the remaindered bins, are transported - in their thousands - to recycling centres.
The most unreadable is the wallowingly self-pitying The Blunkett Tapes: My Life in the Bear Pit, by David Blunkett who, incredibly, was once home secretary of the United Kingdom. This pathetic figure is only remembered for a farcical affair which provided a few days of light relief and tabloid titters. The Blair Years, Alastair Campbell's nauseating diaries, are quite simply worthy of Goebbels.
The Mr Blobby prize for dud political literature goes to Prezzaby John Prescott, a bumbling, inarticulate figure-of-fun and former deputy prime minister (hard to believe now). His book, which reveals that he suffered from bulimia (yawn), will be of little use to future historians except to cause puzzled head-scratching at how low Britain had sunk.
Possibly the most damning of the whole dismal crop - because it so vividly exposes the appalling shallowness of the entire "New" Labour "project" - is the aptly titled The Spin Doctor's Diaryby Lance Price, a former BBC political correspondent who worked at No 10 Downing Street. Here's a typical extract (from 1999): "Mo [Mowlam] is playing a ridiculous game, more concerned with her own popularity. She really is useless. She went on the Todayprogramme to discuss the Queen's Speech this week and not only failed to talk about fairness or enterprise, our chosen themes, but failed to deny that taxes were going up or that class sizes were rising and waiting lists [for hospital treatment] were getting longer. She is supposed to be in charge of improving our message delivery."
Gordon Brown, currently on holidays in Suffolk after the calamitous Glasgow East byelection, certainly won't be short of holiday reading. Though it's not the sort of stuff to revive his drooping spirit. "New" Labour is dying. The emperor has no clothes and the spinners can no longer weave the old spells.