‘Prince Andrew’s official trade missions were like rugby club tours’

In the third exclusive extract of his secret political diaries, Chris Mullin reveals all about being stared at by a grumpy late Queen, a faux pas with Judy Murray... and his fears for Prince Harry’s future

‘Lunch with the Queen. Well, a slight exaggeration ... She was at the next table’ (Getty/PA)

A Labour MP for 23 years and minister under Tony Blair, Chris Mullin became a cherished political diarist thanks to his blend of candour and lack of interest in the pomp of high office.

In the Commons, he was a self-effacing junior minister best known for eschewing official chauffeur-driven cars and for representing Sunderland South, the solid Labour inner-city constituency whose result is almost always first to be declared on election night.

His first three diaries won praise from critics for being “wickedly indiscreet”, “a treat to be savoured” and being “the sharpest and most revealing political diaries since Alan Clark’s”. This fourth volume, serialised exclusively here, details life after retirement from Westminster in 2010.

“I have never been much more than a fleabite on the body politic,” he writes, recalling how a former colleague peered over his glasses and said: ‘Didn’t you use to be Chris Mullin?’ “‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘That will be the title of volume four’.”

2012

Wednesday 18 July

Durham Castle.

Lunch with the Queen. Well, a slight exaggeration. Myself and about 100 others. She was at the next table. I caught her staring at me during the national anthem and half-wondered whether someone had tipped her off that she has a walk-on part in my diaries, including an account of an incident which the Mail on Sunday had plastered all over the front of its review section, about which she won’t have been too pleased. (In his earlier memoirs Mullin described how a privy counsellor friend had told him how the Queen sent a convicted murderer to the gallows with the words, “Fancy appealing to me for mercy. Do you know he even shot the dog?” The man had appealed to the palace against a death sentence for murdering the governor of Bermuda in 1973).

After she left the lunch, I poked my nose into the room where she and the Duke of Edinburgh had rested briefly beforehand. Sure enough, there was the statutory half-empty glass of gin and Dubonnet.

2015

Wednesday 18 March

To Buckingham Palace, where the Queen laid on a reception to mark the 50th anniversary of the Churchill Trust. The old couple are in remarkable shape. Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s former private secretary, told me the Duke once remarked to him: “Charm is a greatly overrated virtue.”

2017

Thursday 4 May

The Duke of Edinburgh has announced that he is withdrawing from public life. A cantankerous old buffer he may be, but you have to admire someone who considers 96 a reasonable retirement age.

Chris Mullin was the Labour MP for Sunderland South until 2010 (PA)

2018

Sunday 6 May

To a literary festival at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, the Adam mansion rescued by the Prince of Wales. At lunch I found myself sitting next to Judy Murray, mother of tennis champion Andy. She has a strong accent. “I have to check on my appearance,” I understood her to say as she was leaving. “You don’t need to check on your appearance,” I responded. What she had actually said was: “I have to check on my parents.”

2019

Sunday 20 January

Prince Philip has been spotted driving without a seatbelt, three days after he was in what could have been a very serious accident. He took delivery of a new car within about 24 hours of the incident, while the injured were still in hospital. I was inclined to be sympathetic at first, but this is a provocation too far. Time the silly old buffer was relieved of his licence.

2020

Wednesday 8 January

Prince Harry and Meghan have announced that they wish to become semi-detached from the royal family and live for much of the year in Canada or the US. Despite their apparently golden lives, they appear to regard themselves as victims. Harry has always been vulnerable because of what happened to his mother. My guess is that Meghan, bringing with her a Californian level of entitlement and all the hang-ups of a “woke” American woman, is the cuckoo in the nest. The couple say they intend to seek financial independence while at the same time keeping one foot inside the royal family. We will see how that works out. I foresee a future involving high-end therapists and soul-baring memoirs, possibly ending in estrangement and loneliness.

2021

Monday 8 March

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been parading their victimhood in a much-trailed interview with Oprah Winfrey. Meghan clearly the main mover, Harry very much second fiddle. She played all the cards: woman, race, mental health. How long, I wonder, before the marriage ends in tears and Harry comes limping home?

Tuesday 9 March

Ms Markle’s allegation that, when she was pregnant, a member of the royal family speculated about her baby’s likely skin colour has gone viral. Although we don’t know what was said or by whom, her version of events has been accepted without question and every professional anti-racist in the country is pronouncing on the subject. Even if true, depending on the context, there is another possibility. I am married to a Vietnamese woman and from time to time, over the years, people have remarked, without being in the least offensive, that they can see evidence of Vietnamese blood in Sarah. The palace has issued a conciliatory little statement which says simply that “while recollections may vary” they will address the issue within the family, of which, it adds, Harry and Meghan remain much-loved members. Oh yeah?

Friday 12 March

The public space is getting narrower for us men of a certain age. Self-styled anti-racists are being given airtime to argue that no white person is entitled to express scepticism about Meghan’s version of events because ours is not her “lived experience”.

Monday 15 March

The fallout from the Meghan interview still reverberates. A poll indicates that while those in the 18 to 24 age bracket are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Meghan, the opposite is true among those aged 65 and over. Which broadly reflects the division of opinion between Emma Mullin (Mullin’s daughter) and her dad.

Saturday 10 April

The BBC has gone into overdrive with its coverage of the death of Prince Philip. His was a big life which deserved to be commemorated, but this is overkill. As someone said: “Thank fuck for Netflix.”

Saturday 17 April

The Duke of Edinburgh was interred in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Most poignant of all, the Queen, a tiny, hunched woman in black, sitting alone in front of the flag-draped coffin, quietly saying goodbye to her husband of 73 years, knowing that she will shortly be following him into the Great Silence that awaits us all, high or low.

2022

Thursday 13 January

The Queen has stripped Prince Andrew of all his honorary titles in anticipation of a messy legal action involving serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has long been a national embarrassment. When I was at the Foreign Office, I recall one of our ambassadors complaining that a trade mission he had headed was “like a rugby club outing”.

Thursday 2 June

The jubilee. Floating above it all, the subject of this four-day jamboree. Radiant, cheerful, inscrutable. Universally respected, if not always loved.

It is said that her father advised her to choose her words carefully because, when she became Queen, everyone she met would remember whatever she said to them for the rest of their lives. In public at least, Elizabeth II has rarely said anything memorable.

Dogs and horses are the only things that appear to excite her. Just occasionally one glimpses evidence that behind that apparently bland exterior there lurks a sense of mischief, not to mention withering sarcasm. “Someone important?” she enquired when Clare Short’s pager went off during a Privy Council audience. And my favourite: the alleged reply from the palace to Margaret Thatcher’s suggestion, after they appeared together in colours which clashed, that in future perhaps their private offices should liaise in order to avoid it happening again: “Her Majesty does not notice what other people are wearing.”

Would we be happier or better off if we dispensed with the fairytale and replaced the monarchy with a President Blair or Heseltine? Somehow I don’t think so. Best leave well alone. After all, we are not short of bigger issues to worry about.

Thursday 8 September

Just after 12.30, a statement from the palace: “The Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health.” Widely interpreted as meaning that she is dying. I never thought I would, but I feel quite emotional.

Early this evening another statement: “The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.” Amen.

Extracted from ‘Didn’t You Use to Be Chris Mullin? Diaries 2010–2022’ by Chris Mullin, published by Biteback on 11 May at £25. © Chris Mullin 2023. To order a copy for £20, visit www.bitebackpublishing.com