What I Am Reading: "A Very British Coup" by Chris Mullin

I read this in honor of the Labour Party leadership election, which takes place by mail and will be wrapped up on Saturday. Keir Starmer is apparently going to win. I say that mainly as a time capsule in case he does not, in which case armchair historians of the future will have the opportunity to clamber back over the records in search of who the hell Keir Starmer was.

This was recommended to me as the best British politics novel. It was written by a left-wing journalist and Labour Party activist in 1982, in the first term of Margaret Thatcher. Chris Mullin went on to be an MP for 23 years; representing Sunderland South, traditionally the first seat to report its results on election night. The book is interesting as an artifact of '80s left-wing defeatism, from when the forces of conservatism seemed triumphant and all causes seemed lost. It reminds me a lot of the movie Bob Roberts, from a decade later, where another conspiracy in high places brings about the downfall of a left-wing candidate, with many cynical references to South American coups along the way.

Unlike that movie's Senator Brickley Paiste, the left-wing politician in this book is not a hapless victim. That leader is Harry Perkins, a reliable working-class MP who takes the Labour Party leadership by storm on the strength of constituent votes, and then sweeps to victory in the 1989 election after a decade of deindustrialization, financial ruin, and urban unrest under a Conservative-Social Democratic coalition government (a slightly informed projection of the first years of Thatcherism). Immediately after Perkins’ win, the opposition gets to work. We don't hear much from the actual Conservative Party, however; the opposition consists of a murderer's row of civil servants, press barons, and American backers straight out of a Trumpist's most fevered Deep State fantasy.

First, Britain's troubled financial situation is leveraged in an attempt to restrict the radicalism of the government under an IMF loan, but this is foiled after the Foreign Minister undertakes a secret trip to obtain loans from the Algerians, Libyans ("the colonel who replaced Gadaffi a couple years earlier"), and Iraqis. This coup saves the Sterling and dismays only the Zionists, who worry about what the government may have traded on Israel policy ("only what's in our programme," we are assured, "a homeland for the Palestinians.") The establishment takes its revenge after DI5 leaks to the press the Foreign Minister's affair, and he resigns from the government. After this, union unrest is fomented by the leader of the energy workers, groomed more for establishment favor than organized labor's larger interests (the workers themselves support the Perkins government). Despite an eventual resolution, this puts the Perkins government on thin ice; a full pressure campaign is brought to bear when they try to enact their plan to remove American bases from Britain, with backing from the American government. His popularity and support sinking, Perkins is finished off when a nuclear incident and affair come back to haunt him from his early career. He is sequestered away from his cabinet, and a replacement PM is chosen by the MPs, not the party constituency.

The sides in the conflict are drawn in a cartoonish way. The permanent secretaries, press lords, and spooks have their full Establishment resumes listed upon their introduction, and are contemptuous of democracy and of the common worker. All are overweight cigar smokers. Tory girls don't read until their boyfriends introduce them to left-wing ideas (other than Joan Cook, Labour’s Home Secretary - based on Barbara Castle?). Mendacious military briefings on the balance of power in Europe are easily picked apart as biased. Labour party traitors are ambitious strivers with a peerage on the horizon. It is useful to be reminded that the left was every bit as susceptible to conspiratorial thinking as the Trump faction is today, or as heavy-handed as an Ayn Rand novel in characterization. I had fun regardless; the novel is a tight political thriller, economical with background and characterization.

On the other hand, there were active, if ultimately fruitless, talks about a forced removal of the Wilson government, unconfirmed at the time of the book's writing but apparently widely rumored in Labour circles. The book also has a heavy focus on financial policy and an organized American effort to devalue the Sterling and cripple the British economy, as well as foot-dragging on demobilizing their forces in Britain. This reminds me of a quote that a friend sent once, about how similar pressure was applied by Eisenhower to end the Suez Crisis, causing Britain (paraphrasing) "to realize that they did not have control of their own foreign policy anymore." (I am told this was taken from a retrospective in a Max Hastings book). I am not a conspiracy theorist, but any poli sci undergrad learns that bureaucracies are not fully subject to partisan control, and develop their own interests; and there are many ways to bring international pressure on allies and enemies alike. I do wonder, however, why the book’s situation reports never have it work on the Dutch.

Apparently just last year Mullin wrote a follow-up, The Friends of Harry Perkins, about Brexit. This will go on my reading list; it would be interesting to see how this writer's views on politics have evolved after almost a quarter-century in the House of Commons; as radical leftist who served in the Blair government, and after Jeremy Corbyn brought, as claimed by at least one new edition of the book, the story to life (without any of Perkins’ competence brought to bear). It is not often that a writer provides his readers with such a straightforward document to analyze. Will it be the next best British political novel?