Who wants to be a millionaire? I do
Sion Simon
THE UNCONVENTIONAL MINISTER by Geoffrey Robinson Penguin, £16.99, pp. 256 It must be odd being as notoriously gen- erous as Geoffrey Robinson. By which I don't mean rich, and which I don't mean sarcastically. There's nothing funny, after all, about being known to be rich. People do it all the time and get away with it. But being notoriously generous must tempt strangers to react strangely. Certainly, when I sat down to read Mr Robinson's new book, his legendary largesse was the first thing which popped into my mind. So happily did it enshroud him that I could not help but think, 'I do hope I enjoy his book, that I may write an unexpectedly charitable review. Then perhaps he will send me a short but grateful note of thanks (this is a fantasy, remember), to which I will reply with grace and wit. We will have lunch, first tentatively, then on a strangely regular basis. To the amazement of every- one else in the Labour party, we will become friends. And then he will give me a million pounds.' I imagine half the people he meets are prone to similarly sordid flights of fancy.
Yet that is basically what passed between himself and his own surprise benefactress, Madame Joska Bourgeois. Except that, by all (other) accounts, the Belgian business- 'Dave, do you have any foreign films with large printsubtitles?' woman bequeathed quite a lot more than a single million. Even more amazingly, I believe him. Call me naïve — and if I had a tenner for every theory I've heard about where that money really came from I wouldn't thank him for his paltry million but I don't think Geoffrey Robinson is any more bent than any other businessman. In fact, considerably less so.
Just as I also don't have a shadow of a doubt that his famous generosity is gen- uine. To my recollection (which, I admit, is often flawed in such matters), I've never met the man. But I have several trusted friends who are trusted friends of his, and I'm convinced by their assurances that he is possessed, as people either are or they aren't, regardless of their wealth, of that true spirit of financial generosity which springs, more even than from kindness, from a lack of respect for money. In a rich man that can seem paradoxical, but I'm sure it's true of Mr Robinson.
On the whole, he comes out of his own book well, which is more unusual than it might seem. I think he's decent, honest, truthful and was a good and successful minister. Again, such views may partly be informed by what people say, but I also believe that most fair-minded and percep- tive readers coming cold to his book would draw broadly the same conclusions.
I may seem to be well on the way to my million pounds. But there is a snag. I am unable to recommend The Unconventional Minister to any other than Emeritus Profes- sors of Civil Service Minutiae on the grounds that to any but that select band it would be stupendously boring. As a sad beltway bastard myself, I found half of it moderately interesting, but I suspect that for the non-professional reader — however ultra-political and intellectually dry — that percentage would be nearer five.
This is in no sense a work of autobiogra- phy, or even any kind of conventional political memoir (see, he really is uncon- ventional). It is thematically organised in 17 relatively short chapters, the first three of ,/hich are entitled 'The Mandelson Affair', `Joska Bourgeois', and 'Brown's Team', and the last two 'Resignation' (though that should not be mistaken for evidence of chronology) and 'An Inspector [DTI, into his business affairs] Calls'. In between there is interesting (to the utterly obsessed) stuff on the 1994 Labour leader- ship election, the euro and 'Life at the Treasury', and surreally tedious stuff on corporate taxation, the Private Finance Ini- tiative, the genesis of the Individual Sav- ings Account, the royal yacht, Coventry City, the restructuring of British Aerospace and Rover, and so on. It's not badly writ- ten. In fact, I quite like his businesslike, if slightly over-literate, prose. But the content is crushingly boring.
My conclusions are: give the guy a break, he's a good egg. But, whatever you do, don't buy his book. He (probably still) doesn't need the money anyway.
Previous page
