Diaries are funny things. As Tony Blair remarks to Chris Mullin midway through A Walk on Part, they’re subjective and self-serving. And of course the author always has the last word. Being a blogger of course, I’d know nothing of such things! Ahem.

I don’t keep a personal diary myself. Frankly a daily list my my humiliations, limitations and failures might be too much even for me to take. I am glad that Chris Mullin kept a diary though. And even more glad that Michael Chaplin has adapted this for the stage.

I’m in a bit of a New Labour kick at the moment, doing a great deal of reading on our recent past to see how it is shaping our present and haunting our future. So when offered a ticket to see A Walk on Part, I leapt at the opportunity.

The play is the story of the New Labour government from 1997 to 2010. It’s a story from a very personal perspective, and all the better for that. It mixes personal ambitions, obsessions and reflections from a close distance.

The staging and casting is sparse. Four actors play dozens of characters each on a set comprised of eight chairs and an under-utilised bank of television screens. John Hodgkinson is extraordinary as Mullin. I think I only realised how good he was when he took a curtain call, and I realised how much he had previously been physically embodying Mullin as he relaxed into himself again.

In many ways of course, Mullin is not the central character, “The Man” (as Mullin refers to Blair) is. You can sense Mullin’s enormous admiration for Blair’s talents throughout. That never leaves him, even when Mullin is seeing those very talents leading Blair in very wrong and hubristic directions. It also doesn’t leave him over the many occasions when Blair is shafting him. He still inspires Mullin’s loyalty, admiration and even love. Others, especially Hillary Armstrong, Jack Straw and Gordon Brown don’t fare so well.

Inevitably, any drama about the New Labour years has a large focus on the disaster that was Iraq. Mullin’s rebelled over Iraq, but clearly did so with a heavy heart. That it wasn’t then the clear-cut decision that many have liked to claim retrospectively is handled admirably and refreshingly honestly. There is a little self-congratulation, but no grandstanding.

The most moving scenes in the play detail Mullin’s relationship with a Ukrainian family seeking asylum. The heart-wrenching letters written by Sasha, one on being removed from Sunderland and the other while in detention at Harmondsworth exemplify both the individual tragedy unfolding and the horror of a lawmaker finding himself completely powerless to help.

Mullin makes it clear that on the whole the New Labour government did a powerful amount of good. They didn’t do enough – it’s unclear whether he believes enough is even possible – but they did transform lives in Sunderland and Britain.

This isn’t a play written for loyalists or oppositionalists and it’s the better for that. But anyone wanting to understand Labour then and the journey to Labour now could do a great deal worse than to get themselves to the SoHo theatre for a View from the Foothills.

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