My Dad, Donald, Was A

I Have Always Been Driven. I Have Always Believed In What I Believe Very Deeply.

Friends Have Suggested That I Am The Least Qualified Person To Talk About Happiness, Because I Am Often Down, And Sometimes Profoundly Depressed. But I Think That's Where My Qualification Comes From. Because To Know Happiness, It Helps To Know Unhappiness.

So Here Is One Of My Theories On Happiness: We Cannot Know If We Have Lived A Truly Happy Life Until The Very End. This View Of Life And Death Was Reinforced By My Close Witnessing Of The Buildup To The Death Of Philip Gould. Philip Was Without Doubt My Closest Friend In Politics. When He Died, I Felt Like I Had Lost A Limb.

I Never Met David Kelly, But I Knew From What He Told Other People That This Was Not His View. The Bbc Were Saying That Tony Blair Was Making Up Lies So That He Could Send Young Men And Women To War, Maybe To Die. I Think That If The Bbc Had Done Their Jobs Professionally, They'd Have Realised That You Couldn't Justify What They Said. And Nothing Has Emerged Since To Justify That Report.

If You Look At The Other People Around At The Time - Charles Clarke, Alistair Darling, Jack Straw - They've All Gone. And They're Not Old. What's Happened Is That Someone Who Is Quite Old - Jeremy Corbyn - Is Now Leader. We Have To Take Some Responsibility For That.