Closure

Closure

Making decisions is my job. Everyday. Big, small, consequential, I decided I like it. Sometimes the impact is immediate, the credit is yours alone, sometimes the impact is downstream, you’re long gone, in a new post when the decision converts. The press is still at my door. ‘You need to talk to the new incumbent,’ I say helpfully, ‘it’s not my brief now’ I add as my government car glides to the new ministry.

This job, let me be clear, isn’t the job I really wanted. We are all the same: Home Secretary, Chancellor, FO is what we all want. I mean what do you come into politics for?

Education. Kind of half way up, make a mark and you are en route to the Big Three, create a mess, you hit the ceiling then the floor, turn off the lights on your way out. Anyone name the last Secretary of State for Education?

The ministerial red boxes are the bane of the job, if you allow things to go that way. You need to start the way you want. I told my Parliamentary Private Secretary on day one, keep it light. I hate reading. A BlackBerry flick is enough for anyone.

It was a quiet Saturday morning in the constituency. The afternoon was looking up. I’d skimmed the white paper on selection for primary schools, a tract by some professor who thought Universities should take anyone, an update on the library closure programme. Progress. Libraries were pretty easy for us, usual brief: digital age, everyone in it together, luddites, anachronism. I was amazed how easy they were to close, ticking them off the way fighter pilots used to chalk kills on their cockpit.

The final memo to read was from the press office- ‘how do you want to play this minister?’ It was the end of the programme, the last public library in England was to be closed on Monday. I was deeply proud of this one. ‘Put it together ,’ I red penned into the memo margin.

This wasn’t going to be a work of fiction. I’d called for a big splash, maximum photo op, a Monday to like. My car approached the library building, the crowd was huge.

‘Stop the car here I said to my security, I’ll walk the last steps, say a few words to the gathering,’ it was my moment, history out of the book onto the street. Security, who needs it at times like this.