As members of Labour's shadow front bench in opposition you at present see each other all

As members of Labour's shadow front bench in opposition, you at present see each other all the time Some of you even talk to one another At any rate, you get the opportunity to do so. In government, ministers are split up and kept away from each other, each batch sequestered in a separate departmental building.Unless extremely strong-minded, you may come to regard life in these buildings as the be-all and end-all of your existence. Yet, out there is the rest of the government and, believe it or not, the real world. Ministers should understand that the success of their own department's line, in isolation, may not only not be the best for the government and the people, it may in fact be the worst.One colleague in the Labour government, involved in a dispute with me over policy, demanded that we meet not in my department but in his, or at any rate on what he called "neutral ground".

I pointed out that we were not participants in some armistice negotiation, but colleagues who should be co-operating for the common good. This idea, at first quite novel to him, eventually made sense; we came to a decision that was good for thousands of workers (and, incidentally or not so very incidentally, good for the Government).2 Beware the disease of Ministerialitis. After 18 years of being an opposition dogsbody, getting to be called "Minister" numerous times every day may give you ideas above your station. Being a minister is an honour, but it is an honour that has come your way fortuitously and may equally fortuitously be taken away.When John Parker, MP for Dagenham, became the first member of Clement Attlee's administration to be sacked, Parker had the temerity to ask Attlee why.

Attlee, notably taciturn, mumbled, "Not up to the job."Being up to the job as a minister involves remembering that there is a whole universe that does not care (or even know) whether you are a minister or not - unless you actually do something which improves that world, however marginally, or unless, by being big-headed or incompetent, or both, you do something that infuriates the world.3 Remember you are an MP. Quite near to your Department is the House of Commons, filled with hundreds of colleagues in your own party who believe, quite possibly rightly, that it is they and not you who should be the minister. Ted Leadbitter, MP for Hartlepool and nemesis of Anthony Blunt, was convinced that he rather than anyone else in the world ought to be Secretary of State for Defence. Frank Tomney, obscure (though not obscure enough) MP for Hammersmith, in the interstices of blackguarding homosexuals and demanding the death penalty, never forgave Harold Wilson for not making him Foreign Secretary.So treat your MP colleagues courteously, and pay grave attention to what they say, even if it is nonsense. At night, as you glide by the taxi-stand in your ministerial limousine, stop and ask backbenchers if any of them are going your way.

After all, they have stayed late to vote to sustain the government of which you and, by perverse ill chance, not they, are a member.4 Remember you are Labour. Some ministers believe that their appointment to office requires them to abandon anything so pretty as partisan considerations. Yet what was the point of your party winning the election, if not to offer something distinctively different from that of your rejected opponents? So remember that your party exists and should be heeded (even if not invariably truckled to).Spread the word about the Government's high qualities (and your own concomitant virtues) among the party membership in the constituencies. You will find them predominantly sane, quite frequently sensible and sometimes possessing better ideas than your own.

It was a group of party supporters, brought to meet me from Bristol by Dawn Primarolo, who gave me ideas for a Defence Diversification Agency to deal with the industrial consequences of disarmament.5 Remember your constituents They elect you They can get rid of you Do not take them for granted. One of my wiser parliamentary colleagues made the point succinctly: "You can be an MP without being a minister, but you can't be a minister without being an MP." One young fellow, appointed to junior ministerial office by Jim Callaghan, told his constituents that they would henceforth be seeing less of him. When the opportunity arose, at the very next election, they decided to see nothing of him at all and removed him from what had seemed to be a safe seat.Returning from a ministerial trip to the United States to attend a tenants' association meeting in Manchester, I was told by one of my forthright female constituents, "I saw you on TV gallivanting in America." She then added, supplying the ultimate accolade: "Still, I've got to say it, we do see you here."6 Be boss. By this I do not mean that you should be dominating, swaggering, bullying.