Theresa’s like a flaking old pit prop everyone knows will collapse... we are in meltdown... **** -A-DOODLE-DOO!
Withering put-downs. Outrageous gossip. And a ringside seat on the maelstrom of the May years... yes, it’s another serving of ex-minister Alan Duncan’s rollicking memoir
OUR third extract from Alan Duncan’s bombshell diaries opens as PM Theresa May is struggling desperately to pull off a Brexit deal. Her popularity among Tory MPs has sunk to an all-time low and several — including Boris Johnson — are plotting to replace her. But Foreign Office minister Duncan still supports her, at least in public . . .
Friday, September 14, 2018
REPORTS [of MP tom tugendhat] calling for a younger person to assume the crown of the Party when [May] goes. i wonder who he might have in mind?
All these people want to run before they can walk. they see politics as a perpetual battle for succession, and not as a journey of duty and obligation which may or may not bring political promotion. it’s only the promotion that matters to them.
these types have little concept of what it takes to be a minister, let alone the Prime Minister. Only a ghastly period on the Opposition front bench begins to help them qualify — and the way they are behaving, that might come sooner than they’d wish.
Thursday, September 20
OH [former Armed Forces minister] Mike Penning — what a dumbo. He is one of the dimmest MPs on our side. He has been over-promoted at every stage: as an MP, as a minister, as a rt Hon and as Sir Mike.
instead of being grateful for his good fortune, he lives in a permanent sulk that he isn’t in the Cabinet — God spare us when it’s bad enough already — and he has now done an interview attacking the PM. So thank you, Mike, you moronic, ungrateful, self-deluded, treacherous dunce.
Friday, September 21
[Brexiteer] Andrew Bridgen has apparently told our council leader that Boris has promised him (i.e. Bridgen) a position in his Cabinet if he becomes PM. Bloody hell!!! Australia here i come.
Saturday, September 22
[TREASURY secretary] Liz truss has completed her visit to the u.S. but it has been odd, unproductive and purposeless.
i sent an official a mock Diptel [diplomatic telegram] draft, daring them to issue it: ‘Chief Sec Liz truss visited. Her stay was deemed both timely and useful. But to whom is not wholly clear. the consulate met her request to see a game of American football, and go shopping. Our local hosts proved most welcoming, but expressed a degree of bemusement at the purpose of her visit, and indeed at the minister herself.’
Wednesday, September 26
LABOUR’S MP for Crewe & Nantwich, Laura Smith, has called for a general strike to bring down the government if there isn’t an immediate general election. What a stupid, silly, rancid little idiot.
unfortunately it’s not just her: the Labour benches are now populated by quite a number of rasping nasties — more often women than men — who haven’t moved on from their first year in the students’ union.
Monday, October 1
[NEW Foreign Secretary] Jeremy Hunt has drawn an unfortunate parallel in his speech likening the eu to a ‘Soviet-style prison’. it has backfired, particularly among the eu member states who joined to escape from communism. Pretty clumsy.
Tuesday, October 2
BORIS [has] contrived a frontpage photo [of himself] running through a field of wheat as a deliberate p***-take parody of the PM (who once said it was the naughtiest thing she’d ever done). Ha ha.
Thursday, October 11
A PROPER face-to-face with Jeremy Hunt. He has assumed informed command of his brief at lightning speed.
Sunday, October 14
DD [David Davis] is openly calling for a ‘Cabinet rebellion’ to firm up our position on Brexit. Well... he couldn’t firm anything up himself when he was [Brexit] Secretary. He couldn’t even come up with workable proposals.
Nadine Dorries, aka Mad Nad, is promoting David Davis as an interim PM. No, no, please, please, NO!
Monday, October 15
[Brexit secretary] Dominic raab has got nowhere on Brexit and returned to London. David Davis swaggering around; other (useless) Cabinet ministers murmuring about resigning; the whole ship taking in water.
Tuesday, October 16
SPEAKER Bercow is an uppity little man. He is supposed to be impartial and should only hold a view which is set by the Commons. All these historic assumptions have been obliterated by Labour’s capture of the Speaker in the name of progressive causes . . . diversity, equality, women and so on. the fundamental rules of the place now count for nothing.
Wednesday, October 17
[FCO] ministerial team meeting. Jeremy [Hunt] is conscious that we can be pure of thought for easy targets such as Burma, but then we trim and equivocate when it’s our friends or where we have interests.
Friday, October 19
THE ecuador Ambassador says they have taken away [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange’s cat. After living in their embassy for five years [where he’d sought asylum], Assange has today launched a lawsuit against the ecuador government for violating his human rights, but probably for restricting his internet rather than taking away his cat.
Sunday, October 21
[TORY MP and former Army officer] Johnny Mercer has slagged off the PM. if he were still in a regiment, he’d be taken behind the officers’ mess and roughed up.
Dinner with a parliamentary colleague who comes out with a stream of unrestrained gossip: one female MP colleague is being knocked off by two uniformed officers, but presumably not at the same time; [Justice Secretary] David Gauke hates Boris; the Chief [Whip] hates [tory MP] tom tugendhat; and the bovine
potato-trader [Tory MP] Andrew Bridgen is known as Spuduhate.
Tuesday, October 23
BUcKINGHAM Palace Banquet for the Dutch State Visit. There was a moment that was more amusing than embarrassing when I was talking to the Prince of Wales. The neckstrap of my heavily starched white waistcoat chose to detach itself, allowing my pristine garment to slip down my front.
Friday, November 9
PRoTocol call [me] with a problem. our charming officials in the Immigration Service are refusing to issue visas for the Queen of Morocco’s domestic staff for when she comes to london for the Prince of Wales’s 70th birthday party. This is just the sort of idiotic jobsworth prattishness which can turn into a full-blown diplomatic crisis.
Sunday, November 11
I cHAT with the PM [Theresa May] over coffee: ‘Don’t flinch, and let me know if you want me to finish off anyone else.’
‘you are a little exocet missile!’ she said, in a rare moment of banter.
Monday, November 12
BoRIS has called for the cabinet to ‘mutiny’. He is an egotistical wrecker.
Tuesday, November 13
HIlARIoUS [Fco] meeting to discuss my speech to the Foreign Press Association. I speculated on the likely reaction to a speech in which I said what I really thought instead of one that just spouts bland, boring platitudes based on what we laughingly call our current foreign policy.
Thursday, November 15
cRIKey. What a tumultuous day! At 9am Dominic Raab resigns. He’s been the Brexit Secretary for four months. Then at 10am out goes esther McVey from Work and Pensions. The s **** y little Speaker Hobbit keeps [May] at the dispatch box for three hours.
Friday, November 16
[eNVIRoNMeNT Secretary, Michael] Gove has left his home, looking ghastly in jogging kit, thus acting out the usual tacky publicity stunt. He is milking it as usual with extensive briefings behind the scenes, while feigning loyalty to the PM. It fuels attentionseeking headlines: the ‘will he resign or not?’ c**p.
Wednesday, December 5
A FRIeND with links to the MoD swings by my office. He says [Defence Secretary] Gavin Williamson is bonkers; he has mad notions more appropriate to an imperialist power the size of the U.S.
Monday, December 10
THe bumptious [Brexiteer MP] Mark Francois muttered something gratuitously rude to me as I walked into New Palace yard. Such is the current mood, but he’s also a pent-up oddball.
In the Tea Room, [Nicholas] Soames is on typically ebullient form. When I mention that my office do all my tweeting, and that I don’t know how to, he grabs my phone and says, ‘It’s easy — look,’ at which point he tweets ‘Bollocks’ in reaction to [political editor] laura Kuenssberg’s latest BBc tweet. He is a naughty boy. I have to text laura to explain.
Wednesday, December 12
leADeRSHIP challenge!!! It is a total act of sabotage, colossal folly and poor judgment. [May] wins convincingly — 200 votes to 117. Quite a day.
Monday, December 31
I’M ReAlly thinking of quitting politics next year. I am finding it so suffocating and small-minded. It is stultifying. Good night, and goodbye 2018.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
AMUSING story about the Sultan [of oman] from Patricia [Baroness Rawlings]. He was once given a bullet-proof Range Rover as a gift, which had all the latest bells and whistles on it. HM ordered the Royal Guard to take it out into the desert and fire at it. They did so, upon which it promptly exploded in a massive fireball. Hmm!
Friday, January 4
DINNeR [in Muscat, oman] with William and Ffion [Hague] who are holidaying there. As a guess at who might eventually succeed May, he punted for Sajid [javid] and I punted for [Michael] Gove.
Saturday, January 12
HAWAII Five-o series 9 has begun but the storyline has deteriorated.
Monday, January 14
lABoUR MP laura Pidcock came in to discuss a consular case involving child abduction. She was actually oK, despite being best known for saying she could never be friends with a Tory. My enormous portrait photo of Margaret Thatcher discomfited her somewhat. just what it’s there for!
Tuesday, January 15
DAy of the big meaningful vote [on May’s Brexit deal]. Defeated. Some of us hold an immediate meeting of what soon becomes known as the ‘jan 15th Group’ in the chancellor’s office: [Amber] Rudd, [David] Gauke, indeed all the moderate sensible colleagues who are not mentally certifiable.
Wednesday, January 16
THe Deal is dead. After today we will be in office but not in power, so the only route out is [to] work with labour. If we could be shot of Momentum on the labour side and Moggmentum on ours, sensible people could sort this out.
Monday, January 21
PHoNe call with lord (David) Triesman. He’s a former Fco minister under Blair. He said that under corbyn, no jew could feel comfortable in the labour Party. I said corbyn was too stupid to make the distinction between jews in general and the actions of Israel in Palestine.
oil entrepreneur and neighbour Algy cluff says [ex-Minister for International Development, now justice Minister] Rory Stewart is doing well, but ‘although he used to look quite pretty, as he grows older he looks more and more like a horse’.
Tuesday, January 22
I’M TolD james cleverly really thinks he is a credible candidate to take over from Theresa May, and that he would definitely make it to the last two in any contest. It lifts absurdity to a new level, as he’s been in the House for two minutes, has never been a minister and seems to think his clandestine briefing of the Press and being a mere vicechairman of the Party (which doesn’t mean much these days) somehow equip him. The place has gone mad.
Monday, January 28
THe PM had just addressed the Party. At the meeting, Boris