TOMORROW: ‘Airhead Waddle bottom’ – which MP could he mean?

aggressively demanded she say what her solution is. to think that six months ago he was her Foreign secretary and today he is like the slovenly teenager at the back of the classroom being insolent to his teacher.

Tuesday, January 29

Encounter Justin Welby, the archbishop of canterbury, in new Palace yard. He is always jocular. i say i haven’t a clue what will happen, but that given the lunacy of colleagues it requires a serious dose of divine intervention.

Wednesday, February 6

continuing brexit mayhem. gloom. gloom. gloom.

Saturday, February 16

Bump into george osborne in the foyer. as soon as ‘Private Pike’ Williamson spots him, he immediately drops all his meetings, to the fury of his private office staff, both civil and military, choosing instead the opportunity to suck up to george.

brief encounter with [trump’s son-in-law] Jared Kushner. there is something unusually baby-faced and attractive about him, which is very annoying as i’d expected to find him inherently dislikable.

Sunday, February 17

SEEING boris in the corridor last week, i noticed he’d taken off more than half his hair. the tousled blond mop had been turned into a scraggy layer resembling the lunar surface. it means he’s on manoeuvres.

Wednesday, February 27

[Jacob rees-Mogg] Moggy sounds ridiculous on today. apart from his pompous, over-mannered ‘good morning, Mr robinson’, he was in a fantasy land of nitpicking nonsense. He thinks he’s clever: he is not.

Friday, March 1

JH [Hunt] is in oman... pictures emerge of him crossing his legs during the audience, which i specifically briefed him not to do, as it is very bad manners in the arab world. it is like slouching or picking your nose.

Tuesday, March 12

TEXTED [former education secretary] nicky Morgan to chastise her for calling for theresa to go. she is not up to much: promoted too quickly, then binned, now bitter, with poor judgment and behaving self-indulgently.

Wednesday, March 13

Ecuador ambassador Jaime Marchán is determined to get assange out of his embassy, but President Moreno requires a final push in order to be persuaded to press the button.

Wednesday, March 20

MINISTERIAL team meeting. Hunt just doesn’t exude enough purpose or authority. lots of rational thinking but not enough grit.

the PM’s performance at PMQs went down like a bag of cold sick. she’s like a single flaking old pit prop: everyone knows it will collapse but dares not touch it to wedge in a replacement in case the roof falls in first. We are in meltdown and seem to be on an unstoppable journey to national humiliation and decline. **** -a-doodle-doo!

Saturday, March 23

My REGARD for Jeremy Hunt has dipped somewhat. in the last couple of days he has failed to condemn trump for saying the golan Heights now belong to israel; he wanted to cancel the Prince of Wales’s trip to cuba because of u.s. disapproval; and he made the UK vote against a motion in the un criticising israel’s human rights record — even though they killed 180 in gaza, including children.

Monday, March 25

i BERATED tom tugendhat, who should know better, for his lack of diplomatic good manners in openly criticising the Prince of Wales’s visit to cuba while it was under way. He was totally unrepentant. cocky little t **** r.

Tuesday, March 26

on THE off-chance, i texted [Health secretary] Matt Hancock to see if he could make dinner. He said yes. i’ve come to like Matt, having rather resented his progress as [george] osborne’s pet. i told him he’d made a great journey from pushy little s**t to becoming a contender. i say he should consider buddying up with Jeremy Hunt, and that there are plenty around who would do anything and everything to stop BOJO getting even halfway up the Mall.

Thursday, March 28

a SMALL moment of humour in the tea room about [tory MP] Michael Fabricant’s infamous hair: ‘it’s so woven, axminster has met Westminster.’

i think i am nearly there with Ecuador to get Julian assange out of their london embassy. it has taken months of delicate negotiations, but nearly, nearly . . .

Tuesday, April 2

i INTEND to finish as a minister in summer and return to the private sector. i suspect the government will collapse then anyway.

this is no longer a party i feel happy in. Half of my fellow MPs are intolerant ideologues and we just don’t share the same principles. they are throwbacks and nationalists; they have no proper sense of international influence and relationships. their actions will diminish britain.

Wednesday, April 3

HAVE a coffee with Ken clarke, who is about the only sensible person left. charming [tory MP] alex chalk says we are surrounded by fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists. We are indeed turning into a mutant ukip. so, all in all, another s **** y day in the hideous brexit odyssey.

Thursday, April 4

Minor reshuffle. [MP] simon Hoare is very upset not to be made a Whip. but what’s the point of being a deckchair on the titanic for only a few months?

Sunday, April 7

[Jacob] rees-Mogg is a cheap nationalist with faux manners and an ego the size of a planet.

Monday, April 8

to LUXEMBOURG with JH [Jeremy Hunt]. on the plane back, it became clear that high-level advice to JH is not to make a stand on the israelis’ annexation of the West bank, because our relations with the u.s. matter more than the principles we ought to defend. it’s the end of us having a credible foreign policy.

Thursday, April 11

SUDDENLY it’s game on: i’m told assange will be sprung from the [Ecuador] embassy today. so i drop everything and head to the operations room at the top of the Foreign office.

operation Pelican is go — suitably assisted by one official wearing a pelican-motif tie.

We watch a live feed which ironically was available on the web from russia today. bang on 10am, two or three plainclothes policemen enter the embassy.

We were expecting assange to be brought out very soon after their arrival, but texts to the ops room revealed he had caused a bit of a commotion and had been screaming and bawling while edging towards the ambassador’s office — at which point he was forcibly restrained.

then, with military precision, six police officers marched up to line each side of the entrance steps, to form a protective corridor through which assange was bundled out at about 10.20am. by this time russia today had twigged something was afoot and cut the live feed.

so, job done at last — and we take a commemorative photo of team Pelican. it had taken many months of patient diplomatic negotiation, and in the end it went off without a hitch. i do Daily Mail, Tuesday, April 6, 2021 millions of interviews, trying to keep the smirk off my face.

Wednesday, April 24

i AM suddenly called up to answer an urgent Question about the saudis’ execution of 37 men yesterday. it is not my ministerial responsibility and i am required to defend the indefensible. but i somehow manage.

one of the stories leading the news is the PM’s supposed decision to allow the chinese firm Huawei to participate in the building of the UK’s 5g mobile network against the view of some who were at yesterday’s nsc [national security council] meeting. it is being spun as a bad decision by the PM.

[i hear] there is a ferocious leak inquiry. i think they need to look at gavin Williamson’s phone. it is bound to be him.

Friday, April 26

MARK LANCASTER [armed Forces minister] calls at 8pm. He says gavin Williamson is sweating! a full-scale leak inquiry is under way, and ministers who attended the nsc have been asked to show their mobile phones. ooh, ooh, ooh.

Wednesday, May 1

BREAKFAST with david cameron. He is so glad not to be in the middle of everything that is going on at the moment. He has a very straightforward opinion about boris — ‘He ruined my bloody career.’

there are fizzing rumours that a ministerial sacking is imminent. and then it happens. Williamson is summarily sacked.

Thursday, May 2

WILLIAMSON is proving ferociously defiant, protesting innocence. but he had refused to hand over his phone, and when he did he had deleted all his texts, which was self-incriminating. Even if he was innocent, he had it coming.

Monday, May 20

a Fabulous day in ireland with the Prince of Wales and the duchess of cornwall. dinner at our ambassador’s residence, glencairn. one of the guests is the mimic oliver callan, ireland’s answer to rory bremner. over drinks after dinner, he plays out a hilarious donald trump skit in front of the duchess and two or three of us.

as he finishes to universal laughter, HRH fixes me with a stare and a grin, and says, ‘alan — i understand you do a very good impression of my husband!’

Wednesday, May 22

[Leader of the House] andrea leadsom resigns at 7.45pm. [May] will limp on, but is already dead. We are in an extraordinary state of animated stasis.

EXTRACTED from In The Thick Of It: The Explosive Private Political Diaries Of A Former Tory Minister, by Alan Duncan, to be published by William Collins on April 15, £25. © Alan Duncan 2021. To order a copy for £22, go to www.mailshop.co. uk/books or call 020 3308 9193. Delivery charges may apply. Free UK delivery on orders over £20. Promotional price valid until 17/04/2021.

John Bercow Uppity s **** y little Speaker Hobbit David Davis As PM? No, no, NO! Nadine Dorries aka Mad Nad Rees-Mogg Pompous cheap nationalist