For the record, Mr Shameless, we don’t want to know
EVERY new piece of information about the David Cameron memoirs brings a little twinge of despair.
First there is the fact that he is bringing out a book in the first place, when he should be spending his time working with the poor of the East End of London, as John Profumo did to atone for his far less egregious errors of judgment. While we now realise that Cameron was probably the least disgusting Tory of his generation, still he expresses no shame.
He is apparently donating the proceeds of the book to various charities, but this carries with it the grim reminder that the publishers HarperCollins paid
£800,000 for the rights. Which is made only slightly more bearable by the fact that initial estimates were looking at an advance in the region of £1.5m.
For this they will get a book called For The Record. Ah, there’s nothing quite like the title of a political autobiography to deaden the soul. They love that “no-nonsense” style, the pretence that they are being frank, the hackery of it.
Then we learn that when Cameron submitted the manuscript, the publishers asked him to cut 100,000 words. That’s quite a cut there — in fact it’s a book in itself. And while others will no doubt try to fix some of the bad writing along the way, there is an irreducible badness to any piece of writing which comes in 100,000 words too long.
Knowing what to leave out is the essence of good writing, though with books like For The Record the solution would be to leave out the other 100,000 words too. Because there is nothing at all that David Cameron can do now, to change his place in history as the man who gave the worst people in Britain their big chance.
And no Dave, we don’t want to know how you did it.