Self-serving diaries that teach us one thing – if ever Alan Duncan says he’s backing you, call security!
In The Thick Of It: The Private Diaries Of A Minister
Alan Duncan
William Collins €30 ★★★★★
Another week, another big fat book of ‘waspish’ political diaries by a figure most people would struggle to put a face to. few months ago we had the ‘waspish’ Diary Of An MP’s Wife by Sasha Swire. A few months before that, we were treated to the ‘waspish’ memoirs of the former Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.
All three authors specialise in hand-me-down abuse of bigger fish. Thus Bercow calls Theresa May ‘dull as ditchwater’ and David Cameron ‘deeply snobbish’, and Sasha Swire calls May ‘humourless’ and Bercow ‘revolting’, while Duncan declares that May has had ‘a charisma bypass’ and that Bercow is ‘an angst-ridden oddball’.
The world will be looking at the UK and thinking, ‘What have they just done?’
And so it goes on. Needless to say, in this claustrophobic world there will always come a time when two political diarists find themselves together in the same room, each busily storing up insults against the other, for later use.
In her diary entry for December 11, 2019, Sasha Swire notes: ‘Towards the end of dinner, I ask Alan Duncan how he is enjoying retirement, and if his diaries are coming out. He replies: “What a good idea.” Then after dinner, his waspish husband James, who I have always been unsure about, darts over, all frontfanged, and attacks me for being negative about Alan on my Twitter account.’
Turn to Duncan’s diaries and you find his account of the same dinner: ‘The Swires were there too, and Sasha was rather silly. I knew from Hugo [Swire’s husband] that she has a publishing deal for her diaries, and when he asked me if I do, I accurately answered “No”. She then asked me the same question, and got the same answer. She then went on to ask James separately. Always ahead of the game, he gave her quite a bollocking for being so underhand, and then asked her why she was always so vitriolic on the (anonymous) MPWife Twitter account. ‘How did you know that?’ she asked. He’d got her! Her lapse was a total inadvertent admission that MPWife is Sasha Swire.’
The two accounts of the same conversation are different. Which of them is telling the truth? Possibly neither. All one can say for sure is that they are both shamelessly self-serving.
Ever since the tremendous success of Alan Clark’s witty diaries in the 1990s, lesser political diarists have felt it expedient to pepper their texts with abuse against their colleagues. The trouble is that Clark had a natural gift for comedy, while his imitators are just plodders. Duncan’s insults are hand-me-down and interchangeable. Bercow is ‘an uppity little man’, Mark Francois ‘a horrid little man’, Tobias Ellwood ‘nuts’, Michael Gove ‘a whacky weirdo’and on it goes. This deficiency in what Auberon Waugh used to call ‘the vituperative arts’ becomes particularly pitiful when you can’t picture who on earth he is ranting against, among them various unknown bigwigs in his Rutland constituency. Thus we hear of ‘the unpleasant Geoffrey Pointon – fat, ugly and 80, and ‘the snide and distasteful Christine Emmett’.
The diaries begin in 2016 and necessarily centre around Brexit. Duncan had long been a vociferous Eurosceptic. ‘As 2016 came around, I still expected to join the Leave campaign, and began discussions to do so,’ he explains in his introduction. However, by March 13 he has changed his mind. ‘So that’s it – I’ve made my mind up... our interests are best served by remaining part of the EU.’ From then on he campaigns with all the zeal of a convert, forgetting all previous doubts. After the vote in June goes in favour of Brexit, he despairs: ‘I just know the rest of the world will be looking at the UK and thinking, “What on earth have they just done to themselves?”’
Ever the kingmaker, once Cameron is out of Downing Street, he switches allegiance. On June 27, 2016, he pays a visit to Theresa May. ‘I told her, “I’ve only got one thing to say – you must stand. I’m right behind you, go for it!” All very well, but he then adds, sarkily, “She was pretty wooden, as she always is.”’