A few months earlier on 1 February 2024, Hart recalls a meeting of the honours committee where “one prominent Labour MP seeking an upgrade to his knighthood gets defeated” and a Conservative MP’s campaign for a CBE “gets similar short shrift by the lay members” — apparently amid vague rumours of wrongdoing by said MP on a foreign trip.
From MPs’ demands for peerages to Rishi Sunak calling a minister ‘fucking useless’, stories from former chief whip Simon Hart’s diaries have drawn attention.
In April 2024, Hart met one Conservative MP who was first elected in 2019 in a safe seat — which they now wanted to trade for the House of Lords.
Hart, who served as Rishi Sunak’s chief whip for nearly two years, offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes of his government — including the sexual misadventures of members of the whips’ office.
On 7 June 2023, Hart gets a call from Harriet Harman who tells him the privileges committee she chairs will publish its report on Boris Johnson later that month and hand it to him that week.
