Hart has a brilliant eye for moments of high farce: Jacob Rees-Mogg descending a zip wire in a tweed three-piece suit; Thérèse Coffey wanting to wheel-clamp people for Covid non-compliance; Kemi Badenoch existing in a “permanent state of outrage” that’s exhausting for everyone; Liz Truss’s spad explaining “the mayonnaise situation” (apparently she won’t eat anything containing mayonnaise, and will only drink Pret coffee).
In one particularly wince-inducing vignette, Hart describes the PM chastising Scottish secretary Alister Jack for insisting that grouse shooting resume after lockdown because it’s led to wildlife-loving Carrie giving him grief: “to which AJ retorted ‘Well I’m sorry if you didn’t get your oats this weekend, PM, but this is the right decision.’”.
This highly readable book is unusual in that, while its author served in cabinet for more than four years – as Welsh secretary under Boris Johnson and chief whip under Rishi Sunak – it is less an account of government than of what power did to the Conservative party, and thus to the rest of us.
And if the wrong people make it into the Commons, wait till you see the pipeline to the Lords: Hart almost called his diaries “About My Knighthood”, given the amount of time absorbed by MPs trying to wangle honours for themselves.
If you can’t quite place Hart, a One Nation-ish hunting and shooting type who used to run the Countryside Alliance, the portfolios he held were backroom ones taking him deep inside the plumbing and wiring of government.
