As Westminster reels from Alan Duncan’s shocking revelations that he didn’t much like Boris and that he should have been in the cabinet (not that he cared) who will be next to publish their tell all book? With the watering holes of SW1 shut for most of the last twelve months, politicians have been forced to find new ways to entertain themselves – including, err, writing about themselves.
Below Steerpike runs down the list of those who are or will be shortly bringing out their lockdown projects:
Seumas Milne – the ‘thin Controller’ spent four years at the coalface of Corbynism as Labour’s director of communications between 2015 and 2019. Details of his forthcoming book have been kept hush hush so far but Mr S understands it is being written based on the diary he kept during his time at Corbyn’s side. Milne did not emerge well from the two main works published thus far – Left Out and This Land. How much longer can he resist the temptation to re-enter the fray and settle some scores with the pro John McDonnell account of Owen Jones?
Diane Abbott – another Corbynite keen to tell their side of the story, Abbott declared a nice £18,450 advance this week for her forthcoming memoir ‘A Woman Like Me’. Due out summer 2022, Mr S looks forward to her recalling various media gaffes in the role of shadow home secretary and anecdotes such as the time she and Jeremy went on a motorcycle tour of East Germany.
Mark Francois – the chairman of the European Research Group is writing a weighty tome on his battle to get Britain out of the European Union and save the nation from what he calls Theresa May’s BRINO – Brexit In Name Only. Unsurprisingly Mr S hears the hero of the work is one… Mark Francois.
Lisa Nandy – the shadow foreign secretary is writing a book on, quelle surprise, foreign policy which details how Britain might go about ‘mending a broken reputation abroad’ – a dilemma all too familiar to Labour politicians post Corbyn. But if reports about Nandy’s own future are to be believed, could she be left in the awkward position of publishing a book on foreign policy after losing the foreign policy brief?
Andrew Mitchell – the Plebgate star is set to publish a light-hearted memoir in the autumn spilling the beans on the various Establishment citadels he has belonged to from Radley to the Whips office. Like his onetime Sutton Coldfield predecessor Norman Fowler, Mitchell will be hoping that he is writing ‘during his parliamentary career rather than at the end of it.’
Alex Salmond – Nicola Sturgeon’s sworn enemy promised last April to write a tell all book revealing the events around his trial for sexual assault. Amid excited claims last year that the work would be a ‘volcanic eruption’ for the SNP’s leadership, the former first minister will be certainly be hoping it makes more of an impact on Holyrood’s elections than his Alba party has managed thus far.
Ed Miliband – the onetime Labour leader has returned to the frontbench and is all set to release ‘Go Big: How to fix our world’ in June on topics ‘from flexible working in Finland to the campaign for the first halal Nando’s in Cardiff.’ Given Ed couldn’t even fix the Labour party, Steerpike wonders what chance the world has got.
Liam Fox – the former defence secretary has been intermittently writing a book on pandemics for more than five years. Will it be out by the next time a virus hits the UK?
Chris Evans – the Islwyn Labour backbencher is publishing a biography of legendary Leeds manager Don Revie in October and his journey from pioneer to pariah. A once great institution that dominated in the 1960s and 1970s but has suffered in more modern times, could there be lessons from Leeds for Labour?
Penny Mordaunt – the Paymaster General has co-authored a grandiose work called ‘Greater’ on post-Brexit reform which is out next month. The timing of the book is evidently fortuitous given Greensill – its blurb warns that a ‘wave of scandals has corroded public confidence in leadership in all walks of life’. Such a book will likely be full of much independent thinking, given Mordaunt’s reputation for deviating from the government line.
Other names include Jon Cruddas who today releases his work on ‘The Dignity of Labour,’ backbench members of the Common Sense Group who are writing a work on ‘anti-woke’ themes and both Chris Bryant and Andrea Leadsom who Mr S understands are due to announce book deals in the coming months. Jess Phillips has meanwhile signed a £24,600 ‘multi book contract’ with Simon and Schuster in August but sadly has added no further updates to her last entry on it which read ‘hours: none to date.’
Steerpike wishes the aforementioned authors well but suspects one or two of them risk ending up in the bookshop bargain bin come next party conference season…
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