Alan Duncan rants about ‘idiot’ parliamentary colleagues and Britain’s waning influence

As a budding political apparatchik, my first job out of university was as a junior parliamentary assistant to Alan Duncan MP. Working for him was never taxing because it was never boring.

Nicknamed ‘Hunky Dunky’, he was well known in the Tory fraternity. Too young to be a grandee and too old to be a rising star, he occupied a special space in the parliamentary party, never part of a clique yet consistently present during his 27 years in parliament. We’d often remark — to his annoyance — that he was the Chips Channon of his generation, since both often ended up on the wrong side of the winning team. How apt, then, that the updated Channon diaries and Duncan’s own should appear within weeks of each other.

In the Thick of It documents the Conservative party’s relapse into its masochistic tendency: the years 2015 to 2019 when the Brexit wars raged. Much has already been written about the contempt in which Duncan held certain colleagues, and perhaps, like Channon, he should have kept quiet until more time had passed. But where would be the fun in that?

Duncan, newly returned to the front bench after throwing himself into Theresa May’s leadership campaign, had been rewarded with his dream job as deputy foreign secretary. Of course he was deputising for Boris Johnson, a pairing which had all the makings of an odd-couple sitcom: Duncan, with his pristine suits, attention to detail and fastidiousness, pitched alongside a bumptious, lovable, unkempt rogue.

The diaries are thoughtful, but can be brutal. Duncan views some colleagues as ‘idiots’, ‘thickos’ and ‘nothings’. He rages against injustices in Palestine, bemoans the UK’s loss of diplomatic standing in the world and despairs over the lack of basic courtesy in parliament. Never tribally political, having enjoyed a safe seat for his entire career, he is more interested in the battle of ideas, evidenced by his intellectual fisticuffs with David Cameron when deciding whether to Leave or Remain.