David Cameron’s For the Record ends where the sorriest three years in modern British history begin

It’s fun to look for what’s missing in a memoir; the forgotten egos, the policy howlers buried for posterity. Some omissions are accidental. When Tony Blair published his autobiography in 2010, he raised eyebrows by neglecting to mention his celebrated blue-skies thinker, John Birt. Over more than 700 pages, For the Record is punctilious and dutiful in name-checking the many fallen Cameroonian foot-soldiers who sacrificed themselves in the cause of Conservative modernisation.

It is a testament to David Cameron’s great qualities — his quick wit, habitual cheeriness and calmness under pressure — just how many of them there are. No one working in No. 10 expected to become close pals with the PM; perfectly happy in his own skin, with a young family to which he was devoted and long-standing friends of his own, he had little need to forge personal bonds with the courtiers, most of them ten to 20 years younger, who crowded into his study for the 8.30 a.m. and 4 p.m. meetings. But he and George Osborne did inspire strong and lasting loyalty both to themselves and their project.

A few loyalists have been unfairly left on the cutting-room floor. Top of my list is Daniel Korski, one of the most kinetic special advisers in the No. 10 Policy Unit. Of all the people who knew how to move fast and break things across Whitehall, DK was in a class of his own and warrants an appearance in any bonus material provided for the paperback edition. It is also odd that Chris Lockwood and Camilla — now Baroness — Cavendish, respectively my cerebral deputy and brilliant successor as head of the Policy Unit, have so far not troubled the index compilers.

Other oversights are surely more deliberate. The book lost weight on early drafts, but remains fatter than Blair’s, despite covering a premiership that lasted about half the time.