Jerry Hayes

The loneliness of Edwina Currie

Edwina Currie is very much an acquired taste and I am very happy that I acquired it in 1983 when we were both first elected to Parliament. Sassy, saucy, fiendishly bright, burning with drive and ambition, yet with a heart, she was head and shoulders above most of her male contemporaries and they hated her for it. People forget just how far Cameron has detoxified the Conservative party. Women, gays (only tolerated in the research department), blacks and Asians had a very steep if not impossible mountain to climb just to get on the candidates list, let alone have a chance of obtaining a winnable seat. Currie tells one tale that should shock any reader to the core:

‘Worse was the appalling story told by Geeta Sidhu, a wealthy and beautiful Indian recently selected for Blackburn…But when CCO heard she was pregnant, officials spent over four hours with her, she said, trying to persuade her to have an abortion.’

Edwina’s second volume of diaries (1992-1997) are required reading for anyone wishing to sit in the Commons. The book is a candid warning to the bright and the able, to those who have actually done something with their lives, that being an MP does not guarantee a magic carpet ride of red boxes and mid-range family saloons. It reveals the sad little truth about Westminster life: it can be dreary, routine, unfulfilling and lonely. No wonder there are so many bitter men and women who skulk on the backbenches, horribly disfigured by failure and determined for revenge. Perhaps Louise Mensch saw the writing on the wall.

The real sadness in this book is Edwina’s yearning for John Major. I had the impression that everything was viewed through the prism of their doomed relationship – a relationship, that as friends of them both, I sincerely wish we had never been told about.

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