Simon Hart
Macmillan, 2025.
I knew that I would enjoy reading this book. I’d heard an interview with Simon Hart and he is very down to earth and free speaking. His diaries are a rollicking read.
Simon Hart was an MP from 2010 – 2024. There were five conservative Prime Ministers during this time: David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. He worked most closely with Boris and Sunak.
“Boris made me Minister for Implementation in the Cabinet Office. As Boris said in the appointment interview: ‘Before you ask, I don’t know what that is either’.” Page 3.
When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister he asked Simon to be Chief Whip. Simon didn’t relish the opportunity:
“The risk of failure, the hate, the inevitable wall of pressure that comes with this role… There is a reason there have been eleven ‘Chiefs’ in twelve years.” Page 180.
He had to work in an environment where the smallest mistake by an MP was met with immediate demands for resignation or sacking:
“Decision-making is forced into ever shorter timescales; the only reaction permitted is one of outrage to any government or human failing, however trivial. Whatever happened to ‘mildly disappointed’ as a reaction to a political event?” Page 4.
He recounts serious and stressful matters in a fun and detached way that presumably enables him to avoid drowning under the weight of worries:
On Covid restrictions:
26 October 2020: “Mark Drakeford is under fire for the ludicrous Welsh Government supermarket fiasco. They have cooked up a system whereby shops can only sell ‘essential items’ and are banned from selling ‘non-essential’ ones. The devil is in the detail. That means alcohol is considered essential (quite right too) but school uniform and baby milk isn’t. Cue photos of supermarket aisles with non-essential items behind police tape.” Page 62.
On national security:
13 March 2023: “the head of the China Research Group, a body set up to expose the deviousness of the Chinese regime, is arrested by the Met for spying, for the Chinese! Got to hand it to the Chinese, they don’t piss about when it comes to a bit of spying.” Page 221.
On accepting bribes to ask parliamentary questions:
5 April 2023: “Blackpool MP Scott Benton is ‘stung’ by The Times, offering to ask questions and provide information for money. Unlike some of our cases this one doesn’t seem to have an innocent explanation, unless rank stupidity is included.” Page 230.
On electioneering:
29 June 2023: “I reckon the lifespan on any literature we leave is the time it takes to pick it off the floor and chuck it in the bin.” Page 256.
His role of Chief Whip included trying to co-ordinate voting in parliament and advising on reshuffles. There was also an HR role, for which there is little training or resources:
2 November 2022: “We have instantly been handed ongoing troubling cases of claims made against serving MPs.
The first is a long-standing case of multiple alleged rapes and coercive control by an MP against two women on the Parliamentary estate.
In a separate case it looks like the CPS is considering charging a separate former MP with child sex offences.” Page 185.
23 January 2023: “Both Emma [in the Whips office] and I are now getting multiple messages from a victim in one of our many cases of misconduct, often late at night. They are getting quite desperate, which is very upsetting, for Emma especially. We are only trying to help, but it is clear she is very troubled and in need of a level of help that the Whips’ Office is not really equipped to provide.” Page 201.
His work also involved recommending people for honours. He was disappointed at how self-important and ‘entitled’ many MPs considered themselves:
“I nearly called this book ‘About my Knighthood…’ due to the large number of colleagues who either started or ended their conversations with me with those words.” Page 173.
He documents, under Boris especially, that Cabinet Government doesn’t really exist:
2 October 2020: “Boris calls a remote Cabinet to tell us what we have already read in the media.” Page 58.
10 May 2021: “5 a.m. departure for Cabinet at 11ish. I needn’t have bothered as the meeting lasted nine minutes and involved no contributions other than the PM.”
He has excellent pen portraits of individuals:
• Dominic Cummings (Special Adviser to Boris Johnson):
14 February 2020: “Cummings likes to project the image of some kind of pound-shop hard man, but nobody really takes him seriously any more” Page 23.
• Boris Johnson (who Hart sees as a loveable rogue):
26 April 2021: “he did a walkabout on the High Street. […] he was mobbed by old grannies, kids on bikes as well as young lads sitting in the pub. […] people see in Boris a bit of what they are, or what they want to be.” Page 90.
3 June 2020: “BoJo was good, having unusually read the brief.” Page 47.
6 July 2022: “I explained how I liked his anarchic approach to politics, but we had run out of road. If he didn’t go, I explained then the ’22 would get him [the 1922 Committee]; and if they didn’t get him then the Standards Committee would have a damn good go.” Page 159.
• Liz Truss:
19-20 July 2022: “super odd if Truss gets anywhere. Are people blind or delusional? … I dread to think what a Truss Government would look like, or if it will even last.” Page 163.
20 August 2022: “We need to unite the country, the Party, restore the economy and win an election. Liz can’t do any of those things, let alone all of them.” Page 164
“What the Boris years had done for our reputation for integrity, Liz had now repeated in terms of economic competence. In electoral terms we were never to recover.” Page 171.
• Nicola Sturgeon (First Minister of Scotland):
“The SNP is having an ironic moment of internal meltdown as Nicola Sturgeon, her husband and some comms bloke all seem to be on the way out due to financial scandal. [….] The big mistake Nicola made is to have been relentlessly sanctimonious about everybody else’s behaviour for years, so when the light shines on her we are all especially smug about it.” Page 233.
• Rishi Sunak:
7 July 2022: “I speak to Rishi several times and agree to back his bid early. We need a grown-up, but above all else we need someone kind. And there aren’t too many of them left.” Page 160.
When Simon gave a tour to a family with their son who had terminal cancer: 29 March 2023: “Lisa [Lovering, Rishi’s PA] had put aside a little time as a huge favour to me so I showed them round No.10 and then into Rishi’s office for what I hoped might be a few moments and a pic. Instead, Rishi gives them more time and love than I dared to ask for. We sat in the office for nearly 40 minutes as the children played and he gave them as much support as he could. It was a lovely act of kindness, way beyond the call of duty.” Page 229.
“Rishi Sunak is a man whose ability to study, learn, absorb and analyse is in a league of its own. […] he wrestled with a reluctant Government machine, juggling the egos and expectations of MPs. He always took decisions for the right reasons and yet even that – eventually – wasn’t enough to unite our own colleagues, let alone the wider nation.” Page 336.
• David Cameron (former Prime Minister, whom Rishi brought back into Government as Foreign Secretary):
13 November 2023: “Out DC strolled, as confident a swagger as ever.” Page 281.
22 May 2024: “Bill Clinton once said the world divides into two sorts of people: ‘big people’ and ‘little people’. The former never lose sight of the goal, the latter always get distracted by meaningless drivel. […] David is a ‘big’ person.” Page 337.
• Sir Keir Starmer:
12 November 2023: “Starmer really is as steady in real life as his public persona suggests. His great strength is that he looks good and isn’t actually mad.” Page 280.
July 2025
Adrian Vincent.