Rude political diaries are rarely interesting
The best memoirs are written by self-deprecating characters with a ringside seat - not the stars of the show
6 April 2021 • 7:00pm
Alan Duncan and I became MPs on the same day in 1992. My old friend (who left parliament in 2019) has just published his political diaries – and not to universal acclaim. That doesn’t surprise me. In my own Westminster diary, on November 16 1995, I wrote: “I like Alan. He is amusing, and effective, but within the system here they’re suspicious of him. They don’t quite trust him.”
Perhaps with good reason. Judging from the serialisation of the Duncan diaries, “little Alan” (as I am ashamed to say I always dubbed him) disses all and sundry. Boris is a “buffoon”. Theresa May is a “frightened rabbit”. Gove is “creepy”. Priti Patel? “She really is a nothing person.” As I recall, there were plenty at Westminster who thought Alan himself a bit of a nobody – certainly somebody w