Confessions of a Recovering MP

"I suppose that there’s a bit of a theme in all the books that I’ve chosen in that there’s a real rawness about them. Nick de Bois was only an MP for one term, between 2010 and 2015. He lost his seat to the Labour MP that he defeated in 2010. I got to know him quite a bit. He was a regular on my radio show. And I actually helped him get a career in radio after he finished as an MP. It’s very difficult for MPs who lose their seats. There’s this phrase: there’s nothing so ex as an ex-MP. Many of them find it difficult to get jobs after leaving parliament because, in a way, being a member of parliament doesn’t really qualify you to do much else. Nick was a successful businessman before he entered parliament. He wasn’t poor, he didn’t need to earn money, but wanted to do something rewarding. When he came to me with the idea for this book, I was a little bit hesitant at first, but then he wrote a couple of chapters. I thought: he can really write, this is quite funny and insightful. It’s not an autobiography, but it’s got autobiographical bits to it. He describes what the life of an ordinary backbencher is like and its frustrations. Most politicians, whether they’re frontbenchers or backbenchers, have frustrations because they always think that power is held at the next rung up the political ladder that they haven’t quite got to yet. Then, they get to that stage and they find that it’s actually at the next level and then the next level. Nick never became a minister, which I thought was weird, because I think he would have been a very good minister. He’s very eloquent, good on the media, had some good ideas, and could explain Conservative policies very well. His book looks at all of the different aspects of being an MP from constituency work to parliamentary work. Even somebody who knows nothing about politics or is not interested in it would find this book to be an interesting read. I did it because nobody else had done it. It’s such a simple format, I couldn’t believe no one had done it before. It was coming up to the 300th anniversary of Sir Robert Walpole becoming our first prime minister in 1721—and it’s always good to hook a book onto an anniversary. I decided, I can’t write this book myself, I haven’t got the time. And, there were quite a few of the early prime ministers that, even as an ultimate political geek, I’d never heard of. And I thought: I want to know more about Henry Pelham or John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. So, I recruited an army of 55 different people, each of whom wrote one chapter. It was quite like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. For some of the chapters, I actually approached someone to write about a particular prime minister, who I knew they had a bit of knowledge of. For others, I asked people to bid for them. That was a really interesting process. I think it worked well. Obviously, when you have 55 different people writing, they will write in different styles, but there were very few chapters that stuck out like a sore thumb. One or two we had to redraft a bit. It became a bestseller, and there aren’t many political books that become bestsellers—particularly not £25 hardbacks! So I followed it up with a book on American presidents . The next one is on kings and queens, which will come out in September 2023, then I’m going to do dictators and generals. People seem to really like the format."