Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin

"It’s effectively an autobiography . And, an autobiography is very different from a diary. I mean, there are overlaps, obviously, but an autobiography is written with the benefit of hindsight. Damian’s book is basically a mea culpa, talking about all of the things that led to his eventual downfall. I’ve published 600 books in my career and I still think that Damian’s is the best book of all of them. It’s incredibly readable. It reads like a novel—at times, a thriller. It holds the reader’s attention as very few other political books do. Maybe I’m influenced because I didn’t just publish it, I played a role in his defenestration. He tried to portray me as sort of an extreme, far-right racist. All of the emails came to light and, in the end, he was forced to resign. Eighteen months later, he wrote me a letter of apology for what he’d done. We met for a coffee and I said, ‘well, why don’t you write a book?’ And so he did. And I published it. So, there was a certain serendipity there. But even if I hadn’t had any role in it, I think I still would have found Damian’s book one of the most fascinating I’ve ever read. He does talk about the art of spin, but let’s not run away with the belief that spin was started under New Labour. Spin has been around since the days of Henry VIII in different forms. I think we recognise it more now because it’s more obvious and we know the people that are doing it. Damien really goes into the art of the spin doctor. I’ve done that a little bit in the past for various politicians and when I was a politician myself. People always think it’s ‘the dark craft of spin’, but it’s not quite like that. It is just like normal PR. You’re putting the best gloss on something, even if there isn’t much of a gloss to put on it. That happens in business. It happens in the charity world. It happens in every aspect of our society, but when it happens in politics, I think it’s a little bit more obvious."