Barely a month in his term of office as Chief Whip and Simon Hart was awakened in the early hours of a Thursday morning of his dormers by the urgent ringing of his phone telephone.
The caller, a new Tory Member of Parliament, was apparently well abolished, but, as Hart remembered, “just about coherent.”
“Hello, chef. I hope I didn't wake you up, “he started Breezily.
Hart, a seasoned political operator who was appointed by Premier Rishi Sunak as the most important role of Chief Whip – the enforcer of party discipline – noted sardonically: “It is 2.45 hours, for F *** sake.”
The subsequent conversation was unusual to say the least, but it was characteristic because the former head of the Countryside Alliance found its center stage that manage the unhappy, hopeless and sometimes pointless last years of the last Tory government.
“What's going on,” he asked? The Member of Parliament, unfortunately, answered, replied: “I'm stuck in a brothel in Bayswater and I have no money anymore.”
The uncertain heart listened to while the backbencher explained how he had met a woman in the Carlton Club, spiritually at home of the conservative party, and that she had offered to buy a drink for him.
The only problem, he tipped tips, was that he now thought she was “a KGB agent”, and added: “She wants £ 500 and left me in a room with 12 naked women and CCTV.”
Hart organized what he called and arranged an 'extraction mission' and arranged a taxi to gather the man to bring him back to his own hotel as he went asleep again.
This infamous kiss caught on the camera unveiled Matt Hancock's affair
Suella Braverman is said to have launched a 10 -minute Diatribe Diatribe against Rishi
Then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with Simon Hart on the day PM Left Left Office
A little more than an hour later the phone rang again. Things did not go according to plan.
The MP told Hart that he had somehow come into the wrong taxi, he said, “by an Afghan agent named Ahmed” he claimed, “demanded £ 3,000 for AB *** J **.”
“What happened,” asked Hart? “I brought it back to the hotel and locked the door,” said the Member of Parliament.
Hart, a former secretary of Welsh, continued to tell the Prime Minister about the episode about a pizza in the Downing Street flat and remembered: “Poor Rishi – he doesn't believe such things happen. He is refreshing law and tends to see the good with most people. He would have to work in the office of the whips for a day and that would change quickly. “A few weeks later, Hart notes that ministers were not told during a safety briefing not to have 'unusually beautiful Chinese women (or men, I think)'.
It led to the Scottish secretary Alister Jack to breed: “If you think you are beating your weight, ask yourself why.”
Sexual misconduct or potential misconduct often encountered its radar. During the dinner in the Snooty Hurlingham Club in West, he was told that a senior and married parliament member 'had become a bit fruity' with a journalist who had suggested that her 'beautiful dress would be better thrown away in my bedroom floor' .
To which Hart noted: “Moaned …”
Just like the best chronicles of political power, it is not the memories of those of the top, but the memoirs of those figures who worked for one of them who give the most compelling report. Some such as the late Alan Clark, minister, historian and serial Philanderer, a light shouted about how our masters operated and torment. Reading Simon Hart's horrifying story of his 18 months in the warm chair of the whips is more related to lifting a stone and staring at what scary-crowlies arise. But there is also enough pain.
So the publication of his diaries Unmanageable-Die over time are selected Westminster Agog, cuddling of curiosity to the indiscretions and almost Farcical Behavior of ordinary MPs and the over-Weept ambition of ministers who have often viewed promotion and preference with nothing with nothing to do with Nothing with nothing less than right.
For all exposed venality, the Hart account sometimes looks like a parody.
Invited to the inner sanctuary for Sunak's November 2023 -Reschering, he and others listen to the anger of Suella Braverman after being fired as Minister of the Interior and who has placed the prime minister on the speaker.
After a few politians, Hart, 'All Hell Breaks Los' says on what follows 'horrible ten-minute Diatribe of vengeful and personal bile'.
It was, Hart writes in his diary, difficult to know how to respond and 'looking where'. Sometimes it felt like 'we are all eavesdropping', but he acknowledged that for the protection of the prime minister and the integrity of the government a record had to be taken – and saved. So he describes the scene of spectators who are sitting in 'surprised silence' around a table with shot tones and half empty coffee cups, doing their best 'so as not to grim, smile or give an indication of what we feel'.
A few months earlier he had written a memory to tell the prime minister that Braverman is 'not his friend'. While the whips witnessed 'The Real Suella', no 10 the more home -trained version '.
He added: “We see the leaks, the tear briefings and the general lack of solidarity.”
But the story that has attracted the biggest attention concerns an earlier commotion of ministerial positions. A happy cabinet -which is described as 'less grateful than her promotion deserves'.
It was not her agreement that was so tempting, but the observation of Rishi, as recorded by Hart. “Let's all agree on one thing,” the normal prim -pm is quoted. “She is f ****** useless, but we can't get rid of her.”
By last night, the devastating observation had activated an extraordinary Whitehall gambling game to identify the thankless minister.
There were only three agreements at the female level of cabinet in that February 2023 RESHUFFLE: Lucy Frazer became a culture secretary, while both Michelle Donelan and Kemi Badenoch were transferred to revised portfolios. To which of those three could Sunak reportedly have referred?
Based on comments about social media, Kemi, the current conservative party leader, seems to be the most likely perpetrator.
In a later entry, Hart describes a meeting with Badenoch in what he calls a 'chat about trans-stuff'. Trying but not finding 'a mutually usable wavelength', he added: 'She is another who lives in a permanent state of indignation. It must be so tiring. '
Naughty and insightful, it is the most hilarious investigation of parliamentary misconduct since the Sasha Swire diary of a member of a member of a Member of Parliament in 2020. She had a chair in the Ring during David Cameron's premiership.
But Hart is also a merciless critic. The Maverick Tory Parliament member Andrew Bridgen, who lost the whip about Crass comments in which the rollout of COVID vaccine was compared with the Holocaust, has been labeled as a 'utter k ** b' and 'malolent creep'. He said there was a “massive cheers” after he announced that the whip was taken from Bridgen.
When he heard that Blackpool MP Scott Benton was the victim of a newspaper lobby that lobbyed 'sting', Hart noted that there seemed to be no innocent explanation 'unless rank has been recorded'.
Problems come thick and fast. A standards committee report on the behavior of Chris Pincher, a one -off deputy main whip accused of touching a young man with a suspension of eight weeks.
“He is ready,” took on heart, acknowledging that the punishment seemed “incredibly hard, since he lost his job, all his money and most of his friends.”
But he reasoned that “maybe we all discover that” pinching the donkeys of people “is not acceptable, how fleeting or the circumstances drank.”
However, sometimes he cannot help but treat the peccadillos of some MPs with a comic sense of disbelief. One day the veteran Peter Bone informed him that he was being suspended for bullying a young male assistant, insisting that it was all a bit of a misunderstanding. A contagious heart noticed: 'Peter was 60 and the boy was not yet 25, so the claims he exposed himself and had the habit of leaving the boy with his hands between Peter's legs as a punishment for misconduct, will have a lot of chance Eliminate public sympathy. '
Reassurance for quirky parliamentary members was his stock on the market, but it was not only members of parliament who needed it.
Simon Case, the former secretary of the cabinet, was concerned about him that MPs were openly rude about officials'. He wrote: 'He claims whether' Open Season 'is-in which parliamentary members and ministers blame all our problems with the official apparatus Dan, we can activate a GOLOW in areas of controversial legislation.
“In other words, if you are rude to the waiters, don't be surprised if they finally spit in your food.”
It cannot have helped Robert Jenrick, now secretary of Shadow Justice, believed that officials placed asylum seekers in hotels in marginal seats of Tory in an attempt to damage them. “Jenrick thinks that the home office does not give so *** whether the schedule works or if our people are offended,” wrote Hart.
Six months after his work and heart, however, was no longer surprised by the lack of self -consciousness of his colleagues while they swarmed around the king and the queen during a royal visit to Westminster Hall.
He despaired: 'It became a scrum with some members who maneuvered themselves so that they could have a second or even third attempt at a selfie, or … monopolize the king, who in one remarkable case produced an envelope of poetry to read. '
One of his first controversies concerned the former health secretary Matt Hancock, who was forced to resign when it was revealed that his COVID restrictions had been violating.
Hancock said he asked for leave to appear, I am a celebrity … Get me away here!
But when he then revealed that he went to the ITV jungle that day, Hart noted: “So Matt, you don't ask me as much as it tells me.”
Other, more filthy encounters concern a special adviser (or spad) who, noted, had gone to an orgy and eventually took 'AC ** P on the head of another'.
On the same day he heard that a commons employee had attended a party dressed as the pedophile Jimmy Savile where he had sex with a bloated doll.
“Just another day at the office,” he recorded Drolly.
