ARCHIVING - SIMON HART A CHEIF WHIP IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DURING RISHI SUNAKS PREMIERSHIP HAS WRITTEN A BOOK AND A ARTICLE!!
note: full article behind paywall, archive link provided so anon can read it for free. continued in next comments.
dough below to full article - images saved on screenshots from article.
https://controlc.com/3557978a
===
FIRST PERSON
Sex scandals! Fights! Egos! Confessions of the chief whip
Simon Hart was chief whip during Rishi Sunak’s crisis-ridden premiership. In his hilarious diaries, he reveals what was going on behind the scenes (think Yes Minister on steroids)
https://www.thetimes.com/article/e25f175e-5e99-4a33-8f88-11d9e819792e
https://archive.ph/tpgQ2#selection-1443.0-1453.179
Simon Hart
Wednesday February 19 2025, 12.00am GMT, The Times
--—
I am in Central Lobby when I get a call. “Rishi Sunak”, it says on the screen. He sounds somewhere between overwhelmed, excited and grateful.
After a few niceties he says, simply and slightly awkwardly, “Will you be my chief whip?” Slightly awkwardly, I agree. I feel pride, but a sense of terror too. There is no hiding place now, no one else to blame. It’s terrifying.
I am told to report to the Old Admiralty Building at the top of Whitehall in 15 minutes to “assemble a government”.
Once the sackings are complete, we move to No 10 for the hirings.
[But] before the ink is even dry, Suella Braverman is in trouble for leaking confidential info to a backbencher, Sir John Hayes.
It was put down to lazy misuse of the internal email system.
By unhappy coincidence for Suella, there is more than one person on the parliamentary email system of the same name as Sir John’s staffer, to whom she had intended to send the “protected” information.
The other happened to be a rather good friend of mine, startled to receive such sensitive material out of the blue and rightly minded to “do the right thing” by alerting the authorities. Understandably, the PM is loath to lose her this soon, so we gloss it over, at least for now. Let’s hope she remembers.
October 31
An urgent meeting request from Matt Hancock.
I suggest tomorrow, which to me met the definition of urgent. “I really need to see you now,” comes the response.
My heart sinking, in he comes, cheery and upbeat as ever. “I need to get permission for an extended period of absence,” Matt suggests.
Naively, I ask exactly what this means.
“A couple of months maybe.”
He then explains he has accepted a chunky fee [rumoured to be £400,000] to go on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!. I explain I would need to speak to No 10 and get back to him.
“When are you planning to leave?” I ask.
“Tonight at nine.”
“So, Matt, you aren’t so much asking me as telling me,” I suggest.
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s it really.”
• MPs vote on mobile app to make jungle life a misery for Matt Hancock
November 3
Breakfast for the new whips’ office with the PM in the cabinet room.
We have instantly been handed ongoing troubling cases of claims made against serving MPs.
The first is a longstanding 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.
November 7
I am blessed with the use of a car to share with Commons leader Penny Mordaunt. On its first outing, the government car service sends a very pleasant driver who has clearly never been outside the M25 and is totally unfamiliar with the rural, unlit lanes of west Wales. We crawl along, following the verge in and out of every yard and gateway until we get to a road with white lines, where normality is restored.
November 24
The phone rings at 2.45am from a 2019’er, clearly pissed but just about coherent: “Hi, chief. Hope I haven’t woken you.” (It’s 2.45am, FFS.)
Me: “What’s up?”
Him: “I’m stuck in a brothel in Bayswater and I’ve run out of money.”
Me: “Go on…”
Him: “I met a woman as I left the Carlton Club who offered me a drink, but I now think she is a KGB agent. She wants £500 and has left me in a room with 12 naked women and a CCTV.”
Me: “Give me a few moments and I will call you back.”
Bloody hell, this is a mess. I ring Spad [special adviser] Emma. She offers to leave her house and go personally to Bayswater on an extraction mission.
I suggest not (she sounded rather disappointed).
Instead, we devise a plan to send a taxi, extract our man, return him to the safety of his own hotel. I go back to sleep.
4.10am. Phone rings again.
Me: “Are you back safely?”
Him: “Yes, but you will never guess what happened next.” (The truest thing he said all evening.)
Me: “Go on…”
continued