Ungovernable
The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip
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The first insider account of life as a Chief Whip inside Westminster, from MP Simon Hart who has served under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.
Over the course of the last five years Simon Hart has had a front row seat to the most turbulent political years in recent British political history, from negotiations around Brexit to COVID and its political fallout to the impact of Liz Truss' extraordinary 43-day premiership and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And, in 2022, under Rishi Sunak, he witnessed successive dramas unfold while holding the position of Chief Whip.
During those Whip years, Simon oversaw a record fifteen Conservative MPs fell by the wayside. Three of these were resignations, including the scandal of Nadine Dorries and her disappearing Peerage; two defected to Labour, and the remaining ten were suspended by Simon for offences ranging from Matt Hancock's unauthorised appearance on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me out of Here to Lee Anderson's refusal to apologize to the London Mayor for his public accusation that "Islamists" controlled London. Each one of these involved an extensive build up, a complicated process and a noisy and vitriolic public commentary. None of this stopped him becoming one of the few Chiefs to survive for an entire premiership, of which there have been ten Chiefs in fourteen consecutive years.
Ungovernable is his revealing, real-time blow-by-blow diaries of that extraordinary period of politics, at-times-salacious at-times-mundane, and a glimpse behind the curtain of what truly goes on in Westminster.
About this Author
Simon Hart was MP for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire between 2010 and 2024. Previously a chartered surveyor, Simon cut his political teeth as the former Chief Executive Officer of the Countryside Alliance, the UK's largest rural lobbying group between 2003 and 2007. He has also served on four select committees. Following Theresa May's election as Prime Minister in 2017 he became her representative on the Committee for Standards in Public Life. He was appointed to Minister for Implementation in the Cabinet Office under Boris Johnson, and resigned from his government the day before Boris himself surrendered. In October 2022, Rishi Sunak invited him to become Government Chief Whip, where he became one of the few Chief Whips to last an entire premiership. He is married with two adult children, both of whom have managed to keep their father's identity largely a secret throughout their university years. He lives in Pembrokeshire.
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