Political diaries of a Chief Wet
Perhaps being a Conservative MP should be reserved for conservatives?
Simon Hart was the Chief Whip during Rishi Sunak’s premiership, having earlier served as Welsh Secretary under Boris Johnson. Hart lost his seat of Caerfyrddin at the General Election last year and has published his diaries. Naturally, the media’s attention has focussed on an incident where one of his Parliamentary colleagues “rings at 2.45am” to say: “I’m stuck in a brothel in Bayswater and I’ve run out of money.” The colleague adds: “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.” The KGB was dismantled in 1991, and its successor body is the FSB. But Hart could be forgiven for overlooking this error. Another incident involved a special advisor who “went to an orgy over the weekend and ended up taking a crap on another person’s head.” Hart treats such degenerate antics with indulgence: “Just another day at the office … today’s HR joys … “ The one thing he can’t tolerate is any statement of Conservative belief from his fellow Conservative MPs.
An essential role of the Chief Whip is to accommodate the different factions in the Parliamentary party to maintain some level of cohesion. The Prime Minister will be advised to balance Ministerial appointments to reflect this. Sometimes advise that the legislative programme be amended to avert damaging rebellions. Naturally all sorts of personal ambitions and resentment play their part. But what the Government is actually doing does also matter. So it helps is the Chief Whip can be someone respected on all sides, seeking to resolve the competing pressures in a fair minded way. Sometimes he seeks to portray himself in that way. The difficulty is that on page after page he gives the game away — practising the bitter sectarianism he is supposed to eschew. Far from being force for unity, Hart is entrenched in his factionalism he shows no inclination for empathy or understanding of those with a different view.
In his analysis, he dismissed the European Research Group as “noisy” but commends the One Nation group for “pursuing a more centrist approach, convinced, rightly in my view that elections are won from the centre not the fringe.” Identifying the “centre” is rather intriguing. The Conservative Government presided over record levels of state spending and taxation, net migration reaching nearly a million and an upsurge of woke puritanism. The backlash of millions of Conservatives abstaining or switching to Reform UK was unremarkable.
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Hart boasts about the Daily Express describing him as the “wokest Chief Whip ever”
But in Hart’s mind the Conservative Government was intolerably right wing. On June 3rd last year, Hart records that Nigel Farage has announced he will stand in Clacton. “Naked opportunism and ego” from a “pub bore” promoting “hatred and division.” Hart then adds, in quite extraordinary reflection: “Colleagues suggest that we do a deal, but what does he want that we haven’t already delivered?”
Not that Hart was alone in such analysis. On 20 November 2023 he had “dinner with Tom Tugendhat, who worries we are being dragged into an unelectable position out on the right.” The following week its lunch with Penny Mordaunt: “She is worried about the long-term future of the Party, as am I, if we keep capitulating to the lunatics.”
Hart has made a contribution to the rise of Reform UK by forcing out Lee Anderson from the Conservative Party. Anderson had suggested on GB News that “Islamists have got control” of the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and that was the explanation for policing deficiencies regarding Palestinian marches in London inciting violence and promoting anti semitism. There was nothing new about Khan being challenged over his extremist links — Zac Goldsmith and others had done so. The suggestion was not that Khan shared Islamist beliefs himself but that he was “cowardly” in standing up to them.
Anderson confirmed that he was not anti Muslim. The term “Islamist” was a reference to the extremists, the fundamentalists, the jihadists. Yet Hart seemed unwilling or unable to grasp the distinction. After a couple of weeks Hart records that Anderson has defected to Reform. “A total nob,” says Hart lamenting that Anderson has “shown no loyalty to the Party that provided him the platform from which to launch his career.” How much “loyalty” did Hart expect after throwing someone out?
Compare his treatment to that given to William Wragg. This was the Tory MP in the honeytrap sexting scandal, who leaked colleagues’ numbers to a man he had met on the gay dating app Grindr. He had sent over intimate pictures of himself to the user and thought it would be a good wheeze to let his colleagues get entrapped in return for being let off himself. Hart refuses to withdraw the Whip at first — but he and Wragg “gently reach a position” where Wragg agrees to surrender it.
Elsewhere, we have swipes at the Conservative Democratic Organisation — “another group of right-wing fundamentalists who are dragging the Party into unelectability.” More disdain for “John Hayes and few others from the Christian wing” who want to allow silent prayer outside abortion clinics to exercise freedom of speech. Hart has no sympathy for them. “Women using the clinic are probably experiencing enough trauma”, he says — without seeing Christians “creepily” praying for unborn children about to be murdered. As for Danny Kruger’s New Conservatives, don’t get him started.
Hart boasts about the Daily Express describing him as “the wokest Chief Whip ever.” Identity politics being at the forefront of his mind when it comes to Ministerial appointments. “The big question is why only 25 per cent of our MPs are women, not why only 34 per cent of the Cabinet is,” he says. A “big question” for him, I suppose. Later on, he says: “Kemi popped in for a chat about trans stuff — I try but I cannot find a mutually useable wavelength.”
There are complaints from colleagues about Michael Gove’s Renters Reform Bill having “a feel of anti Conservatism about it.” Well, indeed, if one supposes private property rights and the freedom of contract are concepts Conservatives should wish to protect. Hart shrugs this off as many of the objectors being landlords: “we can’t ignore the fact that renters also need protection.” No thought that the big clunking fist of the state crashing down on the private rented sector might prove tricky for tenants as well if the shortage of accommodation was made worse.
29 November 2023 sees a visit to The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards. “Suella Braverman decided to double down on her ‘hate march’ rhetoric to a room full of left of centre political commentators triggering a predictably muted reaction.” Hart earlier accuses Suella of “dripping with poison and hatred.”
Why couldn’t she follow his approach to ingratiating herself with the Lefties? At the Remembrance Sunday service in Whitehall earlier that month, Hart says Keir Starmer “really is as steady in real life as his public persona suggests. His great strength is that he looks good and isn’t actually mad.” Tony Blair is “always delightful.”
Contrast 14 March last year which offered Hart some respite from all these ghastly Tories. He has “coffee at the Athenaeum with former colleague and podcaster extraordinaire Rory Stewart. We have common ground on most issues and our journeys have taken us to the same centre ground in politics.” Both remainers, of course, but while Hart stuck with the Conservative Party, Rory left to attempt an ill-fated independent candidacy for Mayor of London. Rory “is nattily dressed, a zip-up cardigan under his suit.” (?)
Of course, there is also plenty in this volume that one nods along with. Hart gets exasperated by the “entitlement” of mediocre MPs demanding knighthoods and peerages — though the reader finds his endless complaints about the Government Car Service hinting at the same character flaw. He often laments the failure of proper candidate vetting by the Conservative Party when approving individuals as suitable candidates for Parliament. Quite so. But given some of the opinions he expresses, should not the vetting also ensure that those put forward as Conservative candidates hold opinions with some resemblance to that label?
