Compulsory political reading

What I find so depressing about this book is that so few politicians and journalists have bothered to read it. A couple of days ago I popped in to the Commons for dinner. As I still had Boles’s book in my pocket, every time I bumped into ministers and senior journalists I asked if they had read it. Not one had. This is as remarkable as it is worrying. There are too many people who moan that they don’t know what the Coalition stands for or how it ticks. For those who really want to know – for those, of all parties, who really care about this country and her peoples – this book should be compulsory reading.

The glory of Which Way’s Up? is that there is something in it for everyone. Even the Hitchcockian mound that is Simon Heffer could not disagree with much of it. And the Gothic figure of Norman Tebbit might just manage a smile when he reads the quote from Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, “I would not mind betting that if Mr Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party”.