My clash with Cameron

MPs have a standard approach to political biographies, which falls into three phases: first, preliminary gossip about what will or won’t (always a lot more interesting) be in it; second, mildly salacious enjoyment of the usually tepid leaks and excerpts in the press beforehand; and third, once the book comes out, the inevitable furtive rummaging through the index to see if they get any mentions.

Stage three is hardly restricted to MPs, of course: William F. Buckley famously sent Norman Mailer a book with ‘Hi Norman’ inscribed in the index, knowing Mailer would look there first.

But I hadn’t got near stage three with David Cameron’s autobiography when my indefatigable assistant sent me a couple of spontaneous screen shots that made it clear that David had badly mis-remembered one small but significant episode: the 2012 rebellion over the government’s attempt to abolish the House of Lords.

Gentle reader, I led that revolting band of Conservative brothers and sisters — naturally, we called ourselves the Sensibles — and hitherto I have rebuffed numerous invitations to spill the beans as to what actually happened. My view has been that this was a most unfortunate, indeed un-Conservative, incident best left to posterity. But now that the sanctity of the lobby has been violated, the true story can be told; including a close encounter of the third kind between myself and the then prime minister.

Spectator readers are an educated bunch and, I have no doubt, are stern and unbending upholders of the British constitution. They have browsed the works of Bagehot, cosseted Coke and delved into Dicey. But the same was not true of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of 2010.

The prime minister had made his big, open offer, and had decided that the Liberal Democrat demand for a national referendum on the Alternative Vote was a small price to pay for a stable government with a large majority at a moment of national economic crisis.