The autobiography of a fig leaf

There are going to be plenty more of these, no doubt, even though the Blair administration doesn’t strike one as having been a government full of natural diary- keepers or memoir writers. Still, the incentive of publishers’ lucre presses strongly on those recently deprived of office — John Prescott, in this memoir, remarks guilelessly that he had no idea, until he stood down, quite how expensive London property was. Mrs Blair and now John Prescott have probably been wise to dash into print with books, however atrocious in execution and deplorable in intention, before too much time elapses. If past experience is anything to go by, there will soon be more ministers’ memoirs than there are customers to buy them; and, without a doubt, Prescott’s will be quite forgotten in a very few years.

I find this an astonishing volume, for a number of reasons, but the central one is that it doesn’t resemble a politician’s autobiography at all.