The diary of a chief whip is a rare thing. Holders of the most shadowy office in Westminster have typically made a vow of silence about their work. In the words of the documentary maker Michael Cockerell, ‘discretion is like the calcium in the bones’ of a whip – or at least it used to be.

A quarter of a century ago, Gyles Brandreth gave us a glimpse into the whips’ office with his diary Breaking the Code, which featured his stint as a whip in the John Major government. His indiscretion was not appreciated and the erstwhile MP for Chester received an ominous ‘black spot’ through the post, presumably from one of his disgruntled former colleagues. Yet Brandreth was a mere junior whip. Simon Hart spent two years as Rishi
Sunak’s chief whip. In this book, he pulls back the curtain on the whips’ office altogether. Omertà is well and truly broken.

Hart was first elected as a Conservative MP in 2010. Under David Cameron and Theresa May, however, his career didn’t get off the starting line. His fortunes changed in July 2019, when Boris Johnson asked him to serve first as a parliamentary secretary and then as secretary of state for