It was, says Alan Duncan, a form of therapy to write a diary as a minister throughout the most turbulent period in British politics. “The catharsis of putting everything down — the rage on the page every day — was a fantastic outlet,” he says. “I could keep my composure all the way through, but also remember everything and get it out of my system.” And what a lot he had to get out of his system.
Duncan’s new book, In the Thick of It, is a compelling compendium of high gossip and low intrigue, full of withering put-downs and waspish observations. Boris Johnson is denounced as “an international stain on our reputation, a selfish, ill-disciplined, shambolic, shameless clot”. Priti Patel is “a nothing person, a complete and utter nightmare, the Wicked Witch of Witham”, Michael Gove “an unctuous freak, a whacky weirdo” and Gavin Williamson a “leaking slimeball”. Even Theresa May, whom he has known since university and supported for the Tory leadership, is described as “a frightened rabbit, a cardboard cut-out” with “sub-zero” social skills.
Since extracts were published his phone has been pinging all week with texts and WhatsApp messages from “MPs saying either they love it or are they in the index?” Perhaps not surprisingly, the prime minister has not been in touch. “I’ve had some conversations with him over the last year, but maybe not now,” says Duncan, who was once described as Johnson’s “pooper-scooper” when he was his deputy at the foreign office. “There are actually some very nice things in the book about Boris, but there’s nobody who doesn’t find him exasperating.”
He has no desire to hear from the home secretary. “I think she is utterly unsuited to high office.” His only regret is that he was so critical of May. “I’m upset with myself for some of the bursts of frustration against Theresa because she was dealt an impossible hand.”
Duncan, who was the first openly gay Conservative MP, had a ring-side seat at Westminster for more than 30 years until he stood down at the last election. Now 64, he was a minister in the Foreign Office and at the Department for International Development for much of the past decade. Diminutive and dapper, the former oil trader has always been good company and remains ferociously well connected.
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We meet in his Georgian townhouse, just around the corner from the House of Commons. It was John Major’s campaign headquarters in 1990 and William Hague’s leadership hub in 1997. The walls are lined with political cartoons and photographs of Conservative grandees. There is a picture of a young Duncan with Margaret Thatcher in the hall and letters from three prime ministers in the downstairs loo. Duncan takes me down to the basement kitchen, makes coffee, then perches on a socially distanced stool in the corner as we talk.
The book covers the period from the eve of the 2016 referendum to the UK’s eventual exit from the EU. Duncan insists he never intended to publish his diary, but kept it because he wanted a contemporaneous record of the extraordinary events he was witnessing. “It was absolutely non-stop, relentless. I wanted total recall and the only way of achieving it was to write it down.”
As for what he admits are occasionally “waspish opinions”, he says: “Look, let’s be honest. Everybody thinks these thoughts. A lot of MPs go and give them to journalists. I put them on a bit of paper.”
He insists that overall the book is “far more generous-spirited” than cruel. “I’m tough on people who I think have behaved badly and a lot of people did. I’m quite entitled to be tough on them.” That certainly in his view includes Johnson. “He plotted against a prime minister and brought her down, which I found difficult at the time,” Duncan says. “There’s no point in publishing a diary which pretends to be a reflection of the moment if you’ve subsequently bleached it.”
Strangely, one of the most explosive moments described in the book is a stand-up row that Duncan had with Johnson in 2017 about one of my columns for The Times. I had just returned from the US, where I had been amazed by the contempt in which our then foreign secretary was held. It chimed with what EU diplomats and several senior Tory MPs had also told me so I suggested that Johnson was turning into an “international joke”.
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Johnson “completely popped”, blamed his deputy and summoned him for a dressing down. He demanded to know why people did not take him seriously. “Just look in the f***ing mirror,” Duncan replied. Relations never fully recovered. “He picks people up and then he throws them aside,” Duncan says. “I’m deliciously, happily detached from all that now. Politics has become so shallow.” I ask what he thinks motivates the prime minister. “The limelight,” he replies. “A lot of people have said, ‘Was he always more interested in getting there than being there?’ Well, time will tell.”
Duncan describes Johnson’s first reshuffle as a “massacre, replacing the Sensibles with the Despicables” and he is excoriating about the senior ministers now running the country. “All politics requires ambition, but I have never known a parliament in which so many people are so self-seeking and self-promoting,” he says. “The most junior squit briefs papers that they are the next cabinet minister. They’re so shameless and discipline has collapsed. There’s a void of clear policy and philosophy.”
He sees no logic to ministerial appointments. “Nobody works out what someone’s done, what job they might be good for. You give less attention to putting someone in charge of a department of state with a budget of £10 billion than you might interviewing your own parliamentary secretary. It’s absurd juggling around.” Johnson made matters worse by prizing Brexit loyalty over talent. “Effectiveness as a cabinet minister is seen to be more about PR than policy management.”
What makes Duncan even more furious is the rise of the unelected officials surrounding successive prime ministers. “The usurping of democratic power by special advisers is contemptible. All these people in No 10 think they’re more important than ministers and this is not acceptable. Special advisers have a unique capacity to corrode and destroy government. They’re pushing us towards a presidency and it’s gone too far.”
Duncan does give Johnson credit for his handling of the pandemic. “Only Boris would have had the force of personality to galvanise the country on Covid.” He is less tolerant of the Tory lockdown sceptics in the Covid Research Group. “It’s the same cast of characters who behaved abominably with Theresa May and, in my view, are now behaving abominably with Boris. Those in the Conservative Party who are adopting these simplistic postures are just not Conservatives, they’re simplistic radicals.”
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However, he worries that Britain’s standing in the world has been severely damaged by the past few years. “There is,” he says, “simmering reputational disdain which is not going to go away.” The threat to break international law “did slap a label on this government, as has the decision to reduce the 0.7 per cent [of GDP spent] on international aid.” The character of the prime minister and quality of the cabinet are also a problem. “There’s a lot to rebuild . . . One of the reasons the Foreign Office was so influential was that we had intellectual integrity and honest conduct and didn’t play games. We played things straight. That was a great plus point for the Foreign Office. We’ve eroded that.”
Having worked closely with so many leaders, he fears the Tory party has lost its way. “I don’t know what we think any more. We are governed by press release rather than by policy formation, and parliament has completely crumbled. Twitter is the new parliament. People just get together to object to things. What I want to see is competence and clear thinking. I don’t want government by gestures, I want government by good ideas.”
A Middle East expert, and a fervent supporter of Palestinian rights, Duncan is strongly critical of the influential parliamentary group the Conservative Friends of Israel. “It’s a scandal,” he says. “This is embedded espionage. All these senior politicians in the next generation are so ignorant of the history of the Middle East and all they want is donor money. They have no understanding of what is happening on the ground in the West Bank. Where is the party’s sense of justice, either for poor people or for Palestinians?”
Duncan has long been a leading Tory moderniser and liberal. His book is dedicated to his husband, James, whom he clearly adores. “I’m very lucky. He’s such a star.” They have spent the lockdown at their home in Rutland with their cockapoo, Noodle, choosing paint colours and soft furnishings for a converted barn that they have turned into a guest house.
Homophobia was endemic at Westminster for years, Duncan says. He was almost prevented from being a Tory candidate because Conservative Central Office feared a “scandal”, then he was “blackballed” by the whips’ office in the Commons. It was 2002 when he became the first Tory MP to come out. “I thought the only way to break the mould was to do it by example and that that was more important than campaigning.”
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He is pleased that sexuality is now “a matter of fact rather than a matter of controversy” in politics, but it was not easy to be a trailblazer. “It gives them a weapon to be patronising about. I’ve spent years being patronised by people for either being small or gay.” He thinks he suffered for his decision. “Only one person can be the first. I’m glad I’ve left that mark, but it came at a price because I was too early to be free of the drag anchor. They’re all saying, ‘We’ve got to have some ethnic person in the cabinet.’ By the time they thought, ‘Let’s have the first gay guy,’ everyone said, ‘What’s so special about that?’ ”
Duncan would have loved a cabinet job, but he insists he has no regrets. “My mantra is always, be a happy politician and don’t be bitter. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Politics is about being in on events and I’ve been in on events. I have been, as the book says, in the thick of it.”
In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan is published by HarperCollins, £25
