‘Dear UK publishers,” tweeted the writer and presenter Damian Barr on Wednesday as the resignation letters flurried in like the owl post down Harry Potter’s chimney. “Please don’t buy their memoirs.” I felt compelled to remind him that there was an infinitely worse prospect: that all these ex-ministers and parliamentary private secretaries would take advantage of their free time to write their “novels”. After all, if Nadine Dorries can do it (publishing a novel or being appointed to a cabinet post), the bar must surely be set low enough to make anyone feel they may as well have a go.
There’s precedent, obviously. Plenty of politicians have been persuaded that writing fiction is a legitimate second job, in a long and respected tradition that stretches from Benjamin Disraeli to Ann Widdecombe. Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, currently has a thriller out, co-written with the novelist Imogen Robertson, and Watson deserves a special round of applause for having the humility and honesty to give Robertson equal billing on the cover.
