Not many sleeps to go until publication day for Liz Truss, the short-serving former prime minister, who has written a book titled Ten Years to Save The West. The book, out in mid-April, will “share lessons” from Truss’s decade in Government (and 49 days in 10 Downing Street). But how optimistic are the publishers? We notice that Truss’s initial advance from her UK publisher, Biteback, is a paltry £1,512.88. The rest will come in instalments. It’s a modest sum when compared with the advance her predecessor Boris Johnson received for his forthcoming memoir, as yet untitled.
Johnson reportedly bagged more than £500,000. Perhaps it’s calculated in line with time served in No 10? Her US publisher upped the ante with an initial advance of £6,161.40. Truss’s book might sell better in America than here. She has been touring the US to promote her ideas about limited government and free markets and spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, where Donald Trump was the keynote speaker. Truss lamented a “deep state” effort to sink her government. Many Republicans lapped her up as a second Thatcher. UK readers might be more sceptical.
Owen Jones leaves Labour but stays loyal to one MP
The last time the Londoner saw Left-wing YouTuber and columnist Owen Jones, he was dancing the night away at an East London club night. But he took a break from the party lifestyle this week to make headlines with a spectacular announcement: he is leaving the Labour party after 24 years as a member because of his strong disagreements with the current leadership of Sir Keir Starmer. In an emotional video, Jones urged people who feel similarly to support Greens or Left-wing independents standing against Labour. But he made a special exception for some Labour MPs, first among them John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, who he will continue to champion. McDonnell gave Jones his first job, plucking him out of the obscurity of an Oxford history masters degree to hire him as a researcher way back in the Noughties. So began Jones’s inexorable rise through the Labour movement which he has now, finally, broken with.
The Guardian prints a selective scoop
The Guardian’s front-page exposé about the public figures who frequent The Garrick, a men-only private members’ club, has made waves (the heads of the civil service and MI6 have resigned from the club after being named as members). But some members are peeved at all this attention. On our latest visit, a stony-faced member moaned that the full membership rolls are easily obtained by members “so it didn’t require much sleuthing to get it!”. Another fumed that one prominent member not named in the piece, Stanley Johnson, happens to be the father-in-law of the hack who got the scoop.
