Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, as we head towards Christmas and look back at the political year, we've got the author

of what for my money is the best political book of 2025, Ungovernable, the diaries of the former

Chief Whip, Simon Hart. Now Lord Hart of Tenby, having been promoted to the House of Lords,

he somewhat controversially lifted the lid on his time inside the Whips office during the dying days of the Conservative government.

And so we chatted about the criticism he faced for breaking the murder and the whipping system,

what the Labour government can learn from his time in office, and the difference between life in the upper chamber and in opposition.

So, Simon, thanks so much for coming on.

You've had a pretty busy year, even though obviously you left Parliament last year.

We've obviously returned into the upper chamber, publication of your book.

Just kind of an assessment of it of how you've, how you felt

this kind of year, first year, not as an MP, but how has it been? I mean, you know, every year

in politics these days appears to attract the, you know, the expression tumultus. And I think this is

no different. And, you know, if I'd been sat, you know, maybe last Christmas, wondering what

the 12 months would look like, probably wouldn't have thought it would look like this. You know, it's a different lifestyle, different pace, you know, all that kind of stuff. One or two new, new ventures, but none of it was really easy to predict, that's for sure. No, quite a few kind of old faces up in the upper chamber. there's a bit of a kind of a reunion of some of that kind of 2010 era of conservative MPs. There's quite a few of you now up there, aren't there?

I feel it's like I've gone from primary school to secondary school and then, you know, I'm with this bunch of older people now. But actually, it's remarkable how sitting alongside Neil Kinnock and David Blunkett and big characters from

politics of years gone by, who everybody remembers, they may wonder what they're doing now.

Well, actually, you know, they're doing stuff up here and, you know, regular hardworking

attendance and with a whole load of experience under their belts. That's really interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we'll come on to kind of the work in their House of Lords because I think it's become a pretty active kind of place and it's going to become, again, another kind of battleground with some big bits of legislation at the end of this year and into kind of next year. But as I said, you published your book this year about your kind of time as an MP finishing with those couple of years as Chief Whip. I just want to talk to you about kind of the response, because when it first came out, it was kind of excerpts were in the Times, and it was this kind of glorious romp through the kind of the last mad couple of years of the Tory government. And I think we were always kind of someone quite kind of lurid stories. And I felt there was a bit of a backlash towards it. I mean, firstly, for kind of, you know, speaking about breaking the sanctity of the whips office, some people were unhappy about that, although, you know, it has been done before. Jalz Brandt literally wrote a book called Breaking the Code about the secrets of the whips office. But also, secondly, this idea that perhaps you were sort of making light of some of the more serious things. Were you kind of affected by that

kind of backlash? I think both of those things are perfectly legitimate observations, actually.

The making light, dealing with the reverse, I think the making light of serious stuff,

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