The Chatterer is nothing if not generous, and so is happy in the season of goodwill to praise a nugget it picked up on a rival political podcast recorded at Whitehall institution the Red Lion, following the New Statesman podcast team’s own outing there this week.
This is the titbit on Telegraph podcast Chopper’s Politics that stalwart Brexiteer and Braveheart-quoting antihero of the Tory back benches, Mark Francois, has self-published his own book about the fight for Brexit – on Amazon, because all the publishing houses he went to (“a couple of dozen”) turned it down.
“Orthodoxy within the publishing industry is very much Remain,” he explained. After asking Nadine Dorries (the Culture Secretary who “knows something about books”, having sold 2.5 million of her novels) for advice, he decided to publish it himself, with the title: Spartan Victory: The Inside Story of the Battle for Brexit.
There is much to recommend it that the Remainiac publishing cabal has overlooked. Impartial literary critic Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, says: “If you voted for Brexit, you really ought to buy this book.”
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Its Amazon blurb describes it as “candid, sometimes humorous”, a “dynamic, insider account” and a “unique perspective on arguably the most important event in British political history since the end of the Second World War”.
Giving it an average rating of three stars, reviewers seem less sure. While the top two give it five stars as an “interesting read from behind the lines” and a “fascinating book – wonderfully written”, a couple of others downgrade it to one star with “This book is an insult to the English language” and the devastating critique: “Utter garbage. I would give it zero stars if I could.”
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Ah well, he’s probably had much worse from the whip’s office.