"Ungovernable" with Simon Hart

Simon Hart spent four years watching the British Conservative Party go from unassailable to unelectable. As Chief Whip under Rishi Sunak, he had a front row seat to three prime ministers, a pandemic, a market meltdown, and a parliamentary party that stopped being governable.

Now he's published his diaries. And they're causing a stir.

This week on Craft Politics, Simon Hart joins Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy to explain why he broke the Chief Whip's code of silence, what went wrong between 2019 and 2024, and whether British politics has become impossible to manage.

We discuss:

Why he published. Chief Whips don't write diaries. Simon did anyway, because if the Conservative Party is going to avoid repeating the mistakes of those years, somebody has to talk about what actually happened.

The Boris problem. Great political instincts, terrible on the small stuff. And in the end, when you're Prime Minister, the small stuff matters too. Simon walks us through the Dominic Cummings press conference disaster and the moment Boris asked him to kill the Privileges Committee report.

Rwanda and the rebellion. A flagship policy the government's life depended on, and colleagues prepared to crash it for a version that could never win a majority. The moment Simon realized the party had become ungovernable.

The two things that broke the brand. Integrity under Boris, economic competence under Liz Truss. Once both were gone, voters stopped listening. And the 20 point polling deficit never moved.

The brothel call at 2:45am. Yes, that story is real. Simon explains why the salacious bits aren't just gossip, they're a window into the impossible HR function of managing 650 MPs drawn from all walks of life.

Why Rishi doesn't get enough credit. Simon makes the case that history will be kinder to Sunak than the ballot box was, particularly on how he steadied the economy after the chaos.

The toxicity problem. Simon's son wrote about what it was like being the child of an MP in the social media age. We discuss whether politics has become so toxic that decent people will stop running, and what that means for democracy.

Simon Hart is the former Member of Parliament for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire and served as Chief Whip under Rishi Sunak. His new book, Ungovernable, is out now.

Find the book: Ungovernable by Simon Hart

00:00 Welcome and introducing Simon Hart — The Chief Whip who broke the silence
03:32 Why publish the diaries? Breaking the Chief Whip code
06:39 From unassailable to unelectable — The Conservative collapse
09:53 Ungovernable Britain — Why Starmer faces the same headwinds
21:05 The Rwanda rebellion and the art of the impossible
30:09 Boris Johnson — Getting the big calls right, botching the small ones
33:17 The Dominic Cummings disaster and Boris's regrets
36:10 The Privileges Committee and Boris's impossible ask
42:45 2.45am phone call — Stuck in a brothel with a KGB agent
46:30 The HR nightmare — When politics meets human chaos
50:28 Halloween horror — The orgy incident and other workplace disasters
54:01 What gets lost in the headlines — Praise for SPADs and civil servants
58:18 The toxicity problem — When being an MP becomes a family shame
59:06 Optimism or despair? The trajectory of British politics
1:07:14 The future of democracy — Can we agree on facts anymore?