Christmas is drawing near – these are the books to get for the political obsessive in your life

For political correspondents, of course, the experience of devouring such tomes is rather different from the regular reader, writes Andrew Woodcock

Michel Barnier’s ‘My Secret Brexit Diary’ deserves your prolonged attention (AFP/Getty)

As Christmas draws near, I’ve been getting a few requests from friends for tips on books I’d recommend for the stockings of politically-minded friends and relatives.

For political correspondents, of course, the experience of devouring such tomes is rather different from the regular reader.

When not serialised before publication, biographies by Westminster big-hitters and exposés by investigative reporters tend to be scoured in a frenzied rush for the jaw-dropping nuggets which will produce a headline, rather than perused in leisurely fashion for their quality of thought or prose style. Indexes are often the first pages we turn to in our hunt for a story.

Among those which deserve more prolonged attention is Michel Barnier’s My Secret Brexit Diary – a 450-page doorstopper which I filleted in two or three hours when it came out in French earlier this year, but returned to with interest when the English translation appeared in September.

For anyone who remembers the Brexit negotiations as a never-ending and incomprehensible fever dream, this ringside-seat testimony offers a lucid and eye-opening account of the convoluted processes involved in extricating the UK from the EU following the referendum.

Clearly Barnier – who later made an unsuccessful bid for the French presidency – has a vested interest in the way the events are portrayed, but the picture he paints of an unprepared UK team riven by internal battles comprehensively outmanoeuvred by seasoned EU negotiators certainly rings true.

A view from the other side is provided by Theresa May’s ex-chief of staff Gavin Barwell, who lived through the nightmare of the former prime minister’s doomed attempts to deliver on the referendum verdict she had inherited while subjected to constant assault from within her own party trying to force her into the most extreme Brexit possible.

The long-suffering Barwell does little in Chief of Staff to conceal his distaste for the manoeuvrings of Boris Johnson, showing him using the post of foreign secretary offered him by May as a platform to destabilise and eventually replace her.

If Brexit is a battle you don’t want to revisit, there are fascinating accounts beginning to emerge of the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic.

Investigative journalists Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott draw on hundreds of interviews with politicians, scientists, medics and bereaved families to paint a picture of the first year of the pandemic under a title – Failures of State – which acts as a pretty comprehensive spoiler as to their judgement on the performance of Boris Johnson’s administration.

Jeremy Farrar’s Spike offers the same story from a different angle, with the author – as an eminent medical researcher and director of the Wellcome Trust – directly involved in the debates in both scientific and political circles which shaped the UK’s response.

And for an alternative take on the pandemic, Pandemonium by Armando Iannucci – creator of political satires The Thick of It, Veep and The Death of Stalin – is an epic poem on “the Current Predicament” which is by turns laugh-out-loud funny, heart-rending and devastating in its assessment of official bungling.

Also hilarious and horrifying in equal proportions is Peter Oborne’s The Assault on Truth, which clinically documents the long history of lies, half-truths and deceptions committed by Mr Johnson in his rise to the pinnacle of the political establishment.

Notable political biographies this year included Always Red by former Unite union boss Len McCluskey, featuring a behind-the-scenes account of Jeremy Corbyn’s ascendancy and fall as Labour leader as part of a revealing history of a lifetime spent in battles both industrial and political.

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And in Beyond a Fringe, former Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell presents a view from inside the establishment as seen by one of the few remaining holders of the One Nation Tory torch, who has parted company with the party’s current leadership over its savage cuts to overseas aid.

For a wider vision of the political realities of the UK today, Financial Times journalist Sebastian Payne’s Broken Heartlands takes a sustained look at the rise of political disengagement and discontent in Labour’s strongholds in the Midlands and north of England, interviewing politicians from Norman Tebbit to Andy Burnham as well as residents to build up a more nuanced picture than the red wall slogan from the 2019 election.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor