LAST week marked the first 100 days of our new government and the political literary event of the year with the launch of Boris Johnson’s new book about his time in No 10, Unleashed, writes former Darlington MP Peter Gibson.

Sadly, I didn’t get a gold trimmed invitation to the glittering launch of the latter. Undeterred, I got myself down to Waterstones and saved myself a fiver off the purchase price, a bargain compared to those who attended the London-based unleashing of Unleashed, and who had to pay full price after having queued for the privilege of a squiggle by the big dog.

I have devoured it over the last week, skipping the pre 2019 chapters, which I will return to later, because I wanted to follow the chronology of events that led to my election as MP for Darlington, along with success for many colleagues, and the subsequent democratic drubbing.

While I was a close observer and player of events in Westminster, I wanted to understand what was going through Boris’s mind as we went through those rollercoaster years: the highs of the December 2019 election, of getting Brexit done, and of delivering the vaccine rollout.

And what did he really mean by “levelling up” and was he committed to it?

Plus the lows too, of Owen Patterson, of lockdowns, of Dominic Cummings, and of events in Downing Street.

Boris’s boosterism blasts off every page, but the takeaway I have is that the job of Prime Minister is a terribly lonely one, particularly during those dark days of Covid. I heartily recommend the book, and look forward to reading the recollections of others in the future.

The start of Labour’s first hundred days saw me beaten at the ballot box and commence the laborious work of making my dedicated team redundant, emptying offices at two ends of the country and decanting the contents of two offices and a London flat into my dining room, much to the disgust and chunterings of my better half.

The British public voted for change, but more recent polling drops Labour onto a share of the vote not seen since November 2019, suggesting this government is not the change people wanted.

The removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance has seen me and my Conservative colleagues in Darlington collecting petition signatures on High Row, and being dragged into impromptu pension credit surgeries at every turn.

I have no inside knowledge of the content of the inboxes of the newly-elected Labour MPs but I am pretty sure they will have far outstripped the zenith of mine which was caused by an infamous trip to Barnard Castle.

Politicians get given stuff and there are very clear, if a little convoluted, rules on how to declare this. While the “getting stuff” isn’t necessarily approved by the British public, they absolutely don’t like their politicians saying one thing and then doing another, and Keir Starmer has clearly made a right hash of this.

The staff team should never be the story, and as we saw more coverage of Sue Gray, it became inevitable that she couldn’t last much longer.

We have this week seen the positive news of inward investment, but the Government has failed to acknowledge how much of this was down to the Tories. We’ve still to see Hitachi saved at the “stroke of a pen”, and I genuinely fear for our hard fought for Northern link road.

Perhaps the promised change will follow the Budget on October 30.

  • Peter Gibson is the former Conservative MP for Darlington