The best (and worst) politics books of 2024, from Boris to Truss

Amid election fever, gossipy memoirs and furious polemics came pouring out – and ex-PMs began jostling for attention

Never mind the General Election and change of government: there were few bigger stories in politics this year than the appearance of Boris Johnson’s long-awaited memoir, Unleashed (William Collins, £30). Those Conservatives who still believe the former prime minister was a good thing wrote rapturous encomiums; those less enamoured of the booster-in-chief tore the book to shreds. The rest of us were able to salute its considerable merits – wit, pace, jolly style – while acknowledging that its cavalier attitude towards such tiresome things as factual accuracy made it more a ripping yarn than a serious attempt to set the record straight.
No such yarns, ripping or otherwise, are to be found in Tom Baldwin’s sober biography of the current prime minister, Keir Starmer (William Collins, £25). Still, it compensates with a detailed account of what motivated Sir Keir throughout his early life, legal career and his ruthless dispatch of Labour’s Corbyn faction. (It should, perhaps, have been called The Starmer Supremacy.) Baldwin is a friend of the PM’s, so his study is undeniably partisan, but it’s still rich in insight into its subject’s political and social leanings – and surprisingly emotive family history.
In the last administration, Sir Graham Brady, the all-powerful chairman of the 1922 Committee, became synonymous with the removal of every Conservative leader save David Cameron and Rishi Sunak. (That pair did it to themselves.) Sir Graham’s eloquent and surprisingly gossipy memoir Kingmaker (Ithaka, £25) finally offers his account of the succession of regicides over which he presided. There was endless speculation as to how many “letters of no confidence” he was receiving in each hapless PM, but Brady never commented. Now, freed from the shackles of discretion, he lets rip about each leader and their downfall.
Kemi Badenoch has, as of earlier this month, replaced Sunak as the Conservative leader. So what is she really like? Michael Ashcroft, and his team of researchers, have profiled many aspirant leaders, and their latest, Blue Ambition (Biteback, £20), is a typically full and fair-minded examination of Badenoch’s background, strengths and weaknesses – albeit without direct input from its subject. However strong Badenoch is, she’ll have a job on her hands, as Geoffrey Wheatcroft explained earlier this year in his magnificently damning Bloody Panico (Verso, £14.99). Subtitled Or Whatever Happened to the Tory Party, it surveys the last 14 years with wit and anger, arguing that the Ides of March have come for the Tories: they’re facing an existential crisis that demands real boldness and imagination, not cheap platitudes and sloganeering.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter what they do. Sam Freedman’s eloquent Failed State (Macmillan, £20) sees Britain’s problems as a rot at the heart of the country itself, and blames successive governments – Labour and Conservative alike – for finding it politically inconvenient to tell the truth about the scale of the problems we face. In his reckoning, these include political reform, the NHS and local government, and in his estimation, it’s a “toxic cycle”.
The Green Party may no longer be the force it was since its charismatic leader Caroline Lucas stepped down, but her latest book, Another England (Hutchinson Heinemann, £22) is a welcome reminder that she continues to be one of the more thoughtful figures in public life. We shouldn’t regard “Englishness”, she thinks, as a straightforwardly Right- (or Left-) wing concept, but instead as a patchwork of literature, history, social evolution and political change. Conservative readers might find her conclusions occasionally facile, but there’s no doubt that Lucas makes her points with a skill and passion lacking in most politicians-turned-writers.
As for how England became what it is today, consult the political scientist and historian Vernon Bogdanor. In his latest book, Making the Weather (Haus, £22), he examines the post-war era, and half a dozen figures who changed the face of the land. Taking well-known faces both from the Right (Nigel Farage, Enoch Powell) and the Left (Tony Benn, Nye Bevan), Bogdanor convincingly argues that what distinguishes great politicians is their conviction, oratory and ability to persuade the sceptical of the righteousness of their cause – if only fleetingly.
Still, just because the charismatic can become the darlings of the people, it doesn’t follow that what they’re saying is desirable. In her typically well-researched and readable Autocracy, Inc (Allen Lane, £20), Anne Applebaum reminds us that there are considerably greater threats to our safety and security than political disagreements with domestic adversaries, not least the rise of such undemocratic states as Russia and China, who would collectively delight in the downfall of the West. If we aren’t quite yet at that point, Applebaum shows us how it’s far from unimaginable.
After months of coverage of the US presidential election, Britons may be forgiven for wanting their own declaration of independence. Angus Hanton’s Vassal State (Swift, £25) lays bare the lies behind the comforting term “special relationship”, and exposes how British politicians and businesses alike have rolled over for decades in order to keep our allies happy – a one-way relationship that has only resulted in our increasing addiction to American money. You’ll read it with fascination, anger and a desperate wish for change. Alas, as with many books on this list, the last of those isn’t yet on the cards.
Finally, every year throws up its share of unsuccessful titles. Two of 2024’s most disappointing, in my eyes, revolve – aptly enough – around Liz Truss. Anthony Seldon’s Truss at 10 (Atlantic, £22), an account of her short-lived premiership, was an evisceration of Truss both as person and PM; its enthusiastic hatred brought its tone perilously close to misogyny, and suggested that scores were being settled. Yet much the same could be said of Truss’s own memoir, Ten Years to Save the West (Biteback, £10.99), which mistakenly assumed that Britons in 2024, faced with all manner of ills from brutal mortgage rates to the triumph of Starmer’s Labour, would sympathise with her defenestration two years ago. Self-important and conspiratorial, this book may be essential reading – but not for the reasons its author had hoped.
Alexander Larman’s books include Power and Glory: Elizabeth II and the Rebirth of Royalty. To order any of the books above at a discount, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books

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