Don’t Menshn The Memoirs

As the McBride memoir is pored over, digested and discussed in political circles, others who have moved on from the arena of politics are being asked whether they intend to follow Pa Broon’s spinner and write a tell-all book, no matter how trivial or tangential their contribution. And if we’re talking trivial and tangential, the candidates don’t come more ideal than Louise Mensch.

Has she got memoirs for us? Hopefully not

The former Tory MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire, now representing the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket, has felt the need, especially with her palm greased by the filthy lucre emanating from the Murdoch empire, to pass judgment on the activities of Damian McBride, despite her not arriving in the Commons until a year after his departure from the stage.

But here a problem enters: McBride worked for Brown for around six years, being very much in the proverbial thick of it. Ms Mensch was an MP for a mere 29 months, much of that taken up with such earth-shattering events as constituency surgeries, and Twitter reminders to anyone out there that she loved East Northants (although, as events have demonstrated, maybe not so much).

She will try to make hay with the supposed connection between McBride and Mil The Younger in her column for tomorrow’s Sunday Sun (alongside her pronouncements on Simon Cowell and Nicki Minaj), observing “McBride. There is something so distasteful about dropping your former allies in it. Nobody has any honour any more” and waving away any suggestion of redemption.

“He’s supposed to have turned over a new leaf working for CAFOD. Evidently not” she sneers, clearly unaware of the idea that confession is good for the soul. And Ms Mensch is unequivocal in her determination not to produce her own political memoir: “Absolutely [no chance] whatsoever. I keep my word” she sniffs at the suggestion. But the reality is rather more prosaic.

Louise Mensch has, truth be told, next to nothing she could tell in a memoir that is not already known. Moreover, a large percentage of any assertions would be instantly challenged by the likes of Piers Morgan and Labour MP Tom Watson, and anything to do with Phonehackgate would be out of bounds while she has anything to do with any Murdoch media outlets.

And, as Rupe provides her sole press engagements nowadays, she is not about to cross him. After her hectoring dismissal of the Guardian over the NSA revelations, where she asserted that nobody was interested, she would not want the inevitable humiliation of putting out a memoir in which, er, nobody was interested. So there is no keeping of any word involved – she has nothing of any interest to tell.

But she has to maintain the pretence that she has. No change there, then.