Why Politicians Shouldn't Write Novels

Vince Cable has achieved what nobody thought would ever be done. He has written a political thriller with Lib Dem heroes. Sorry, that's an "explosive thriller which circles Whitehall to the slums of Mumbai" with Lib Dem heroes, as the blurb puts it.

Open Arms starts with a squeal. It's June of 2019. A headless body floats down a polluted Indian river. Inspector Mankad looks on, aghast. Who is the poor decapitated old rotter? Just another hopeless soul with a tragic fate? Or a clumsily planted plot device designed to introduce the bigger, murkier picture of international tension, terrorism and strained Pakistan/India relations? Well, we're in luck, because Vince has the answer, duly provided over 300-and-something pages of variable intelligibility. Anyway, who cares. If the international relations stuff leaves you drawing for the armpit fan, there's plenty more. Plenty, plenty more. Terrorism, arms deals, parliamentary jousting, the media, Trump, shagging and Brexit (bingo!) to name just a few of the spiciest thematic meatballs.

Sure, Brexit is ghastly, Trump's a dangerous buffoon, terrorism is bad and sex is a bit naughty, but all of that stuff is small beer indeed compared to the Really Important Thing. Which is that the Lib Dems are great. Sensible and great. Just look at Cable's protagonist, fresh-faced Tory MP Kate Thompson. She isn't sensible. We know this because a) she's not a Lib Dem, b) she's a woman, and c) not only is she a woman, she's a libidinous woman. But not an entirely lost cause, having secretly voted Lib Dem at the last election because the candidate just seemed that bit more beguiling in comparison with "the useless local MP". And that isn't all, as having been sent to negotiate a deal between a West Midlands avionics firm and their Indian competition, she ends up falling for smouldering magnate Deepak Parrikar. There's no way a Lib Dem MP would compromise themselves in such an obvious, seedy little manner, is there? You might think that, but Vince Cable couldn't possibly comment.

Despite the thickness of embarrassment oozing out of all this, you might be surprised to discover Open Arms isn't even the worst ill-advised debut novel by an ageing British political mediocrity. Not even close, it transpires. For one, it's not Iain Duncan Smith's 2003 thriller The Devil's Tune, a tale of desperately horny presidents and leaden political intrigue, flecked with the occasional rush at the sublime ("the whispering rush of cluttered memories spun round like a vortex" is particularly succulent). A novel so bad there were whispers upon publication of it winning the Bulwer Lytton prize for "the worst fictional prose of the year". It would have been fitting had it done so: Lord Lytton was another spectacular failure of a Tory politician.

Nor does it possess the boutique squalor of Edwina Currie's Mischief with the Strawberry Whip, A Parliamentary Affair, a titillating dive into the sex lives of four adulterous Westminster politicos which contemporary reviews described as "a failure of imagination so persistent it almost seems miraculous". And does Cable's offering really rank alongside the majesty of Nadine Dorris' The Four Streets ("the worst novel I've read in 10 years") or Boris Johnson's transatlantic Carry On-style farce Seventy-Two Virgins? ("a sense of going nowhere fast")?

Perhaps this is the wrong approach. Compiling a league table of dross might be a fun diversion, but ultimately futile. After all, being a bad writer isn't a crime. If it were, the Gulags would be stuffed with no-mark novelists, Instagram poets and listicle professionals. You might even know some personally. Maybe you're one yourself. The American poet Randall Jarrell wrote, in his famous piece on Bad Poets, that the good and mediocre books come in from week to week, but the "worthless books come in day after day, like the cries and truck sounds from the street", and there is nothing, he says, "that anyone could think of that is good enough for them".

Fine. But why heap particular scorn on the doggerel of politicians? What possible good does it do to tear the twaddle of Vince Cable, Edwina or Bojo into bloodless chunks, you might ask. It's not just that these are bad books. They're distressing books. To watch how many resources, reviewers and publishers have been commandeered to push them to the forefront of a terminally squashed marketplace is to witness a particularly galling kind of hubris. The publishing director of the hugely prestigious publishing house Atlantic had this to say on signing Open Arms: "Vince's insight and wisdom have added hugely to political debates in recent years" (fair cop? Debatable?). Then, presumably followed by the world's most powerful un-grinding of teeth, she added: "This novel is a brilliant page-turner; we are excited to be publishing it."

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You can see the logic. It's often said that publishers don't take risks on "good books". Part of the reason resides in the hyper-competitiveness of an industry notoriously averse to taking a punt. It makes obvious business sense to invest in the likes of Cable to produce what are, essentially, celebrity novels which no one really bothers to pretend are anything other than snidey review fodder and stocking filler for jam-making uncles with the post-divorce jitters.

It's not unusual to ponder if anyone with an eye for the formulas and a basic grasp of literacy could write a bestseller. It's an obvious no, when applied to these strange political-celebrity class Frankensteins. It takes conviction to write novels this bad, and these are nothing if not books written by figures of conviction.

It takes a special kind commitment to bravado, to your own breezy sense of narcissism and entitlement, to write characters like Cable's alluring accountant Shadia, who loves all things Lib Dem "as a compromise between her father's tribal loyalty to Labour and her more business minded and liberal instincts". Or for Duncan Smith to write 430 pages of anything at all.

No. As it turns out, not "anyone" could do it. Only those with a thick skin developed over decades of gaffes and resignations, of depositions and disgraces, can write with this special kind of badness and expect to get away with it. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to write a thriller with Lib Dem heroes – and whatever happens, Vince Cable did it first. It won't have to be done again.

@DrLimes99