Book of the week: Beyond a Fringe by Andrew Mitchell

Andrew Mitchell is the

Andrew Mitchell is the kind of Conservative who was “born to
rule, or at least to have a jolly good go at it”, said Tim Stanley
in The Daily
Telegraph^[1]. The son of the Tory
politician David Mitchell, he progressed through a series of
establishment institutions – prep school, public school, the Army,
Cambridge, the City – on his way to becoming an MP in his early
30s.

Having served as a whip under John Major, he became David
Cameron’s international development secretary in 2010 – and was
promoted to chief whip in 2012. But then “disaster struck”:
Mitchell was accused by a police officer of calling him a “pleb”
during a row about bicycle access to Downing Street.

Although “plebgate” definitively halted Mitchell’s upward
trajectory – it cost him his place in the Cabinet and led him to
pay out around £2m in legal costs, after he unsuccessfully sued the
newspaper that broke the story – it evidently didn’t entirely sap
his sense of humour. For in Beyond a Fringe, he has
written a “wonderfully funny” memoir full of valuable insights into
our political culture.

“Plebgate” ensured that Mitchell’s name became synonymous with
the worst kind of establishment entitlement, said Chris Mullin in
The Spectator^[2]. There is, however, a
“fundamental streak of decency” in the figure who emerges from
these pages. He was a principled and conscientious international
development secretary, committed to preserving the UK’s overseas
aid budget. And more recently, he has “carved out a useful role on
the backbenches as one of the few genuine internationalists in the
upper reaches of the modern Conservative party”.

One ends his memoir with a strong sense of injustice that a
“minor incident that lasted no more than 45 seconds” – and whose
nature was strongly contested – should have “brought him to the
edge of ruin”.

Although Mitchell doesn’t say it in so many words, said Andrew
Rawnsley in The Observer^[3], “his account suggests
that he came extremely close to being psychologically destroyed” by
“plebgate”. As he was “flooded with hostile emails, including death
threats” – and as reporters camped outside his house – he recalls
not being able to sleep or eat, or, on some days, to get out of
bed.

He seems to have emerged from his ordeal a wiser man – or a
“reformed Establishment lackey”, as his book’s subtitle has it.
Moving deftly “between the comedies and the tragedies of the
political life”, this is an engaging work that shines an
entertaining light on the workings of the British
establishment.

Biteback 384pp £20; The Week
Bookshop^[4] £15.99

The Week Bookshop

To order this title or any other book in print,
visit theweekbookshop.co.uk^[5], or speak to a
bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday
9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.