After All Out War, Fall Out, and No Way Out, Tim Shipman’s final Brexit book, Out: How Brexit Got Done and the Tories Were Undone, was published late last year. His quartet, a definitive account of UK politics since the country voted to leave the EU, tells “the full story of the most explosive period of domestic British politics since the Second World War.”
Out is the least Brexity of the four books, which comes as a relief and is something Shipman himself acknowledges. Spanning the entire Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak governments, it has the same extraordinary insider’s access and all-sides coverage that made Shipman’s previous accounts so unique and essential.
Shipman argues that, for better or worse, Johnson “was the most consequential figure of the period”, and that he achieved far more than his predecessor: “Theresa May was defined by the things she failed to do, Boris by the things he did — both excellent and execrable.” An example from the execrable category: Johnson asked his attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, not to inform ministers that prorogation of parliament may be illegal, telling him, “don’t spook the cabinet by talking about the litigation risk.” Shipman calls this “one of the nadirs of Johnson’s premiership.”
Shipman has consistently reported some of the most remarkable pull quotes in recent British politics. In Out, he quotes an unprecedented confrontation between a prime minister (Johnson: “Are you threatening me?”) and a senior adviser (Dominic Cummings: “Yes, I’m fucking threatening you.”) An even more extraordinary quote comes from Elizabeth II, who joked with her staff after Johnson resigned: “at least I won’t have that idiot organising my funeral now.”
Unsurprisingly, Shipman is dismissive of Johnson’s successor: “Liz Truss need not detain us long here.” He cites several Downing Street staff who describe her as “fucking mental”, and one who calls her “psychologically unfit to be prime minister.” (This recalls Alastair Campbell’s description of Gordon Brown’s “psychological flaws”, quoted in Andrew Rawnsley’s Servants of the People.) Truss drove an assistant to tears after they brought her the wrong type of coffee (like Mugatu in Zoolander).
Before introducing Sunak at a 2024 election campaign event, Johnson asked his aides: “Why am I doing this? This guy’s a fucking cunt.” Shipman’s assessment of Sunak is also critical though, of course, more measured: “the lack of a driving political vision gave him no political cover from failures of delivery.”
Out is the least Brexity of the four books, which comes as a relief and is something Shipman himself acknowledges. Spanning the entire Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak governments, it has the same extraordinary insider’s access and all-sides coverage that made Shipman’s previous accounts so unique and essential.
Shipman argues that, for better or worse, Johnson “was the most consequential figure of the period”, and that he achieved far more than his predecessor: “Theresa May was defined by the things she failed to do, Boris by the things he did — both excellent and execrable.” An example from the execrable category: Johnson asked his attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, not to inform ministers that prorogation of parliament may be illegal, telling him, “don’t spook the cabinet by talking about the litigation risk.” Shipman calls this “one of the nadirs of Johnson’s premiership.”
Shipman has consistently reported some of the most remarkable pull quotes in recent British politics. In Out, he quotes an unprecedented confrontation between a prime minister (Johnson: “Are you threatening me?”) and a senior adviser (Dominic Cummings: “Yes, I’m fucking threatening you.”) An even more extraordinary quote comes from Elizabeth II, who joked with her staff after Johnson resigned: “at least I won’t have that idiot organising my funeral now.”
Unsurprisingly, Shipman is dismissive of Johnson’s successor: “Liz Truss need not detain us long here.” He cites several Downing Street staff who describe her as “fucking mental”, and one who calls her “psychologically unfit to be prime minister.” (This recalls Alastair Campbell’s description of Gordon Brown’s “psychological flaws”, quoted in Andrew Rawnsley’s Servants of the People.) Truss drove an assistant to tears after they brought her the wrong type of coffee (like Mugatu in Zoolander).
Before introducing Sunak at a 2024 election campaign event, Johnson asked his aides: “Why am I doing this? This guy’s a fucking cunt.” Shipman’s assessment of Sunak is also critical though, of course, more measured: “the lack of a driving political vision gave him no political cover from failures of delivery.”
