Politicians can, of course, make great writers, and several have won Nobel’s literature prize, including Britain’s Winston Churchill in 1953, and Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa in 2010. The latter — who ran for president in 1990 — won the prize “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” But has he ever referred to British Conservative grandee Jacob Rees-Mogg as a “Haunted Pencil”? No, he has not.
There are, however, a lot of very bad books written by politicians.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — very much the “Winston Churchill if you ordered him off Temu” — published a book in 2004 called “Seventy-Two Virgins — A Comedy of Errors” (the last four words also being the summary of his Covid policy) about a terrorist group targeting the U.S. president on a visit to London. It was described in the Guardian some 15 years later — after Johnson became prime minister — as ” sexist, racist, fundamentally undiplomatic.”
But the undisputed king when it comes to politicians letting out their inner writer is France.
In 2023, Bruno Le Maire, then the country’s economy and finance minister, published the novel “Fugue Américaine,” which drew instant criticism and mockery, mainly because of an explicit sex scene (unhappy French people were quick to point out that they had been screwed by the government for years).
Then there’s Marlène Schiappa, former government minister and writer of raunchy books under the pen name Marie Minelli, with titles such as “Osez les sexfriends,” “Sexe, mensonge et banlieues chaudes” and “Comment transformer votre mec en Brad Pitt en 30 jours.” When she was junior social affairs minister, Schiappa appeared on the cover of Playboy, although she was not naked in the magazine (great news for those who buy Playboy only for the articles).