Everything feels wrong with the story. Her characters are all stereotypes, from the almost saint like parents of one family to the slattern and wasteful ne'er-do-well of the lazy and wasteful neighbours, with their dirty, often beaten and neglected children; from the kindly, honest if frightened of the Catholic Church hierarchy nun to those nuns in Ireland who are evil incarnate; from the 'simple minded' servant girl to the nosey neighbours; etc., etc. You have no mandate from the people, and the government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?”

Because of my own family heritage, I enjoy and seek out books set in working-class Liverpool. That is how I discovered The Four Streets. I have not read any other of Nadine Dorries' works, and I had no idea what to expect with this one. HarperCollins has described Dorries’ book as a “seismic, fly-on-the-wall account of how the saviour of the Conservative party became a pariah” and will feature “unparalleled access, from multiple inside sources talking with astonishing candour”. Quoting a source she says: “When Munira did her big resignation thing over Boris throwing the Jimmy Savile criticism at Starmer for never having prosecuted him when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions, it was so obviously the ‘time to kill Boris’ trigger. When you know how they operate, you can sniff out what was behind it and how it was staged.” A shadowy cabal, Dorries calls ‘the movement’, has been pulling strings in the Conservative party for yearsAmid soft sofas, soothed by shortbread fingers and tea served in Royal Doulton, the author learns the full sordid horror from informants called Moneypenny, Skyfall, Thumper, Bambi and M.

She writes: “He is paid by Central Office, has a pass to No 10 and, some say, Rishi Sunak doesn’t move without first seeking his advice. And yet people can spend years working in No 10 and never hear his name mentioned. Dorries claims Rishi resigned a day earlier than his actual resignation statement, and coordinated with Sajid Javid. “Rishi had already vacated his position as Chancellor the day before; he just hadn’t told anyone yet other than his own confidants,” she wrote. Labour MP Dawn Butler has questioned how Dorries has time to write so many books as an MP while others have cheered her on. The political analysis in The Plot has more puppetry than Tracy Island. Oliver Dowden (whom Nadine Dorries succeeded as Culture Secretary) is a “puppet” of Mr Smith. Lee Cain (the Downing Street director of communications) was “a total puppet” of Mr Cummings. Rishi Sunak was “their dream puppet”. But a question occurred to her about Michael Gove and the conspirators: “Is he their puppet or a puppeteer?” Reviewer Sarah Ditum tore into it for trying to be a ham-Irish Trainspotting, written with lines like ” Jaysus, would yer so believe it not?” and, “That’ll be grand for the boxty bread.”Dorries’ source said: “An MP gave a young female a date rape drug; the next thing she knew was she woke in a country hotel the following morning. He wanted her out of the room because, he told her, he had visitors coming for breakfast.” Anyway, by way of welcome byproducts, it would be nice to think that Nadine’s failure to burn down the whole Conservative government with her book would lead to the permanent demise of the phrase “dead cat”. This expression first made meaningful landfall with the political chatterati during the 2015 general election, when the Australian strategist Lynton Crosby was running David Cameron’s campaign, and had served up some distracting nastiness about the Miliband brothers and Trident. Isabel Hardman in the Spectator glossed it by explaining Crosby’s view that if you threw something disgusting on the metaphorical dining room table, everyone would deplore you but they’d be talking about that rather than the thing that was causing you real grief. Alas, through absolutely no fault of Isabel’s own, a deceased feline monster was born. Ever since, the phrase “dead cat” has served as the default explanation for armchair campaign strategists seeking to explain why anything from a scandal to a war is actually just a “dead cat” to distract the sheeple from the real story. Johnson told Dorries: “If you can have a post-Brexit Britain, why the hell are we putting up corporation tax in this way? Why not cut corporation tax to 10%? You know, why don’t we just do what the Irish do? Why not just outbid the Irish? We don’t have to obey international norms on corporation tax … Dominic Cummings outed himself on Friday as someone who was in the firing line, tweeting an approach for comment from the Daily Mail, which is serialising the book. I’m frustrated. I’m seething. I’m a caged beast. I’m a coiled mamba … We’re drifting; we are losing the plot.”