Review - Rachel Johnson - Rake's Progress: My Political Midlife Crisis, in conversation with Julia Samuel

The closing event of this year's Wells Festival of Literature was an amusing and enlightening hour discussing Rachel's new book, an indiscreet and funny account of her failure to get elected as a pro-Remain MEP for the doomed centrist party Change UK. The book's title is because Rake is the nickname her family have given her.

She started by informing the audience that the book was published in March, four days before lockdown. Consequently, not even Amazon were allowed to sell books as they weren't an essential Covid-related business and all the book festivals where she was due to appear were also cancelled.

As a result, this Wells festival was the first event she has been able to speak at, which raised a cheer from the sold out socially-distanced audience.

She began by saying what a dire (not her word) few weeks it has been in the Johnson family and that "she may have to glide like a swan over some of the deep penetrating questions", to which Julia replied "you're good at that, it's a family strength". Rachel then quoted the book saying her father's motto is "Never say anything to anybody".

The basic guts (her word) of the book is an account of her catastrophic foray into politics which lasted precisely one month, although it she says it felt like longer.

As a committed Europhile with three foreign parents, attending the European School as a child, she felt angry that the country she loved, which had given her and her generation so many opportunities being in Europe, were depriving her children's generation of those benefits.

She couldn't understand why people she knew and considered as friends decided Brexit would be a wonderful lever to get their own hands on the levers of power themselves.

She decided that she couldn't "snipe from the sidelines" so decided to put herself up as a candidate to a "totally useless enterprise called Change UK".

When she joined the party they were polling at 17 per cent, the Lib Dems being at 11 per cent, by the time polling day came they were polling at zero per cent.

She joked that "she was a rat jumping on a sinking ship". When they revealed the list of candidates, in Bristol, for the South West constituency she had a feeling that things weren't going to go well.

She recounted an amusing story of attending a husting in Falmouth. They were walking around the streets when Ross Hawkins, of the Today programme, thrust a microphone in her face and asked why she had joined Change UK and what policies were different from the Lib Dems.

She realised at that moment that she didn't know any of their policies and couldn't remember any of the Lib Dems' either.

She stood there for a while and then realised that she hadn't said anything for about 10 seconds also noticing that the red light, on the microphone, was still on.

Ross just said "long pause Rachel". This clip was played in full on the Today programme and apparently a lot of people thought the programme had fallen off air.

One of the things learned from her foray into politics was how difficult it was to be a politician and how much admiration she now has for them.

She goes on to say that she does not like being told what to do, particularly by her older brother and said how difficult she was finding lockdown with all the rules.

She briefly talked about the worry associated with her brother's Covid issues and how well he was looked after, the family being kept up to date constantly with his illness.

Julia asked Rachel about the comment from her husband, Ivo, who said that Brexit saved their marriage to which Rachel replied "it's because it's the only thing we agree on, apart from the name for our first child". They both worked in Brussels and couldn't see the benefits in leaving.

She said it might be great and then asked the audience to put up their hands up if they thought Brexit would be great - only one did.

She then spoke about her time in the Big Brother Celebrity House, and how she identified the flaw in the system.

Apparently, the celebrities get the same amount of money whether they are in the house for six weeks or one week.

She went in with a strategy, she was stroppy, made a fuss and refused to take part in any of the activities. As a result she the second individual evicted, "kerching" was her response.

She says that apart from the birth of her children, the happiest time of her life was the day she got evicted from the Big Brother House.

A question and answer session then followed. In answer to the first question which asked whether her political career was over, she replied 100 per cent.

The next one asked if the book had upset anyone to which she replied that Chuka Umuuna and Ann Widecombe might not be too pleased but then thought they probably wouldn't have read it.

Rachel went on to say how the canvassing gave her a lot of enjoyment because she met so many individuals, outside of her "London bubble", who had views and ideas very different to ones she was used to.

She also says how much she enjoys her new show on LBC, where she talks to people from all walks of life with very different views and opinions.

The final few minutes were spent talking about the difficult position now where, because of her brother's position, she is unable to say much in case it gets taken out of context.

She is pleased that she no longer has to write a newspaper column as she doesn't think she would be able to without getting into trouble.