The candidate was Carrie Symonds. Unknown to his advisers, Johnson had become close to her, and around this time, one friendly MP walked in on the pair in “a compromising situation” in his House of Commons office. Undaunted and unembarrassed, Johnson persisted with the idea of making Carrie head of staff, calling in Zac Goldsmith to offer support. Only after a (named) aide threatened to resign did Johnson drop it.

If ever a book invited lazy thinking from journalists, then First Lady: Intrigue at the Court of Carrie and Boris Johnson is it. We know what 76-year-old Ashcroft thinks about a lot of things, so it is easy to assume that the billionaire won’t be a fan of Carrie, who is very much a modern, liberal, green Tory (though they share an interest in animal welfare). The book on David Cameron that appeared under his and Isabel Oakeshott’s name, though very readable, was a piece of score-settling by a man who felt his beneficence to the Party had gone under-appreciated.

He remains something of an outsider so, one might think, this new title is presumably another piece of axe-grinding. Plus, given that many of the juicy bits have already appeared in the newspaper serialisation, why bother with the book itself? And evidently some will object to the imbalance of an idiosyncratic rich man examining the life of a woman half his age. One reviewer became “absolutely furious” at Ashcroft referring to Carrie, then 31, as a “young lady” in the introduction; for her, the narrative never recovered.

There are parts that made me squeamish, and certainly some of the anecdotes from her early years feel slightly invasive, inevitably in a biography of this type. But to disqualify Ashcroft because of an imputed attitude to women is short-sighted. And to say his book is a misogynistic hit job just isn’t good enough.

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The days when he would use his wealth to elevate him above libel laws and ventilate nonsense about David Cameron putting his penis in a dead pig’s mouth, or his wife having an affair with one of her security people, seem to be behind him. (Francis Elliott and I checked the latter rumour when co-writing the first biography of Cameron and established it was untrue, but it was still doing the rounds seven years later and Ashcroft and Oakeshott reported it as gossip.)

And the result of Ashcroft’s, shall we say, maturing as a political biographer should not be ignored.[1.  I helped in an indirect and minor way with research for his book on Jacob Rees-Mogg.] Can anyone seriously claim that the story of a Foreign Secretary trying to sign up his new girlfriend for a job for which she is not qualified is not in the public interest? Or that the story is made up? There are too many sources for the book to be dismissed as a hatchet job. True, many remain unnamed, but that should deter no one. It would be naïve to expect otherwise with so fevered a government still in power. So unless Ashcroft has invented them, which is pretty much inconceivable, there is plenty in this volume that deserves to be taken seriously.

The picture that emerges is of someone with more strong opinions than her husband, but no less unhappiness in early life or, later, determination to achieve her goals. Her commitment to green issues, admirable to my mind, is a constant thread. Ashcroft applauds her bravery in waiving anonymity in the case of sex criminal John Worboys, who drugged her in the back of a taxi, her campaign against his release from prison and her willingness to discuss her 2021 miscarriage. He cites her charm, what fun she can be and ability to get on with influential journalists, which is indispensable in PR.

Her early life, financially comfortable rather than lavish, makes for sad reading. She is distant from her father, a journalist called Matthew Symonds, who had another family. The product of an extra-marital affair, she attended two top private schools in London and was brought up as an only child by her mother, Josephine McAfee. She studied drama at Warwick University, spent time in PR and then, after meeting Zac Goldsmith’s cousin at a party, began working for Zac and subsequently for the Conservative Party. She became a special adviser to John Whittingdale and then Sajid Javid before, at 29, becoming the Tories’ communications director.

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But in Westminster she is not universally liked. We know something of this from Dominic Cummings, never one for deft understatement, but the evidence compiled here goes well beyond any campaign he could have organised. Her shortcomings as a colleague are rehearsed at some length (one colleague on the campaign trail called her “utterly, utterly useless”), as is her lack of interest in policy and her enthusiasm for holidays and smart restaurants. She once described the job of being Tatler’s political editor as her dream job.

There are numerous stories of Carrie being hard to work with and of her desire to get on (no more a crime in a woman than a man, of course). She even has her very own expenses scandal, in which she used the names of junior colleagues when claiming taxis. One source said: “She’s lucky she didn’t end up in more serious trouble… It was misuse of CCHQ funds. She used the names of those just starting out on their careers. That was unforgivable”. Whether the cabs were for her private use, or to meet one of the two married Tory MPs (one was Johnson, the other for some reason remains unnamed) with whom she had a relationship, we may never know.

Normally personality traits in a Prime Minister’s spouse would matter only to the PM, but according to Ashcroft this one seeks to involve herself in areas where she is under-qualified and insert her allies into positions of influence. She appears to have been largely responsible for Allegra Stratton’s ill-fated hiring, for instance. Carrie is also portrayed as remarkably thin-skinned where media criticism is concerned, especially for someone so familiar with the transience of the news trade; the PM apparently spends inordinate amounts of time smoothing her ruffled feathers.

Carrie’s defenders will point to the sacking of John Whittingdale and Henry Newman, two of her supporters, as evidence of her lack of influence. But that seems to have been the result of one of the PM’s knee-jerk responses to criticism, following Lord Frost’s public suggestion that he refresh things by removing the woke crowd. Clearly, there is a body of opinion that disdains the greenery-by-stealth approach that she embodies (and which a braver PM would embrace). Either way, Carrie is scarcely the “private individual who plays no role in Government” that her spokesperson claims.

And there is plenty of evidence that Johnson, who hates confrontation, went to extraordinary lengths to avoid rousing his wife’s temper. He would beg aides to help him keep her happy, at one point asking if someone could be given a job title without actually doing the job, just so it looked as if that person performed that role. Was this another Boris joke? Conceivably, but that can’t excuse everything.

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Those who know Johnson well know him to be an organisational disaster. (I’m told his diplomatic protection team often have to remind him to do up his flies.) The expert in mitigating his chaos used to be his former wife Marina. Carrie, perhaps because she is of a more recent generation than Marina, apparently sees no reason why she should mother her husband. As one of Ashcroft’s sources says: “When the marriage [with Marina] ended, he lost his domestic support, the steadying influence, and he traded that in for a demanding girlfriend and strong disapproval from his children”. Even Prime Ministers are entitled to private lives, but are we really to believe these details have no effect on how the country is run?

Without the research that went into First Lady, we would be guessing — trying to join the dots between Cummings blogs, drip-drip news of Covid parties, flat refurbishments and Johnson’s pinball machine decision-making. What the book lacks, though, is the case for the defence. There are few voices supporting her, beyond that of her former boss John Whittingdale. Carrie refused to cooperate with the book, sticking to the “not a public person” line, when even her much-admired Tatler calls her “the most powerful woman in Britain”. Perhaps if she had engaged, or encouraged friends to engage, she could have neutralised the accusations and conveyed a more favourable impression of herself.

Nevertheless, this book offers an account of where Carrie came from, what she wants, what makes her tick and, most important, the influence she has on our PM.

In 2006, Francis Elliott of The Times and I wrote a biography of David Cameron. We spoke to more than 300 people, on and off the record, about the man who was to transform his party’s fortunes. We updated the book twice, and were gratified to be told weren’t a million miles from painting an accurate picture. But by and large, that was when the going was good.

Since 2016, Cameron has said little. The nation built a picture of a lonely, slightly bored figure grimly tapping away at the keyboard in his shepherd’s hut, emerging occasionally to cross the globe and collect a hefty cheque from a speaking engagement. But even then he was at the mercy of events. He didn’t want to be unhelpful to his successors and, as Brexit was delayed, so too was his version. But now the book is upon us.

And the biggest interest will be in that shattering referendum result. He had called the 2016 vote on Britain’s continued membership of the EU in the expectation that the Remain side would win. It was an expectation shared by most of the London media bubble. The story went that the “sensible”, centrist voters would do what they did in the 1975 referendum, namely take their cue on a hugely complicated issue from the sensible centrist MPs and support the status quo.

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But Cameron, and many others, didn’t realise how few people outside London had a stake in the status quo. They felt omitted and disenfranchised. Migrants were taking people’s jobs, or so they felt. English wasn’t being spoken on the bus. Brussels was doing Westminster’s job. Why should they do what the Establishment wanted?

For Cameron, of course, the result was cataclysmic. Even someone of his extraordinary buoyancy and optimism would struggle. He had been in No 10 for six years, had made the Conservative Party electable again, and given it an aura of competence once more. He was within reach of being able to say he had won two elections, three referendums and that he had left office at a time of his own choosing. No Prime Minister for 40 years had been able to claim the last of those, let alone all three.

And I believe that that – leaving office soon after a referendum win – was his intention. Not only would Europe cease to be an issue for the Tories, but he was exhausted. Contrary to popular belief, he worked extremely hard. In our biography, we quoted a colleague as saying that he was brilliant at “chillaxing”. The term was intended in admiration of Cameron’s ability, no matter how grave the decisions he was having to make, to zone out, to switch off and give himself to his family. Yet it was seen as a mark of idleness.

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But, that said, being Prime Minister takes an enormous toll. “Dave is knackered,” I remember one of his friends telling me, “and I do worry for him.” In short, Cameron was running out of steam, and with that glowing legacy in prospect, why hang around and keep his friend and neighbour George Osborne waiting for the top job? He had young children and no desire for them to spend any more time than necessary in Downing Street’s gilded cage.

And, perhaps most importantly, his wife had had enough. She never enjoyed the accoutrements of power, and had put her career on hold for him. Already in 2015 she was designing clothes for the fashion line she planned to launch. The writing was on the wall. Those who accuse Cameron of cutting and running after losing the referendum will find further ammunition here – he was planning to go all along – but I think that is only because he believed, having won, there would be no shame in leaving. On the contrary. Besides, the attacks on him for “walking away” look wide of the mark, given how hard “the mess” has been to clear up. Would his critics really want him to still be there?

His feelings about that defeat will make riveting reading. He takes public service seriously, and the UK was leaving the EU by accident. Unsurprisingly, friends talk of him being “devastated” and of feeling a great sense of guilt. Those who accuse him of wantonly committing to holding the referendum without considering the consequences will claim vindication. That argument will go on for ever. As one close friend puts it: “It was not a reckless gamble, it was a calculated one: the trouble was, he got the calculation wrong.”

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His critics will say that when the stakes are that high, you shouldn’t take any risks at all. And that would have meant not promising a referendum and probably losing the 2015 election. Was it worth it, for a man who says he loves his country more than his party? Would Ed Miliband really have been worse than what we have now? How thoroughly he answers that question will be a test of the book’s candour.

Cameron insists he does not regret calling the referendum, only its outcome. He believes the referendum was a necessity, rather than the hubristic punt that his opponents claim. In the interests of securing re-election in 2015, he wanted to buy off those tempted to vote Ukip. In that respect, he was more successful than he expected, winning an overall majority. (His book should answer Donald Tusk’s claim that he planned to rat on that pledge under pressure from his expected coalition partners, the Lib Dems.) It is generally forgotten, though, that – knowing what damage splits on Europe had done to successive Tory governments – he had first mooted a referendum on the EU as early as 2013.

Cameron’s view is echoed in a forthcoming book by Martin Westlake, which shows that not only was an In-Out vote being taken seriously in senior Tory circles nearly 20 years earlier, largely for reasons of party management, but that Cameron felt the referendum was a necessity for the country. In 2013, Cameron cited the main spur as neither migration nor sovereignty but problems in the eurozone, which were “driving fundamental change in Europe”. “Democratic consent for the EU in Britain is now wafer thin,” he said, and needed strengthening.

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Cameron has said that populism cost him his job. He also knew that the Remain campaign had been a shambles. The brilliance and cynicism of the Leave campaign left Cameron’s team horribly outgunned. He would be justified in crying foul, but is too knowing a  politician not to accept responsibility. His chief regret, surely, will be the failure over many years to advertise the merits of Europe. For a politician who benefitted so much from avoiding policy definition, in a divided Tory Party that would have been asking a lot. Maybe there’s a lesson there.

Just as Cameron’s record has been overshadowed by Brexit, his book will be too. But he takes politics seriously, and there will be plenty for the think tanks, constitutionalists and historians to chew on. There will doubtless be a good deal of explanation and self-justification – on austerity, the coalition, the failure to clean up party funding, the unseating of Gaddafi, the non-intervention in Syria, his frustrations with the Whitehall machine, the non-resolution of press regulation – and I hope he will say something about the 24-hour pressure placed on a PM, the resistance of his party to change and the burdens he placed on himself. For example, he felt he owed it to the victims and to the country to watch in full the videos of jihadist beheadings, at considerable personal discomfort and distress.

The saltier material will be about the personalities. A schoolfriend talks of his sweetness of nature – which essentially he has retained, despite everything – but clearly a number of former colleagues now lie several miles outside his affability zone.

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His former friend Steve Hilton is one. The brilliantly creative salesman of compassionate Conservatism let it be known he thought his former boss was too cautious in office. Don’t be surprised to read of Hilton’s increasingly unworldly schemes, high-handedness with colleagues and “eccentric” behaviour.

Lord Ashcroft, a Tory donor to whom William Hague was close, is another who caused Cameron headaches, and who ended up writing a critical biography, with Isabel Oakeshott, of the then PM. The former PM told friends he would have preferred not to mention Ashcroft at all, because almost anything he wrote might cause trouble. But of one thing we can be sure. There will be no admission of Ashcroft’s claim that at a university party Cameron had placed his penis in the mouth of a dead pig (a claim that caused Cameron’s mother to call him at Downing Street – “just checking, David”). The source of the tale has never been revealed. But we can live in hope.

Cameron has delayed publication of this book because he didn’t want to make Theresa May’s job any harder. He knows how difficult the job is, which is why, when she was at the Home Office, he didn’t think she was up to it. But she did replace him, prompting him to say to one friend: “At least it is not Boris.”

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Oh dear, and now it is. The Johnson campaign was keen to present its candidate as the One Nation Tory, as the natural home for those who had supported Cameron. In a number of cases it succeeded, but few real Cameroons took the bait. On the other hand, the disdain that for a long time prevented Cameron endorsing Johnson for the London mayoralty has lessened. The two former rivals could now be useful to one another, so don’t expect this book to tell you the whole truth about Cameron’s opinion of Boris.

More likely to receive both barrels is Michael Gove, whose surprise decision to back Leave in the referendum was taken extraordinarily badly by Cameron, who, despite his removal of Gove from the Department of Education, had seen him as a last-ditch ally. The hostility is intensified by the former exceptional closeness between the men’s wives. Cameron is good at magnanimity and disdains small-mindedness, but he may think such generosity of spirit would be wasted on his former ally. He may think damning with little or no praise does the trick.

The people I would like to read most about, though, are Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. You will remember that it was Rebekah Brooks who persuaded her boss Murdoch to switch sides and support Cameron’s Tories in the 2010 election. She also persuaded George Osborne and Cameron that her clandestine lover, Coulson, though recently unseated (and later sent to prison) from the editorship of the scandal-hit News of the World, would be a suitable person to run Cameron’s communications.

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She would say that, wouldn’t she, you might think. But surely Cameron and his people were  savvy enough to do the due diligence? Not due enough, seemingly. In all Cameron’s six years in office, by far his most uncomfortable time in public was his session in front of the Leveson Inquiry, when a pink-faced Prime Minister protested to Sir Brian that he remembered very clearly how important it was to secure an assurance from Coulson. But of what? That he hadn’t known about the hacking, or that it was unlikely to resurface and cause embarrassment?

It would be good to have a fuller and franker account than Cameron has so far offered. Coulson – the tabloid counterweight employed to tell the posh boys what real people think – helped get Cameron into Downing Street. Does Cameron truly regret hiring him, or merely the bad publicity when he was finally exposed? How does Cameron regard Coulson now? And Rebekah Brooks? Are they in touch? She made Cameron look very good and then very stupid. He must have feelings about that.

We are unlikely to read about that, though. Because after slow bidding for the rights to Cameron’s memoirs, the deal was reportedly sealed with a hefty £800,000 offer from HarperCollins, owned by News Corp, whose UK division is News UK. Its chief executive, need I remind you, is Rebekah Brooks.

A version of this article appears in The Gentleman’s Journal. For the Record, by David Cameron, is published by William Collins on 19 September