As her old friends argue fruitlessly over the best way to thwart a hard Brexit and plot unsuccessfully to manoeuvre Rudd into Downing Street, she backs the arch Brexiter Dominic Raab’s leadership bid before warming to the “slobbering golden retriever” Boris Johnson. For those struggling to place Hugo Swire, an Old Etonian former army officer, he was never really a household name.

The struggles of ordinary people are ignored in a life of champagne, weekends at Chequers, long holidays in Cornwall and Devon, and afternoons gossiping over high tea and cake. On another Swire visit, “Dave” is glued to the movie Atonement, apparently with the sole aim of ogling Keira Knightley’s nipples. If you needed proof that Britain has been misruled by the unserious, entitled, snobbish, incestuous and curiously childish then the acerbic Lady Swire, unwittingly or not, has provided it.Ten years ago, reviewing Alastair Campbell's diaries for the Spectator, I concluded as follows: "Who will be the chroniclers of the Cameron government? To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It is 30 years since Hazel Holt's biography; many more since David Cecil and Philip Larkin championed her novels. Remarkables REMARKABLES Intriguing, stunning, or otherwise remarkable books These include fine editions, foreign publications that are exceptional for their interest or production, special editions and some first-rate books from very small publishers. Many people have commented on her referring to her father throughout as “Sir John” (Nott) and her mother-in-law, the Dowager Marchioness of Townshend as “the Dowager”; I can almost imagine her glee as she reads the reviews from people frothing at the mouth at this supposed evidence of snobbishness – I saw it as ironic and intentional – almost hoping to get a rise out of the silly readers.

The author clearly was part of David Cameron’s inner circle and completely in the confidence of her husband throughout his years as an MP and junior minister. Someone who I’ve met and whose general reputation is for total charmlessness, was surprisingly (to me) described as “charming” – presumably for being nice to her. Swire is at least vaguely aware of how insufferable it can seem; glancing around the Camerons’ Downing Street Christmas party in 2011, she realises “we all holiday together, stay in each other’s grace and favour homes, our children play together, we text each other bypassing the civil servants … this is a very particular, narrow tribe of Britain and their hangers on. My first laugh out load moment was when, attempting to get a glimmer of a smile from the Countess of Wessex, La Swire explained that she was a Slav, and therefore in a permanent state of wanting to murder people.Despite the bitchy, rather sniping tone which gives the book its flavour (and frankly, is the main reason most people will read it) she is a pretty astute judge of character and nails (or skewers) a lot of people with disarming accuracy. But the Swires were extremely plugged-in socially, and during the coalition years that’s what mattered. But what these diaries do reveal in all it's vainglory is the great lie at the heart of Cameron's austerity: "We are all in this together.