Let’s start - unusually, I admit -  with Dilyn, a dog owned by Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie. In the course of Out’s 900-plus pages, the incontinent, flea-ridden Jack Russell, given licence to roam in Downing Street and Chequers, mauling furniture, chewing carpets and - in the testimony of one eye-witness - “s******* everywhere”, is allowed more space than the SNP and any of its senior figures.

This perhaps tells us everything we need to know about the Westminster bubble’s view of Scotland and its governing party which, in case we forget, in the period (2019-2024) covered by Tim Shipman’s brick of a book, was the third largest in the United Kingdom.  

Twas ever thus, I suppose. There is, however, at least one reason to be cheerful, especially if you are of a separatist bent: in what amounts to a sustained chronicle of dysfunction, incompetence and farce, our role is reduced that of awestruck and appalled bystanders. The events of the years in question may not have been unprecedented in British history, but for sheer ineptitude they send one searching deep into the past for equivalents.

Novelist Roddy Doyle is quoted on Out’s front cover saying “Shakespeare rewritten by Wodehouse”, which is unfair to both geniuses. Rather, what we have here is a soap opera as scripted by public schoolboys whose incontinent use of the f and c words would shame the cast of Trainspotting.

The cover of Tim Shipman's book (Image: HarperCollins) This, alas, is the depth to which our lawmakers have sunk. Shipman’s blow by blow account of the years in which the Tories imploded and prime ministers came and went with the frequency of managers at Manchester United is both fascinating and exhausting, compelling and boring. Its principal characters - Boris Johnson and Carrie, Dominic Cummings, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak - are examplars of contemporary British politics, driven not by any coherent ambition to “level up” and “make Britain great again” but by a desire to achieve and retain power come what may. 

Johnson, of course, a self-confessed “functioning cheeseaholic” who cannot distinguish between a workplace meeting and a boozy get-together, looms largest. It was he who promised to “get Brexit done” and, insofar as we are no longer in the EU, he did. But at what cost no one can say, for we are still counting.

What we do know, however, is that it split the Tories when it was supposed to bind them. As for those us who did and did not vote for Brexit, we are searching for anything positive to emerge from the debacle. Shipman, straining to be even-handed, writes: “Brexit neither solved Britain’s problems as its supporters hoped, nor rendered it impossible to do so, as its critics maintained.”

Confronted with a boss who hasn’t mastered how to tuck in his shirt and civil servants drafted from Yes, Minister, Cummings - to the surprise of this reviewer - emerges from Out’s pages as one of few people eager to behave like an adult and enact change. While Johnson revelled in chaos, and was given to reminding supernumeraries, “Everyone had better remember, I’m the f****** Fuhrer around here,” it was left to Cummings of all people to make No 10 tick.

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Much was made of the schism between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, but it was as nothing compared to that which opened between Johnson and Cummings. Then, when the latter imploded and was fired, he made it his mission to bring the former down. And so he did, with glee.

Shipman follows the course of their toxic relationship, through Brexit, Covid, Partygate, the ill-fated jaunt to Barnard Castle, the proroguing of Parliament, the making of a deal or no-deal with EU, like a truffle-seeking hound. As a study in how not to govern, Out offers a masterclass. Johnson never seems to know what to do or who to take advice from, though “Carrie Antoinette” seems certainly to have had his ear.

It was she, for instance, who organised her husband’s fifty-sixth birthday party when such events were illegal. “Efforts to defend Johnson proved farcical,” notes Shipman. “[Conservative MP] Conor Burns told Channel 4 News the prime minister ‘was in a sense, ambushed with a cake’, a phrase which symbolised a government stranded in the no man’s land between tragedy and circus.”

Out is replete with such piquant details, adding cumulatively to a sense that the centre was not holding and that collapse was always imminent. Relief as it was to see Johnson depart, few could have predicted that even worse was to follow.

In his final chapter, Shipman asserts: “Liz Truss need not detain us long here.” Would that countless mortgage holders could be so forgiving.

Liz Truss is sitting pretty - unlike countless mortgage holdersLiz Truss is sitting pretty - unlike countless mortgage holders (Image: Jacob King)Announcing her resignation after a mere 44 days in office, she entered the record books for all the wrong reasons. On the cusp of her going, records Shipman, “MPs shared videos of comedian Eric Morecambe massacring a piano solo (‘I am playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order’) as a metaphor for her performance.” Uniquely unqualified for the task in hand, she is still touring the globe insisting she was right all along.

Then there is Rishi Sunak, yet another prime minister given the most demanding job in the country by just 130,000 people, innumerable of whom have swapped their marbles for Zimmers. Poor (or not so poor) Rishi: he was, as his chums (wrongly) believed, “the right man at the wrong time”.

Even more deluded are those Brexiters who insist he would have beaten Starmer if he’d ditched the plan to send refugees to Rwanda and left the European Convention on Human Rights. The British public were far more savvy. They were fed up to the back teeth of the Tory pantomime and wanted the show to close. After 14 years, they had run out road and excuses, their lies and unfulfilled promises patent for all to see.

Out is a valuable record of the worst of times though its value is reduced by lack of an index. Who ever thought that was a good idea?