Haven’t You Heard?: Gossip, Power, and How Politics Really Works by Marie Le Conte

Haven’t You Heard?: Gossip, Power, and How Politics Really Works Reviews

• 
  K.J. Charles

  A very entertaining look at how gossip drives Westminster. You will need to be interested in the operation of British politics to enjoy this, and it is in no way a starting point for the uninformed.
  
  It's a terrific picture of a chaotic unregulated system driven by informal engines of gossip and networking because there aren't sufficient sensible formal structures to keep the place functional. Le Conte also stresses the humanity of MPs, something it's easy to forget: we all gossip at work and have our little groups, it's just most of us don't run the country on that basis.
  
  Very well written with lots of good stories and one-liners. I enjoyed it immensely and now want a completely new political system please.
• 
  Kenny

  I feel a little oddly about this book. It’s a good book and it’s funny and it’s well-written and it’s probably right.* But I hate the fact that it’s probably right, because I want politics to be more about policy and less about personality and process. But I want that to be the case at the same time as working in public affairs where obviously I work on building relationships for the good of the causes I work for. I suppose in some ways it all comes back to one of Marie’s early conclusions: politics is messy.
  
  *Marie is wrong that agency PA bods are more interesting than in-house PA bods; they’re just less likely to have values. ;)
  
• 
  Jacob Stelling

  A light-hearted and in places comical discussion of how the Westminster system really works and the role played by gossip and informality plays in the decision making process.
• 
  John

  A really great read. Lots of fun anecdotes and stories about life inside the Westminster bubble, but also more seriously about the relationship between those in power and those who report of them and how this dynamic plays out in actuality. Perhaps a tad repetitive in places (there's only so many times you can be reminded that MPs are human people before it starts to grate) but otherwise a must for anyone with an interest in British Politics.
  
  I look forward to the next book!
• 
  Ryan

  Enjoyed it, but I would say that if you're interested in Westminster politics (and if you're reading this book, you're likely to be), it probably doesn't tell you a whole lot that's new. The best parts by far are the humorous anecdotes.
• 
  Lawrence White

  Accessible and at times amusing insight into how British politics and Westminster really work, but like other readers I found it somewhat repetitive in places. Too many of the anecdotes are very old, or anonymous, or both, so it has more the air of well-stitched-together clippings piece than a book with lots of fresh juicy gossip.
• 
  Gabriel Phillips

  Some great insights and fun stories included. However, it's one step away from being a fantastic book.
• 
  Adam Clark

  An enjoyable stitching together of insights into the less formal side of Westminster/Whitehall life but not a political classic.
  
  It's comprehensive, even extending to clerks and lobbyists, and clearly written from deep familiarity and affection - potentially too much of the latter, as it robs the book of some potential bite. There's an awful lot 'oh we're all awful people really' but not much judgement passed.
  
  There are some enlightening passages. The importance of physical spaces is highlighted, such as the central role of Portcullis House for MPs --a building 99% of the British public wouldn't be able to identify-- or the network of pubs around Westminster.
  
  Conversely there are also good points on the rising importance of social messaging apps - how much easier is it to organise a political coup when no-one can see you plotting - but how many people will actually back up their WhatsApp messages? The potential for a single message to become the basis for an entire day's news cycle is a problem no-one has solved yet.
  
  But there aren't enough concrete examples here to prove the primary argument -- that gossip, or more widely informal contact, is as important if not more so than formal politics. The most gossiped about figures aren't those at the top but relative nonentities such as Lembit Opik or Simon Danczuk.
  
  Particularly in the post-Brexit referendum years, few of the major British political characters - Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn - have been gossipy schemers in the same way as was true of New Labour or the Tory Notting Hill set. This suggests gossip is more important at times of relatively settled politics. The book addresses this in the final few pages by broadening the argument to the importance of charisma, shamelessness and the attraction of power, but that's a rather different argument.
• 
  Sofia

  Far more interesting than I thought it would be. Very accessible for anyone not that into politics or just starting to gain some knowledge. For a book about political gossip, it doesn’t actually share all that much political gossip, instead focusing on the personalities, processes and dynamics that shape the politics of the U.K. A sort of behind the scenes. All I could think while reading was how entertaining a reality show or documentary on the inner workings of the government would be.
  
  That said, in a slightly strange way, I found this book slightly disturbing. It paints a picture of a mess. A formal process that doesn’t work and series of informal processes that rely on who you know rather than what you know. A series of policymakers with no interest in policy making. The author is quite dismissive of this - insisting that this is just human nature and mirrors the dynamics of any other work place. I don’t really care about the ‘who’s shagging who stuff’ but the fact that whole decisions that will affect the entire country will be made on the basis of one upping someone over a personal beef starting from their time at Oxford or crucial information about an MP will be withheld, because the journalist likes them a bit, worries me quite a bit and at times borders full blown corruption. The author doesn’t really understand the gravity of this and almost kind of giddy the whole way through. I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom, politics can definitely be funny sometimes, but people’s lives are seriously affected by this and the apathy towards this bothers me slightly.
  
  The author frequently mentions the dynamic of journalists becoming too close to the people they are reporting and I wonder if this is a similar case here.
• 
  Ellesse

  Haven’t you heard is something very different for me, politics is something that I vaguely follow but don’t have a KEEN interest like some of my friends. The book was interesting to find out how information goes through Westmintiser.
  
  To work there as an MP who doesn’t have a certain background it is a minefield, there are rules that aren’t written but aren’t know. Personally, I struggle to think the people in control all come from the same small pool of privileged people, but that is another story I guess. The book covers the different ways information and gossip spreads…there are ways of getting information out without people knowing the true source or the opposite keeping something that really should be a scandal quiet and away from the papers and media.
  
  The book does cover how the internet and social media (especially Twitter) have affected the way people interact with each other and how something online can affect what happens in the chamber.
  
  3* - I think the book may be of interest to some but does get slightly repetitive for me at times.
• 
  Adam Thomas

  A fascinating, entertaining, and sometimes terrifying, journey through the informal mechanisms of SW1. Marie Le Conte introduces us to the messy relationships between politicians, advisors, press and public, the ways gossip spreads, and how some ends up as news and other bits don't. Le Conte is a thoughtful guide, who shows us some of the tensions and compromises, and also reminds us that people in Westminster are still people after all. She's also an entertaining guide, and pulls in a lot of amusing anecdotes along the way. This is a great way for people outside the Westminster bubble to get a better idea of what really happens, for better or worse, on the inside.
• 
  Peter Black

  An interesting and insightful tour of the Westminster bubble and the role of gossip in government, perhaps explaining at the same time why Parliament is so dysfunctional, and why we have had to endure three years of chaos since the 2016 referendum. The book is a bit didactic in parts (a perception that may be due to me knowing more about the Westminster bubble than the average reader) and I was hoping for a bit more gossip. Still it is worth reading to get a better understanding of how we are governed (or not as the case maybe).
• 
  Ellie Beadle

  Finishing off the year with this super-out-of-my-comfort-zone read cause why not. As somebody who is up to date on politics and general current affairs and that, but also doesn't know an awful lot about the who's who and what's what, I found this to be a really accessible and interesting read. It lost me at points, but it was still apprope for the average Joe like yours truly and I do like learning stuff. I enjoy MLCs writing on Twitter and her tone translated well to nf book format. It's so clear that she loves Westminster and UK politics and it's sort of infectious.
• 
  Eléanore

  Un livre qui m'a demandé beaucoup de temps, mais que j'ai trouvé révélateur sur la façon dont la politique anglaise fonctionne. A travers des exemples concrets, l'auteure montre comment le pouvoir fonctionne, et la grande place que tienne les rumeurs et les relations personnelles dans l'accès au pouvoir - et le fait d'y rester. Je peux facilement imaginer des choses similaires arriver dans d'autres pays, et je pense porter à présent un regard différent sur les personnalités politiques.
• 
  Tom Snape

  Really fascinating deconstruction of the role gossip plays in the Westminster Bubble from someone who quite clearly loves it but is also able to step back and analyse what impact the system has and what downsides it creates. Also has some fantastic anecdotes (some anonymous, some not) about what it means in practice.
  Well worth a read to any political nerd.
• 
  Kit Eyre

  Great book for those interested in how Westminster works. Plenty of scenarios (true and hypothetical) to consider, although I agree with others that the second half of the book was less interesting than the first. This may just have been that, on a personal level, I preferred the "gossip" of the earlier chapters.
• 
  James Hoddy

  This is one for the political geeks, as Marie Le Conte says those of us who are this interested in politics are in the minority, and a niche minority we are, however within these pages are some really interesting facts, invaluable information and insights into the inner workings of Parliament many of us on the outside would not really know.
• 
  Angelique

  I loved this and I love her. I didn’t take away a whole lot. But the big thing for me is how we hold these people to different people standards, when people are going to people. She’s a great writer, fantastic speaker and this book flowed so easily and a great quarantine read because it reminds me of the old times. I wonder what parliament is like now…
• 
  Michael Macdonald

  Jolly romp the bleeding obvious
  
  Well written but overlong, this book confirms politicians are obsessive like a drink or six and gossip. Discovery of humanity in Westminster is as shocking as finding our ursine friends defecating in sylvian glades.