‘I was on my honeymoon!’: Hamish Falconer’s surprise call-up to Burnham’s cabinet

From the publisher

When Hamish Falconer left his career as a Foreign Office diplomat for the hostile environment of a Labour party selection process, one of his last acts was a negotiation to free six hostages from the Taliban. When he won the key marginal seat of Lincoln in the 2024 general election, he did not expect to be back in those offices on King Charles Street quite so quickly – he was appointed Middle East minister just two weeks later. Two years on, he is one among the first three of his generation of MPs to reach the cabinet, and he is back around the negotiating table, this time with the EU.…

The source's own excerpt, unedited