It’s been a great year for the Labour party … from a literary perspective anyway. The 2016 parliamentary book awards, which were handed out on Tuesday, all went to left of centre authors or subjects: Alan Johnson’s The Long Winding Road won best memoir by a parliamentarian; Called to Account by Margaret Hodge (right), about the government’s use of public money, was the best non-fiction; Melvyn Bragg’s novel Now is the Time was the best fiction; and John Bew’s biography of Clement Attlee, Citizen Clem, won the title of best political book by a non-parliamentarian. The winners were voted for by parliamentarians and the ceremony presided over by Gisela Stuart MP, a former bookseller.

Ed Balls sadly didn’t score a 10 with these judges, but in September he proved to be popular with the book-buying public (though not as much as he was with the salsa-loving electorate of Strictly Come Dancing). His book Speaking Out was a bestseller, and is currently a fixture in books of the year lists. On the other hand, Ken Clarke’s memoir Kind of Blue was expected to be a hit, but fell rather flat, and was described in a review in this newspaper as “clumsy”, “shallow”, “smug” and “boring”.

Perhaps Labour figures are just more appealing to the book trade. Back in the summer, Theresa May was rearranging the bookshelves in No 10 before publishers realised that nobody had yet commissioned a biography of her. “In the last Labour leadership contest we had biographies of Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn ready to go,” confided Iain Dale of the publisher Biteback, whose Theresa May: The Path to Power by Rosa Prince will be published in January 2017. Perhaps biographies of May will do well in next year’s parliamentary book awards. Assuming, in these turbulent political times, that she is still prime minister by then ...