Life
The Lobbyist review: A fun yarn of bribery, corruption and bonkfests galore
Lionel Zetter’s novel captures the rapacious spirit of Britain’s political centre
November 20, 2025 16:06
Lionel Zetter’s novel captures the rapacious spirit of Britain’s political centre
November 20, 2025 16:06There’s an awful lot of fun to be had in Lionel Zetter’s The Lobbyist, if you can suspend your disbelief long enough to accept a Jilly Cooper-esque version of Westminster replete with pneumatic blondes and plenty of between-the-sheets activity.
I worked in lobbying, or as we more bashfully term it, public affairs, for a decade. While I saw my share of bad behaviour, it never quite matched the bonkfest that Zetter presents us.
That’s not to say the veteran political aide and former parliamentary candidate doesn’t know his stuff.
Amid a chaotic story that’s part House of Cards, part John le Carré, with a dollop of Yes Minister, he captures the spirit of Britain’s political centre. The pubs, the jollies dressed up as overseas business, the transactional dinners, the gossip, its tiny, incestuous interconnected structure: he gets that spot on.
We open on election night, with the ousting of a long-serving and long-suffering Tory government with which the book’s hero, the louche, amoral Damian Beaufort, is closely connected.
Overnight, Beaufort’s agency loses its clients as they flock to operations with better Labour links. Such sudden eagerness to befriend the new top dogs is entirely convincing: currently every London lobbying agency is racing to recruit Reform-adjacent consultants.
So far, so real. Unfortunately, Zetter has never dreamt up a plot twist he didn’t like, so we career from corrupt Brussels technocrats to inept prime ministers in economic turmoil reheating the Brexit debate, and from internecine fighting between Britain’s security agencies to a more complex Russian plot involving Novichok and a Chagossian cleaner. Somehow Beaufort manages to get recruited by MI5 and is embroiled in a honeytrap in a central European state – and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There is bribery, corruption and a textbook baddie out for revenge.
Yet it’s an entertaining yarn, albeit perhaps best enjoyed with a good bottle of wine.
And it’s nice to see lobbying given a makeover. Although to any young hopefuls looking for a job, the real public affairs world is more spreadsheets and close watching of Hansard, and rather less international spying.
Or maybe I was doing it wrong.
The Lobbyist
By Lionel Zetter
Nine Elms Books
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