Paul Flynn

With a foreword by Tony Benn Paul Flynn is one of Westminster's wittiest and most irreverent bloggers, commentators and campaigners. Funny, fresh and revealing, in The Unusual Suspect Labour's long-serving MP for Newport West (and current Welsh MP of the Year), tells the whole truth of the vanities, triumphs and excesses of the political shark pool. From hiding Rhodri Morgan's underwear at Cardiff train station, to his unlikely alliance with rap group Goldie Lookin' Chain, Flynn has long been an unorthodox but influential presence at Westminster. Never one to fit in to suit political convenience, his tenure in office has been characterised by a campaigning zeal which has seen him become a giant-killing enemy of vested interests. The stupidity of drugs laws, the deceptions of the pharmaceutical industry, the shame of politicians on the make and Labour's misconceived foreign adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have been just a few of the issues that have aroused his indignation. His passions have often kept him off message too, and The Unusual Suspect describes his disillusion with New Labour and its betrayal of the party's socialist principles. In a chapter entitled Icons and KnavesA Flynn takes a close look at the individual qualities and flaws of many of his contemporaries on all sides, in Parliament. In this hilarious, yet deeply personal book, Paul Flynn describes with his customary panache the joys and shattering tragedies of his life, all intertwined with political hope and chicanery. A quarter of a century of Flynn's work with the icons and knaves of parliament has renewed his idealism and conviction that 'the best has yet to be'.