Emma Nicholson’s defection from the Conservative Party to the Liberal Democrats in December 1995 came as a bombshell to John Major’s already tottering government. Long admired as an articulate and concerned politician, she represented the human side of Conservatism which was rapidly being drowned by a cascade of scandal, sleaze and a growing conviction that the Tories had been in power too long.

          Now Emma Nicholson gives her own account of what led to that momentous decision – how lack of leadership, arrogance, tiredness, corruption and a pervasive absence of principle had corroded the soul of the party and reduced it to no more than a secret society. Emma Nicholson’s defection drove another nail into the coffin of a discredited government. Secret Society tells you how and why.