The reading habits of the young Eric Pickles

Eric Pickles has outed himself as a former communist.  Once-upon-a-time he had a passion for Leon Trotsky and Karl Marx:

I was massively inclined that way.  It was part of my upbringing.

I was a pretty serious young chap. For my 14th birthday I got Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution as a present — and I read the damn thing.

Good grief.  However, just two years later he changed his mind:

I was 16 years old in 1968 when Dubcek’s Spring was crushed. I was very interested in Dubcek and thought it was the natural evolution of communism. So I felt a tremendous shock when the tanks rolled into Prague.

I thought the [inaction from the] British government [of the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson] was useless, in the way that only a 16-year-old can think the British government is useless. And I thought: ‘What’s the most outrageous thing I can do to protest? I know, I’ll join the Conservative party’

Little wonder that Eric Pickles doesn't quite fit the Tory mould.