One thing I’ve noticed about Parliament is all the people who have a job but don’t seem to have a job to do. There I was hunkered down in the Cholmondeley Room skimming the Order Paper and not really feeling myself when one of these anonymous bods suddenly came and slumped down opposite. 

 

You interested in foreign affairs, he asked, without preamble, kiss your arse or a by your whatsit. I was taken aback (well, I wasn’t but you know what I mean) Am I interested in foreign affairs? (I kid you not!! Am I?). You’ll understand if good taste prevents further comment.

 

Anyway, that’s how I ended up in the Thatcher Room in Portcullis House at an important meeting as a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Today Lark and Bendover; tomorrow, the world!

 

Committee chairwoman is well-known party grandee Emily Thornberry, a sturdy, generously-covered class warrior you probably know as Lady Nugee or Her Dameship or La Estupenda since the New Year thingies. 

 

I have to say I’m finding it difficult to defend to my ever-so-humble constituents the concept that ‘all men are created equal’ as applied to ‘the ordinary working people’ of Labour when every other party member seems to have some sort of fancy title. Even that sanctimonious creep, ‘Sir’ Chris Bryant.

 

Gossips say Thorny only got the committee (and the damehood) as a sop because Sir K didn’t put her into the Cabinet after many years in shadow roles. Well, he must have had his reasons, say I. How long have you got, luv?

 

I only knew her from appearances on that lunchtime TV politics show which Teddy hated because I always refused to switch over to Bargain Hunt. (Mind you, that was never the same, was it, after darling Tim got the heave-ho?).

 

I had her down as a garrulous, conceited, condescending smart-arse and, do you know what, she is a garrulous, conceited, condescending smart-arse. 

Anyway, forget about her: I’ve to take myself in hand now and tackle the woes of the world. I owe it to my constituents and the country eh? More of foreign affairs (please God) anon.

 

So to PMQs and I wasn’t the only one who thought the leader failed to put his polished boot on La Badenoch’s throat. Chagos? Forget it. With growing whispers about the R word, why no emphasis on the parlous state of the economy bequeathed to us. Why not bang on about the £22 billion black hole? That’s a handy phrase I’m happy to pass on.

 

I’m sorry — and I’m only repeating what colleagues are saying — are we sure that when he revealed he was the son of a toolmaker, that was all he was?

 

On a happier note, more on that Lib Dem cutie I’ve got my eye on: resplendent in lime green one week; a fetching dusky blue the next. Where does he get his suits? Perhaps if we ‘coincide’ in Strangers he’ll fill me in!

Teddy? (You won’t believe it but people still ask). Well, he’s been in Skegness doing the lighting on a panto, Robin Hood and the Seven Dwarfs, or somesuch. Skeggie: It’s got to be a joke, hasn’t it?

 

I also caught his credit as Dolly Grip on one of those awful Channel 5  shows. Dolly Grip? Fancy. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, eh? It appears that no one in the business will allow him to forget that silly joke involving Dame Judi. Such a bitch, though (Teddy, not darling J!) Never forget.

 

Order! Order!

The Hon Oliver MP

 

EPISODE 2

IN WHICH I AM STUNG BY A WASPI

 

I’m revolting. No. Stop it. I really am. I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m cut out to be an Hon Member (much like the Leader, I guess). We’re back after the holiday and I have to report the mood in the party isn’t great. 

 

After a grim first session in which we seemed to have pissed off practically everyone, then we had the Waspi fiasco.

 

I still remember Starmer addressing the nation outside No.10 last July. Our new Government would ‘tread more lightly’ on the lives of voters, he promised. 

 

Tread more lightly? Ha! More like fucking bovver boots (and I don’t just mean Ginge).

 

I told you I was under siege from the farmers but that’s nothing compared to Waspi women on the warpath.

 

Christmas, which I thought would be predictably dull but pleasant, was more like a battlefield. Cos, guess what, my two fellow guests at our modest feast, Mummy and Aunt Vi, are Waspi ‘victims’. Earache did I get!

 

And the horny-handed farmers are still on my case. I hadn’t been feeling myself so I decided to venture back to Up For It! because I fancied being a bit more (how shall I say) up for it. I was in a corner downing the signature cocktail, an How’s Like To?, when a thick-necked farmhand slumped down and gave me a good going over (well he didn’t but one can dream). Talk about aggroculture! (see what I just did there?).

 

Otherwise, the upstanding Hon Member for Lark and Bendover has been trying to get on with things: exciting new policies, well-considered initiatives and all that bollocks but I don’t know if anyone’s taken in. Specially not mummy.

 

Whatever, it looks as if I’ll be hard at it (chance’d be a fine thing) for the next couple of months. But there was some excitement at the Palace of Varieties. The Deputy Leader nearly acknowledged my presence! She was sweeping into her new office and our eyes met across a crowded Central Lobby. For a moment I thought she’d speak, grunt or even nod but, in a swish of those revolting flappy green pantaloons (Rawtenstall market obviously had a sale), she was gone. Ethereal or what!

 

To PMQs. I’m late (Whip Joe gives me The Look). Actually, idling at the Bar of the House gives me the chance to survey our packed benches for a change. Between you and me, they look as if most of them are waiting to go into WeightWatchers. And the Front Bench! The bovine Jess Phillips, brought into the inner circle for now, gurned and grimaced like a fishwife, poor Yvette looked as if she’d just remembered she’d left the gas on and Rachel! She doesn’t look at all well, does she? Word is her ‘reign’ is coming to an untidy end. (And that Tulip’s wilting).

 

More importantly, I’ve been trying to catch the eye of a new Lib Dem cutie. Did you see him in his flashy violet-coloured suit? Maybe more anon.

 

Just time to pretend I’m also a social diarist by updating you on the Daily Drone Christmas Party. It was at the Anglers again, a riverside pub in Walton, and the valorous could even order off the bottomless brunch menu. Bottomless, eh? Who’d have thought. How was it? Discreet veil as Mummy says.

 

As an Hon Member, I’d been warned not to expose myself too much: usually sound advice I’ve found. So I took it easy. The man they call Prodnose didn’t, though. Talk about pissed. He hovered around trying to look menacing but when you’ve toiled under my personal Whip, ‘Thruster’ Ramsbottom, you’re not easily overcome if you get me drift…

 

Order, Order!

The Hon Oliver, MP. 

 

EPISODE 3 IN WHICH I DO SOMETHING

QUESTIONABLE IN THE HOUSE

Thank you, Mr Speaker! Oops, sorry. Forgot myself there for a moment. Hi from the Mother of Parliaments. 

 

What a first session! Nightmare, loves. Winter fuel payments, freebies (for some!), Budget, barely here Keir, Rache’s CV drama and, finally, the fucking farmers.

 

I’m the first ever Labour MP for Lark and Bendover after years of ruddy Conservatives: it’s over-run with sweaty, calloused, rough-and-tumble lads. Since the inheritance row they’ve been after me —and not in a nice way. Where’s it all going to end? 

 

I can’t go out in my part of Northants without stubble-cheeked malcontents haunting me. Good taste prevents my passing on what happened when I was recognised in that nice new club, Up For It, in Wellingborough. Suffice to say, it reminded me of that horrid night at Too Too Taboo in Trowbridge with Ted. I’m getting to old for that sort of thing!

Who’d be an MP?

 

And what is it with whips? Pertinent question which, in this free-thinking age, I don’t feel I should answer in a family online newspaper. But this lot in the party are more like snuffling sheepdogs, rounding us up and herding us as if we were a flock of ewes, panting all the while. Panting!!

 

Don’t they know that the hon. member for Lark and Bendover is a free spirit, an independent thinker, a man who does it on his own? Lobby fodder, I am not, if you please. At least that’s what I thought…until I met Joe or, rather, Joe met me.

 

That’s Joe Ramsbottom, my appointed whip: squat, pugnacious, ex-miner, built like a tub of lard with a face like a Pontefract Cake. He appears to know everything about me (please, God — not everything: especially that think tank in Bognor. Anyway, I’ll deny it) and seems to delight in creeping up behind me and making me jump.

 

One day Joe pinned me down (heaven forfend!) as I had a mid-morning livener in the Standing Member in Portcullis House. ‘About time we heard thee speak,’ he growled, without intro. I’d been conscious that I hadn’t actually said anything in the House since the election but I didn’t think anyone had noticed. Some hope.

 

He passed me a sheet of paper. To my horror, I realised it was a Question to the Prime Minister. 

 

‘This’ll be last one to t‘leader next Wednesday,’ he says. ‘Just bob up and down. You’re good at that. Hoyle’ll be looking out for thee. Memorise it, mind — if I see thee reading it, I’ll cut thee off at t’fucking knees.’

 

So this was The Sweetener, the soft ball question that enables the leader to wind up PMQs with a list of our impressive triumphs since the election - without Badenoch being able to stick her oar in! Aha!

So Wednesday, 12.29: I am called by the Speaker (at least I think I was: I can never understand a word he says).  

A brief look around (Joe is at the Bar of the House, glowering) then a clear, commanding: ‘Would the Prime Minister agree with me that this Government is, without doubt, totally wonderful in every way and the country is ever-so lucky to have it?’

 

Sir Keir vaguely gestured almost in my direction, welcomed me to ‘my place’, and thanked me for my ‘perceptive and important’ question. 

I didn’t catch the answer but I had arrived…  had rocked the Cradle of Democracy. 

 

Now, thank fuck, the looms: Christmas with mummy and Aunt Vi from Burton Latimer. Tio Pepe, turkey crown, pud, Cluedo.

 

It’s at times like this I miss grand times at Frame Hampton…

 

Hope you all have a cool Yule.

 

Order! Order!

The Hon Oliver, MP. 

 

EPISODE 4 IN WHICH I AM SUDDENLY

THRUST INTO PROMINENCE

Oh, hello! So there you are. Bet you thought you’d seen and heard the last of me when Teddy and I left Frame Hampton, Wilts (and I really do mean wilts, luv!). It’s been a busy time; a lot has happened.

 

You’ll never guess what, though. I’ve only got myself elected as an MP! An honourable member, no less. Part of the new red wall. No more Country Boys for me. (Well, not many!).

 

Three months after the July poll I’ve decided to break cover and update you on my new life (and top up my parly pay by penning a column). Eh? — Ed.

No more shall I be toiling at the chalkface, teaching in Queenswold Secondary, Corby; instead I’m representing the lovely but slightly weird people of the nearby constituency, Lark and Bendover. Such a mad, mad rush, I can tell you. 

 

It all started when the head of Queenswold, Freddie Fitztitely, called me into his study, plonked me down on the Chesterfield and asked me if I’d ever thought of offering my services. (Not half, I thought). No. Stop it. What he meant was had I ever thought of standing for Parliament. Turns out he’s big in the local Labour Party and they were looking for a suitable (?)  candidate.

 

Why not, luv, I thought. I’m as horny-handed as the next pleb and I could see me cheek by jowl in that crowded voting lobby or sliding around on those shiny green benches during an all-nighter with Big Ben looming over us.

 

So I said: I’m all yours if you want me, comrade. The selection meeting was a piece of piss actually.  Some of the rough trade on the committee weren’t too sure they’d have me but I spieled something I’d read in the Guardian and, what with the chairman’s say-so, it was enough.

 

Campaigning was a nightmare, though. Non stop riffraff. But I endured and the next thing I knew I was hanging around outside Parliament after the election looking for St Stephen’s Entrance. 

 

Even after all this time, though, I still don’t know my way around and haven’t got an office never mind a phone. I haven’t even managed to track down Alii’s, a pop-up shop somewhere in the bowels of Parliament with all sorts of designer gear, I’m told. 

 

But I’m loving the drama of the place and I had a really good time at the Budget growling approvingly at everything Rachel said as we’d been told to do. (Isn’t she beautiful by the way?)

 

Not so sure about that Kemi, though. Too clever by half, as mummy used to warn. Steer well clear, says I. And our Foreign Secretary? You must have seen him: black guy, shithouse door proportions, like a bouncer outside the Cordwainer, the Wetherspoons in Northampton. ‘Liability Lammy’, they’re calling him, although I don’t know why: best watch this space.

 

What was that? Teddy? Oh, him. Now I’m in London we do occasionally come across each other, I admit. But I try to keep him at arm’s length (at least!) and there are plenty more fish in the sea (well on the shiny green benches, anyway!)

 

Must call for an adjournment now. Speak soon. Order! Order!

 

EPISODE 5

IN WHICH I SPY A LIB DEM DOG’S COCK 

ACROSS A CROWDED DIVISION LOBBY

 

Strap me! Parliament’s a weird place. Wherever you go on the estate — lobbies, cubbyhole offices, bars, tearooms, Portcullis House and, especially, the chamber —  there’s a strange, unworldly atmosphere. 

 

I’m not enamoured, to be honest. After eight months as the upstanding and honourable member for Lark and Bendover I look around at all the swivel-eyed young thrusters and arse-lickers of both every gender(s) on all sides of the house and wonder what the flying fuck they or I am doing here. Look at them at PMQs, for example. Who would vote for them — or me, for that matter? 

 

What have I got to offer, a mediocre English and Drama teacher at a comp? A ‘house husband’ in an insignificant Wiltshire village?

 

Don’t get me wrong: I think being an MP is a proper job but rarely in the Mother of Parliaments that’s all. I’m more happy in L and B tending to my constituents: ‘making a difference.’ My maiden speech is a good example. I’d put it off for so long it was embarrassing. I was terrified. Then my Whip, Joe, pinned me up against the wall in the Portcullis underpass. So a few days later I mumbled and bumbled through some pointless platitudes: pathetic. Afterwards I couldn’t even remember what I said. If I tell you I had to consult Hansard, please, please promise you won’t do the same. 

 

Life at Westminster’s a bit grim, to be honest. I share a basic flat with an elderly Labour MP from oop North. We live separately: I find him difficult to understand and we are not, how shall I say, kindred spirits. The little we have in common includes catching the same No.88 bus and the occasional wave in the Tea Room.

 

To tell you the truth, I’m missing mummy. I see her most weekends, of course, when I return to sunny Northants, but it’s not the same. I confess I was daft enough to confide in Teddy when I felt like this in Frame Hampton.

 

Was he sympathetic? Was he fuck. I remember him telling me I would probably benefit from some psycho analysis. Then he spoilt it by saying: ‘The trouble with Freud is it’s one thing after your mother.’ Smart arse.

 

Back to reality, I inherited office staff from some sad sap who got the heave-ho in July and we perch in a dusty broom cupboard and commune daily to wade through the flood tide of administrative shit that threatens to engulf me.

 

It’s been an interesting session, though, what with a Labour colleague convicted of thumping a constituent, ministers being sacked or resigning (Dodds: who knew?) and Trump taking over the world. Starmer the statesman? We’ll see about that but it certainly diverts his attention from troubles at home.

 

Groupies (Eh? — Ed) clamour for news of the Lib Dem cutie who’s caught my eye — if nothing else. Still looking like a model from Man at C&A. Latest extravaganza matching midnight blue suit, shirt and tie. Reminded me of an exclamation mark (or dog’s cock as you journos call them). But have our eyes met across a crowded division lobby? Have we had a brief encounter in Pugin’s Passage? Sadly, no, dear reader but ever hopeful.

 

Order! Order!

 

EPISODE 6

IN WHICH I FIND THAT ABSINTHE REALLY 

DOES MAKE THE HEART GROW FONDER

 

Oh, hi!

Thank God for the recess. I’ve left my dispiriting flat in south London and the fucking Palace of Westminster for sunny Northants (aka the Notswolds), the good people of Lark and Bendover, a few How’sYourFather cocktails in my favourite ‘night spot’, Up For It in Wellingborough… and, of course, Mummy.

 

These last few weeks have been a nightmare. Whereas I have been wondering for some time: Am I in the wrong party? Now I’m asking myself: Am I in the wrong job?

 

That twat Trump flexing his muscles has highlighted the skewed focus of people in Parliament. Just when he should be figuring out how to get us out of the mess Rache has got us into at home, Our Leader seizes on tariffs as a way of proving what an international statesman he is. As if he’s going to make a difference!  All he seems to know about the economy is that if he shouts ‘£22 billion black hole’ often enough people will think he’s John Maynard Keynes. (Didn’t he play the washboard in The Troggs? — Ed).

 

You have to remember that we Red Wall MPs are just there to file through the division lobby. It’s pathetic at PMQs when the newbys queue up to ask the Arselickers, the questions which even Starmer could answer (I know: I’ve done it myself). You can always tell: he pays an exaggerated compliment to the questioner, whom he’s probably never met, and then reads the off-the-cuff answer his lackeys have prepared for him. I was having this conversation with a colleague when I heard the holder of one of the great offices of state refer in the chamber to ‘ordinary working people’.  That’s all you need to know.

 

I’m not the only Labour MP conflicted over where his loyalties lie. Take Shaun Davies, elected for Telford last summer. I don’t know him at all but in Westminster he’s called Mr Telford having mentioned his constituency more than 60 times in the House since his election. That’s his problem: he’s still a councillor back home (as is his wife) and trying to do both jobs as well as being a family man must be virtually impossible.

 

I, like many backbenchers, was called into Downing Street for a ritual schmoozing as the Government started to get jittery about a revolt over benefits. The Leader really is a woodentop, you know: no charisma at all. I never got even a glance so where does that leave the rest of the ‘ordinary working people’ in Lark and Bendover?

 

And as for Liz Kendall: mad as a box of snakes. Have you seen those daft glasses? Mummy says she reminds her off a newspaper columnist called Marje something who used to contribute to the Drone as well. I was tempted to tell Kendall that she should have gone to Specsavers but she doesn’t look like one of life’s merry quippers.

 

So home comes the hero. And let’s give thanks for Doris, I say. She’s the gem who runs my constituency office in Lark and Bendover and has kept me sane(ish) these last eight months. Doris used to be the Head’s secretary at my old school, Queenswold Secondary in Corby, until old Freddie Fitstightly traded her in for a younger model and she was palmed off on the party.

 

You wouldn’t believe the amount of work being an MP generates. Forget Trump/Gaza/Ukraine, all the people in Marston Trussell, Luddington-in-the-Brook and Fartinghoe are interested in is what’s happening where they live. And don’t I know it! My constituency surgeries in the back room of the Whippet and Wipe It in Aldwincle are like a bear garden. I’ll return to this in a future missive.

 

By the way, they’ve gone très Gallic at Up For It: a French garçon, no less,  behind the bar. Lucien. Nice boy. Early days but I can confirm already that absinthe really does make the heart grow fonder.

 

Ordre! Ordre!

 

The Hon Oliver, MP