There’s one in every House

Thursday, 20th November 2008

The Joker, the Crackpot, the Deadweight Bore: Matthew Parris suggests some awards to recognise the enduring characters in the Commons

There is — never quite expressed — the subterranean feeling that such men and women should not be encouraged; that their interventions, however assiduous, represent a kind of evasion of their real responsibilities in the cockpit of the nation; and that they’ll get their knighthood in the end, anyway, and deserve no greater name than the half-dismissive ‘knight of the shires’ (to which we might add ‘baron of the boroughs’ and ‘saviour of the sink estates’) that hints that an MP was finally of no account. I remember myself (being, I hope, one of them) how ‘a good constituency MP’ was a nice way of saying a chap was failing.

The past 30 years since I became a parliamentary candidate have seen something close to an explosion in the constituency efforts of MPs. I can say with some confidence that never in our parliamentary history have most of our Members been working so hard or for such a large proportion of their time for the people (of all parties) and places that returned them to Parliament.

Say all you like (and I have) about the higher constitutional duties of MPs. Point out, as you should, that modern MPs get enormous financial and secretarial help, at taxpayers’ expense, in this work, as their predecessors never did. But still this work is going on; it’s good work; and the doing of it is teaching our legislators an intimacy with their constituents and their constituents’ problems that no earlier generation of MPs could, as a body, boast.

It must matter, mustn’t it? So to Joe’s list I add the Constituency Member; and to The Spectator’s awards I add Local Son/Daughter of the Year.

Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Times.