Voter apathy? Don’t you believe it. Ever since we asked our readers to nominate this year’s best parliamentarian, our digital post bag has been full to bursting. Nominations have come from as nearby as Westminster and as far away as Australia. They have spanned all three major political parties, and Ukip besides. And they have been by turns witty, insightful and impassioned. This really is democracy in action.
One early frontrunner is the Conservative backbencher Philip Davies. Reader Steve Mullins praises him as someone who ‘defends us almost single-handed against the massed ranks of pressure groups and sanctimonious political busybodies who want to dictate what we can say, do and see’. Dick Puddlecote says that Davies ‘has consistently reflected the concerns of the people parliamentarians regularly forget; that is, the public they are elected to serve’. The MP for Shipley will clearly take some beating.
But there are other contenders for the crown of Readers’ Representative. One is Tom Watson, who has, according to Jules Lewis, ‘done more than any MP to keep the phone hacking scandal on the political (and virtually every other) agenda’. Another is Peter Bone, for, as Bennett Stevens puts it, ‘having the balls to ask Cameron for a referendum on Europe’.
Sadly, however, we can probably discount Gordon Brown at this stage. The only nomination for our former Prime Minister points out that he ‘hasn’t even bothered to attend parliament and says nothing. Great. Just what everyone wants.’
There is still time for you to submit your own nomination. Simply point your computer in the direction of new.spectator.co.uk/parliamentarian and make a case, in no more than 250 words, for the parliamentarian of your choice. The best-written, most persuasive entry will win its author a pair of tickets for the awards ceremony at Claridge’s on Wednesday 16 November. Good luck!
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