Being a backbench MP can be pretty dull. In recent times, former members of the government have found the experience of merely being a member of the legislature so upsetting that they’ve downed tools and left Parliament altogether: David Cameron made a big show of saying he’d stay on and serve Witney from the backbenches, before finding himself on those backbenches sooner than he’d thought and scarpering. George Osborne, similarly, ended up as a backbencher, then quickly amassed as many other jobs as he could, before quitting politics ‘for now’. Perhaps these were rational individual choices given the comparatively lower pay and considerably lower prestige of the backbenches compared to government. But they did suggest that you might as well not bother doing the job that your constituents actually elected you to do.
New MPs are often so keen to join the government or the shadow frontbench that they spend as much of their time as possible auditioning for it by asking sickeningly loyal questions in the Commons, writing supportive op ed pieces for CCHQ to circulate, and doing the dull dirty work of defending the government on political programmes.
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