My first full-time job, at the age of 18, was working for an MP. In the following 27 years, almost my entire career has been spent in or near Westminster. I know and have known lots of MPs. To coin a phrase, some of my best friends are members of parliament.
This, of course, means I’m biased on the topic of MPs, inclined by reason or familiarity to think well of them as a group. But it also means, I hope, that I have a bit of knowledge — knowledge that might be worth sharing as the Commons remembers Sir David Amess and James Brokenshire.
It’s hard to generalise about an inherently diverse group, but MPs as a whole are not, in an important way, like the rest of us. To reach the Commons requires a type of drive and motivation that most people lack. Almost nobody finds getting selected and elected easy.
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