Order, order | 13 December 2017

Diet nannies will spend Christmas telling us ‘you are what you eat’ but in the House of Commons ‘you are where you sit’. Are you a Tory Whips’ stooge or a Dominic Grieve groupie aching to block Brexit, a braw new blue Scot or an English provincial plodder without hope of advancement? Parliament-watchers discern plenty about your political leanings from where you park your posterior.

Each side of the Commons chamber has five green-leather benches that are divided by a gangway. On the government side of the chamber, all MPs are Conservatives except for a couple who have had the Whip withdrawn. On the opposition side, the lower four benches ‘beyond the gangway’ (i.e. further from the Speaker’s chair) belong mainly to the Scots Nats, Lib Dems, Northern Irish and Plaid Cymru. At the very front of that area, the first four places have been retained as Labour territory by Dennis Skinner and his mates.