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 On the government side of the chamber, all MPs are Conservatives except for a couple who have had the Whip withdrawn.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. This enclave, a relic of the ‘awkward squad bench’, is where you find the last of the Labour pit men: the Ronnie Campbells and Ian Laverys. The SNP did try to boot them out after the 2015 election but Skinner would not budge.
The Tories used to have their own awkward squad bench. It, too, is much reduced. Thirty years ago this was home to glowering Ted Heath as well as Michael Heseltine, Ian Gilmour and their languid ilk, Jermyn Street-shirted patricians who thought Margaret Thatcher a Lincolnshire Poujadiste. Today it attracts less snooty Eurosceptics. At least two (Nigel Evans and Tom Pursglove) have a weakness for brown shoes. Aldridge’s Wendy Morton perches here, a daily reminder of what we lost when her bookish predecessor, Richard Shepherd, retired. At the far end of the bench, beside the two little double–seater boxes, one may spot Southampton Itchen’s Royston Smith, perhaps the most taciturn of all MPs.
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