Parliamentarian of the Year | 25 November 2006

The 23rd annual Threadneedle/ Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year lunch took place last Thursday at Claridge’s. The prizes were presented by the Rt Hon. David Cameron MP, Leader of the Opposition. Welcoming Mr Cameron, Matthew d’Ancona, the editor of The Spectator, observed that, in less than a year as Conservative leader, he had dislodged Beckham as the most popular Dave in the country, shown his fellow Tories that a glacier is not just a kind of mint, and taught the political world that green is more than the colour of envy.

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR

Julia Goldsworthy MP

The judges faced a difficult task selecting one MP from the intake of 2005 — which, in the words of Sinatra, was a very good year. The winner unseated a Labour incumbent to become the youngest MP in England, and has already risen to a senior position on the Lib Dem front bench. At a traumatic time for her party, which led to the resignation of a leader still popular with his membership and the public, she dared to ask difficult and painful questions at precisely the moment of her career when one would have expected unprincipled reticence.

INQUISITOR OF THE YEAR

Angus MacNeil MP

When the winner began his dogged pursuit of the loans for honours affair and took his complaint to Scotland Yard, few thought it would amount to much more than another doomed lunge by the Scottish National Party for headlines. But — as Michael Palin didn’t quite say — ‘Nobody expects the Scottish Inquisition!’ The winner stuck to his guns, kept up the pressure and triggered the mother of all credit searches — revealing that there were more loans being fixed in Westminster in the run-up to the 2005 election than in a sofa warehouse on New Year’s Eve. The police investigation activated by this tartan Torquemada continues to rock Westminster.

PEER OF THE YEAR