The triumph of Mr and Mrs Badenoch

When we used to think of Tory marriages, we mostly thought of when they went horribly wrong – when the Honourable Member was caught with his trousers down, as when, in 1992, David Mellor was found ‘in flagrante’ with a resting ‘actress’ who saw fit to sell her story to a tabloid newspaper. The ghastly Mellor made not just his poor wife and children, but his poor wife’s poor parents all line up grinning like chimps by a five-bar gate to prove how solid his marriage was. (‘A five-bar-gate moment’ is still press slang for displays of fake domestic bliss by shameless politicians, while the ceaseless self-serving confessions of the hilarious Little Britain character Sir Norman Fry – though gayer in his extra-marital inclinations – were obviously influenced by this ‘iconic’ shot.) Mrs Mellor surely went above and beyond the call of marital duty when she defended him: ‘I am just very, very sad that someone with such ability is not able to serve his country in the way he can do best,’ she told reporters on the day of his resignation.