Tory staff demand change over sleaze in parliament

Sleaze is the watchword in Westminster at the moment. Morale amongst staff on the parliamentary estate was already low before the latest partygate shenanigans. Recent embarrassments about outside interests, dodgy MPs, drinking on the estate and historic sex offences have taken their toll. Few of the twenty-somethings who work in the Commons have a good word to say about our elected members at present, whether it’s Neil Parish watching porn or Liam Byrne getting just a two day suspension for bullying his staff. Parish fiddles while Byrne roams, indeed. 

Some of those in parliament have had enough. Mr S has been told that a new grassroots organisation is being launched by two enterprising young researchers to lobby for change in Westminster. The group – ‘Conservative staffers for change’ – was started by Henry Dixon-Clegg and Angus McVean, who work for Sir Desmond Swayne and Karen Bradley respectively. The pair have written letters to Boris Johnson, Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle and Tory chairman Oliver Dowden in which they declare that ‘many of us are ashamed that the reputation of our workplace is coming into disrepute.