Why I’ll never become an MP

Every now and then someone asks me if I have ever thought of becoming an MP. My response tends to be a laugh so deranged that the question answers itself. When I manage to verbalise the answer it usually goes something like this: ‘No, because I enjoy saying what I think is true.’ Occasionally my conversationalist will persist: ‘But MPs have a huge variety of opinions. Parliament is not filled with silent types.’

Throughout such interactions various names and images flash through my head. I think of Sarah Champion, for instance — the Labour MP for Rotherham. Ms Champion got her seat in 2012 and among the problems she inherited was the fact that her constituency had recently been one of the largest crime scenes in modern British history. Around 1,400 underage girls and young women in Rotherham were sexually abused over the course of years by groups that we now coyly call ‘grooming gangs’.