When all MPs expenses are finally published this summer, the most embarrassing claims will almost certainly have been leaked already—the pornography bills, the home improvements and the bath plugs. One item seems unlikely to be listed by any MP, however: a sleeping bag. Yet I know of several MPs and at least one cabinet minister who all keep one in their desks, to catch a few hours of sleep during late votes.
Given recent coverage of the sex lives of parliamentarians, including allegations that one Labour politician conducted an affair in his House of Commons office, it may come as a surprise that others sleep alone, under their desks. Changes to sitting hours mean fewer votes nowadays drag on into the night. Even so, it is not an easy life: late nights two or three evenings a week, separation from family, tedious constituency work that you are obliged to pretend to enjoy and incessant media scrutiny. This is not to say that parliamentarians are noble truth seekers, maligned by an ungrateful media. But they are only human.
This humanity is typically revealed through individual frailties, those moments when the behaviour of the political classes threatens to swamp politics itself, and issues of the day become commercial breaks in the soap opera of SW1. Coverage of Jacqui Smith’s husband’s lewd movie habit ran for the best part of a week, as did the dirty tricks email campaign orchestrated by Damian McBride. In between, the G20’s attempts to fix up an ailing global economy almost seemed a diversion and Barack Obama himself a modest interlude between porn and poison.
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