It is nearly five months since Tamsin Dunwoody lost the Crewe & Nantwich by-election. Apologists for politician’s troughing ways claim that the taxpayer needs to pay three times the national wage to MPs to attract high calibre candidates. Guido argues that there is no shortage of candidates, vacant safe seats attract hundreds of ambitious applicants, the market price for wannabee MPs is clearly lower, demand already far outstrips the available supply of constituency seats.

MPs and their apologists claim that they could earn far more in comparison doing other things – to which Guido retorts if they are in it for the money, they should do something else. The modern political class largely comprises of ex-party HQ staff, SpAds, spin merchants with a smattering of lawyers, ex-trade union officials and polytechnic lecturers. Life-long political insiders since their university days with little real world experience outside politics do not have great skill sets for the private sector (outside becoming lobbyists). It is no surprise therefore that Tamsin is still unemployed

She tells the Telegraph “I’ve not been able to find a job since losing my seat in the Welsh Assembly a year ago and I don’t have a pot of gold, so I can’t just go off and do what I want. People don’t like to employ ex-politicians, especially Labour ones like me who might unionise.” After the general election there are going to be a hell of a lot more Labour ex-MPs, SpAds , bag carriers and their hangers on. Nowadays lobbyists don’t even want them, they are alos handicapped by speaking an incomprehensible verbless language: New Labour-speak. They will have to be re-trained to become socially useful, to learn new modes of speaking… “Would you like fries with that, sir?”