It’s hard work climbing the greasy pole, but with a lucky bet and sharp suit, Labour’s Chuka Umunna, the new MP for Streatham, seems to be rising fast, but ruffling a fair few feathers on the way up, especially in his own party. Even Brillo couldn’t resist bringing the former lawyer down a peg or two with his introduction to “Ed Miliband’s chief envelope licker and bagcarrier” on today’s Daily Politics:

Despite being Miliband’s loyal PPS he can still sit on the Treasury Select Committee, but showed an embarrassing lack of knowledge in his attempt to grill Bob Diamond last week. Someone who actually knows the ins and outs of lending tears a chunk out of him in the Standard’s letters page tonight, and in proof that you don’t actually have to have met Chuka to find him absurd, it was a two pronged attack as another reader wrote:

“Chuka is likely to be a competent Parliamentarian, but will he speak out on the issues that explicitly matter to us? We don’t need another centrist clone.”

They say politics is show business for ugly people, but both industries require at least something beyond a pretty face.