Sir Stuart Bell is calling everyone else liars about his disdain for his constituency, his uncontactability and general B’stardish behaviour. He has form for such bluster, during the expenses crisis he acted as the trougher-in-chief and shop steward for MPs via the shameful Members Estimate Committee, doing everything in its power to frustrate meaningful reform and discovery of the truth. Night after night he would deny there was anything untoward in regard to MPs’ expenses, like a Comical Ali in pinstripes.

It has long been rumoured that Bell keeps a flat in Paris where he used to work as a lawyer. It is said that on Friday, or even Thursday afternoons, instead of getting the train north to his constituency he catches the Eurostar east to Paris for the weekend. Far away from the tiresome demands of his constituents. He admits to having written four novels and numerous short stories in Paris, where does a supposedly busy and dutiful MP find the time? Francophile Bell the boulevardier is secretary of the Franco-British Parliamentary Relations Committee in the Commons and a recipient of the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, presumably for services to the Paris restaurant trade.  No doubt he will claim that his weekends in the City of Light are parliamentary business…