101 Uses for a Dumped MP

With happy abandon, many MPs are abandoning the Commons, before they are kicked out on their backsides by a relieved, vengeful electorate. Those confident smiles: have they even thought about what they will do when they emerge into the real world with the rest of us? Do they think they have a future? Bless!

Here’s part one of 101 uses for a dumped MP I wrote down on an old envelope at lunchtime:

  • Reality TV show. Just don’t ask for a £million: you’re not worth it, and if you are, you won’t want to be seen in that trash, even with a strong medicament.
  • (Top slots by the way are I’m a Has Been, Get me a Camera, and Strictly Come Off It: talk to my agent; she’s good.)
  • Start a think-tank: but first find a wealthy donor who is prepared to pay you a salary out of pity. You don’t have to produce anything of value; just collect the cheque at the end of the month.
  • After-dinner speaking. If you were a Prime Minister or Speaker, you may earn five figures for a slot or six for a conference; four figures for a senior cabinet minister.  Anyone else, well, you can always do children’s parties.
  • Bag a pundit slot on a politics programme: but there are very few going and only to those with wisdom and charisma, so that’s most ex-MPs out already.
  • Sue a journalist who pretended you wanted to be on a reality TV show – that is really, really defamatory.
  • Chair a quango. There are plenty out there, usually created to give jobs to otherwise unemployable Blairites, but maybe they will expand to let you in if you mouth Common Purpose platitudes?  They may employ you as a condolence for your powerlessness. You will still be powerless.
  • Start a charity. Two versions:  the genuine, voluntary charity if you actually hope to go back into politics, and you can still think that if you like, or the better route is a grant-farm, where you can be paid your old salary out of taxpayers’ money without actually doing any good; just like the old days.
  • A regular slot on Classic FM: just leave it long enough so they forget about, well, you know.
  • That thing that Ben Shapiro does, with an on-line politics / interviews show?  Shapiro makes a mint, but then he is an intellectual giant and you are not.
  • Beg on the streets.  It’s practically what you have been doing for the last few years anyway.

And the most radical suggestion of them all:

  • Get a real job like a normal person.

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Author: faykinuise

Superheroine reporter, legend in her own bathtime, who never lets a lack of facts get in the way of a breaking story