They drink until exhaustion, they get out of the way, insult old men and priests as teenagers on the WhatsApp groups, they take advantage of their role to get rich. Life increasingly turbulent, these days, in the shade of Westminster. Once upon a time there was only John Prescott, aka The Punch, the Gallese deputy prime minister of Tony Blair, Having become famous after responding with a lightning left to the provocation of the agricultor Craig Evans who had launched an egg on him during the 2001 election campaign. So, his image was not particularly affected and Tony Blair He liquidated the question with a simple “John is John”. But twenty years later, Sir Keir Starmer, It is still struggling with a band of sparked deputies and ministers, difficult to contain. Last October one of his parliamentarians, Mike Amesbury, visibly drunk, attacked a resident of Cheshire without apparent reason, while both were in line waiting for a taxi. Amesbury, who was sentenced to ten weeks in prison, but is still free with a suspended sentence pending the appeal, had declared that he had acted for legitimate defense, but from a video and from testimonies it emerged that the victim’s only fault had been to have submitted him too many questions regarding the closing plan of a local bridge that would have caused chaotic traffic in the areas concerned. After the sentence, the deputy apologized, but still sits in Parliament as an independent after being hunted by the party.
Parliamentary alcoholic culture, accepted twenty years ago, Now it has become a problem that the last government is trying to stem with many difficulties. In 2024 Strangers, the bar of the Chamber of Deputies, was closed for a month after a complaint for aggression that had led to an investigation by the Metropolitan Police. According to an independent commission of experts, excessive alcohol consumption has played a fundamental role in the half of the complaints filed against the parliamentarians of all parties, which ended officially under investigation in recent years. But ministers and deputies have fun even without drinking a few more pints of beer. As in the case of the WhatsApp group recently finished on international chronicles. The Labor had to suspend 11 of its members, after knowing that insults and comments were exchanged in private chats. The scandal, brought to light by the inficable Daily Mail, cost the place at number two of the Ministry of Health Andrew Gwynne, elected representative for the districts of Gorton and Denton, in Manchester. Between 2019 and 2022 the politically incorrect had suggested to stun a local activist in favor of the cycle paths, he had hoped that a retired who had not voted Labor to pull the leather before the new elections and had taken it with an exponent of the Anglican clergy who did not enjoy his sympathies, mocking it cruelly in a hundred messages.
Less serious, but still a source of concern for poor Starmer, The swollen curriculum of the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, the bulky kinships of the former Minister Anti -corruption Sadiq Tulip (discharged because the grandson of the former Bangladesh premier who is currently investigated, think a little, for corruption), the rental of apartments invaded by mold and mice owned by the deputy Jas Athwal. Not the integral characters of which Starmer had promised, in the election campaign, to surround himself. And moreover, the rotten apples and the cheerful burloni who do their own business in Westminster have always been there. Simon Hart, in the funny diary on the 15 years spent among the conservatives, testifies to this as a group leader during the Sunak Rishi mandate. Among the funniest anecdotes of Ungovernable there are the rescue of a deputy found in a Bayswater brothel in the company of a lady considered a KGB agent, the story of a parliamentary employee who went to a party dressed by Jimmy Savile and ended up mating with a rubber doll, while others have cleared themselves to take a selfie with the king visiting Parliament. Nothing new under the sun, therefore, not even the recent revelations of the Guardian who, in an exclusive investigation, tells how 10 percent of the representatives of the Chamber of Lords have been hired by private individuals as political consultants and many others carry out paid works for companies in clear conflict of interest with their role as legislators. A quarter of a century after Blair had attempted in 1999 to reduce the number of hereditary members, it is still expected that Starmer puts a reform that makes the high room more representative than the current one. In the meantime, the motto is always the same: those who can have fun, that the voters think about crying.
