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Big Ben strikes eleven, and time is running out for you to nominate a politician for The Spectator/Threadneedle Readers’ Representative Award. We’ve had an enthusiastic response so far, which just goes to show that our parliamentarians can’t be all bad. Look beyond the venal faces that are dominating newspaper coverage at the moment and you’ll find quieter, more hard-working, conscientious sorts. Our job is to celebrate them.
Boz Robinson began this past week’s nominations with a dose of adulation for Frank Field who, he writes, ‘stands head and shoulders above anyone else in his own party for integrity and commonsense, and above most other MPs in both the other main parties’. Stephen James looked towards the Labour front benches and the figure of our Chancellor: ‘It’s hard not to feel sorry for Alistair Darling, who not only had to pick up the pieces from Brown’s chancellorship, but was almost sacked in the process. For his tenacity, he deserves our admiration.’
Elsewhere, there’s continued support for Douglas Carswell, Vince Cable and John Redwood. Melanie Pugh praises Philip Hammond for being ‘unflappable’. And Humphrey Earle cites Chris Huhne as ‘the only Lib Dem worth listening to’. Even the disgraced former minister Jacqui Smith gets a look-in — although there’s something back-handed about Damien Shannon’s gratitude for her ‘illustrating in a few years how quickly the mother of all parliaments was so atrociously subverted by New Labour’.
There’s not much time left for you to select your own champion. We are accepting nominations until 5 p.m. on Monday 26 October. So please rush to new.spectator.co.uk/parliamentarian to argue your case. The author of the best-written nomination will receive a bottle of champagne and two tickets to the lunch at Claridges where The Spectator/Threadneedle awards are announced.
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