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Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It

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Three weeks later he received good news. He was told immunotherapy and targeted therapy had just been licensed for people at stage three and this would take his chances of living more than a year from 40% to 90%. Culture History, music, cooking, travel, books, theatre, film – but also with an eye on the ‘culture wars’, nationalism and identity. Then there was the Merciless Parliament of 1388, which Oxford historian Professor Jonathan Healey says might have been formed by “forcing a nest of wasps to mate with Katie Hopkins, and cramming their multiple spawns together into a poorly ventilated Wetherspoons toilet”. As a serving MP, Chris Bryant is understandably mindful not to upset important figures whose ill-will can damage his career. In a way, he says, it all makes sense. “I’ve still got my school reports and in my final term, the headmaster said: ‘He’s full of drama and moral courage.’” Was he good enough to become a professional actor? “Obviously not,” he says. “I felt I had a degree of personal strength. I wanted to put that to use, then the church made it clear they didn’t want gays in the clergy. I still wanted to have a purpose in life, to do something that had a sense of drama and used my strengths, and moving from the church to politics was not difficult.” I’m happy to have a row, but I will have agonies of guilt about it afterward, about whether I’ve been too loud or too cross

COVID became an opportunity for Conservative donors and cronies to make a fortune through the award of PPE contracts. Cronyism and Corruption Byline Times uncovers the nepotism that greases the wheels of British politics. His analysis is spot-on. Bryant is super-smart and knows it. Self-criticism is often tempered by a boast. He quotes another Tory MP who warned him the night before he spoke in the Paterson debate. “Mark Fletcher said to me, ‘You have to be very careful, Chris, because you are 80% brilliant and 20% crap,’ so I had to make sure none of the crap was in what I had to say.” He thinks it’s a funny quote, and admits he can be rude, abrupt, sarcastic, angry. What does he do when he gets angry? “I play the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem. It punches out the anger.” Bryant left the church in 1991. Had you lost your faith? “No, it made me lose attendance. I’ve still got exactly the same faith I always had.” In the space of a few years, he did many different jobs – election agent for Labour MP Frank Dobson, author, insurance salesman, London manager of the charity Common Purpose. By now he had come to realise that his liberal conservatism was a better fit with New Labour. In 1997, he was the unsuccessful Labour candidate for Wycombe, then was hired by the BBC in a lobbying role as head of European affairs. Bryant is fond of quoting from popular songs to describe his life. This time he opts for I’m Still Here from the musical Follies. “In the words of Stephen Sondheim, ‘You career from career to career.’”Identity, Empire and the Culture War Byline Times explores the weaponisation of Britain’s past as a key tool in a dark project of division and distraction

While more than 200 MPs have received earnings from work outside their roles in Parliamentin the last year, analysis of the Commons register of interests shows more than 30 Conservative MPs have been paid as consultants. The ideas presented are sensible and could make a major difference to restoring faith in how our political system works. This list does not include one unnamed Tory MP who has been banned from the Commons while under investigation by the police, and three recent MPs convicted of serious crimes.

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So can we expect, when parliament rises on 4 September, a motion clamouring for Dorries’ return to the commons scene? “I’ll certainly be ready with one”, Bryant pledges portentously. Bryant shows how this debasement of public standards works in practice. The ‘levelling up’ initiative, supposed to help poorer communities, has been turned into a Tory slush fund. What is missing is an examination of when standards started to fall as much as Bryant argues they have. He does talk briefly about the last Labour government, but is clearly mostly wound up by Boris Johnson’s cavalier approach to the truth. But there were shifts in political culture before then, including Blair’s spin culture and, yes, that government’s handling of the Iraq war, which did lay the ground for what we see today. Perhaps it is because of partisan blindness. Perhaps it’s just that the whole thing was rather long ago: there are teenagers who have gone through puberty without any knowledge of life under a Labour government. Perhaps he will correct me on missing his examination of his own party’s role in the decay of standards – before apologising for sounding too pompous. Chris Bryant’s important new book starts with an uncomfortable question: “Is this the worst Parliament in history?” By the end of this book, there is little doubt in the mind of the reader.

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