The Party's Over

Tonight sees the finale of Party Animals, moderately entertaining dross (although I feel asleep half way through the first one) about two tribally Labour brothers in junior Westminster positions. No such people could exist any more in real life. For one thing, they have regional accents, which would never be tolerated in, in the heavier-accented one's case, a Blairite Minister's office. They appear to have been educated at perfectly normal state schools, ditto.

But most importantly, Westminster Villagers in their twenties and thirties now seldom, if ever, have fixed political loyalties or even opinions. Just as the older members of the Notting Hill and Primrose Hill dining sets are not even expected to join a political party until their peerages are bought and paid for, and duly delivered, so likewise the younger members are not so expected until a safe seat (such as most seats are, and which might as well be a peerage) of any party has been arranged for them, with little or no reference to the elderly remnant of party activists in the constituency, of which the Chosen One will never previously have heard or even be able to locate on a map, and which he or she will almost never visit except for the count once every four years. He or she then joins the party in question (it matters not in the slightest which party this is), and a totally false back history of long-term involvement is duly invented, if even that is felt necessary these days. Does money change hands? Merely to ask this question answers it.

By such means will well over half of seats be filled at the next Election (it is probably around fifty per cent even now), and practically all of them at the Election after that. Undoubtedly, safe seats whose MPs are likely to retire in 2013 have already been earmarked for named individuals currently in the Sixth Form at Eton and comparable institutions. And I don't just mean Tory safe seats.

But this only goes on because we let it. So, what are you doing to stop it?