Suckers Welcome

As many of us know to our cost, the parliamentary Deputy Conservatives have been highly disciplined in their voting, so that rebellions from Daveybloke's back-bench baboons have caused far more trouble to the coalition than rebellions over anything the Liberal Democrats once claimed to believe in. Nevertheless, the Deputy Conservative MP for Manchester Withington has been brave enough to use unpaid interns in his office, and is now the subject of a complaint to HM Revenue and Customs. Wee Nicky announced a ban on unpaid internships three years ago; but like one or two other announcements by Wee Nicky it promised a bit more than he could deliver: he cannot force his MPs not to use them. The aptly-named John Leech, however, has been advertising for unpaid labour with "an excellent standard of written and verbal communication along with an energetic can-do attitude", despite his office claiming that the lucky candidate will in fact do no real work, and that the MP's motives in offering the position are purely charitable and altruistic. Of course, many people become reckless in the face of more or less certain doom; and with a majority of less than two thousand, Leech has evidently decided that he may as well make a show of principled defiance on a matter close to his heart.