Just put a damn sock in it! Helen Brown

Billy Connolly once remarked that the desire to be an MP should bar a person for life from ever being one.

But then, you look at the work done and the difference made and the light spread by people like the late Jo Cox and by many more, often rather unsung people who have gone into politics to try to make a difference, and you realise there are a lot of them doing and trying to do a job for the rest of us as well as themselves.

Gone are the days of Sir Billy’s witty but wrong-headed analysis of political action: “Don’t vote; it only encourages them.”

Nowadays, even in a system where representation in national elections remains skewed by the retention of the first-past-the-post system, it’s more vital than ever to record your vote.

In my own constituency, our Westminster MP was elected by a majority of two.

There must have been a lot of people round the breakfast tables of North East Fife on June 8 congratulating themselves on getting down the polling station; and a lot of others kicking themselves that they didn’t bother.

Never let anyone tell you, ever again, that your vote doesn’t count.

Big gob

There are times, however, when you wonder just how big a mouth you might have to have, continually to put your foot in it the way some public figures do.

You can never overestimate Boris Johnson’s ability to say the wrong thing. Michael Gove has form on jawdropping utterance and Diane Abbott has been known to give voice to much strangeness. And every time Theresa May draws breath, an odd, alien whirring occurs. Then I give you Philip Hammond. Lord love him, he hasn’t got the easiest job in the cabinet at the moment.

Who would want to be Chancellor of the Exchequer when it seems that nobody can make up their mind whether to go for austere, Brexiteer or single marketeer.

He gets the feet publicly taken from under him over supposedly previously agreed tax changes by his control-freak boss, who then goes on to make a series of catastrophic decisions that leave him looking like a twit.

You can understand he might be a little less than impressed by this. Yet what does he do?

He (allegedly) states among his colleagues that, at a time when the public sector pay cap is being widely discussed and public sector workers are in the spotlight for the amazing work they do in appalling emergency situations, that said public sector workers are overpaid.

This may well, of course, have been in a supposedly private meeting that should not have been reported to the public.

Trap shut

But these days, surely he must realise that if you don’t state clearly what you mean and you don’t want it reported, it would be very wise not to say it in the first place, especially when suddenly “found money” is washing around the system like a tsunami.

Then he supposedly says trains are now so easy to drive that a woman could do it. Now, that particular allegation he has denied, vigorously.

Without turning him into feminist icon Andy Murray, I tend to believe him.

For once, he might have thought it but he probably had the sense not to say it.

Which is probably just as well, given the announcement this week of the casting of actress Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor Who.

Can you imagine how he might have reacted to the news that a woman will be steering the Tardis?

And heaven forfend that she should be paid as much as a man, or a private sector “wealth creator” for doing it. After all, she will be working for the BBC. Mind you, Mr Hammond’s not the only one ill-advisedly shooting his mouth off.

Old timers

Look at interruptions by such past and past-it figures as Tony Blair, George Osborne and David Cameron.

Rich failures all, yet still trying to justify their existence while the rest of us have to lie on the Tracey Emin-style wrecked beds of their making.

It’s like Shakespeare’s so-presciently titled “comedy”, Much Ado About Nothing, and the much-tried Benedick’s riposte to the sharptongued Beatrice: “Why, my Lady Disdain? Are you yet living?”

Which, of course, comes in response to her barbed comment: “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick. Nobody marks you.”

And they say the classics aren’t “relevant” today…

It’s either that or the rather lowergrade Senna the Soothsayer from Up Pompeii, crashing around wringing her hands and yelling: “Woe, woe and thrice woe.”

As Frankie Howerd so sagely pointed out, it’s wicked to mock the afflicted.

And while we’re on that subject, there I was earlier this week, basking in a rare and wonderful Scottish summer, enjoying the sunshine, doing a little light dead-heading and keeping the makers of sauvignon blanc in a happy place.

And what do I get through the post? A missive from the “Edinburgh Hogmanay team”.

Aaaargh!

“There are times, however, when you wonder just how big a mouth you might have to have

Picture: PA. Helen would rather Tony Blair did not involve himself in current affairs. He’s not the only one she’s not keen on, either...