I was enjoying a rather spectacular Dover sole at the Garrick Club on Monday afternoon when I received the devastating news. The plan, which had taken literally hours of careful maneuvering over WhatsApp, was falling apart. Two sitting Labour MPs, whose constituencies we had graciously earmarked as the future property of Andy Burnham, were suddenly refusing to resign.
They had developed, as the political strategists call it, cold feet. I call it something else: a shocking, frankly ungrateful display of personal ambition that threatens to derail the natural order of Westminster.
For weeks, a dedicated team of allies, myself included, has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to rectify a great historical wrong. That wrong, of course, is the fact that Andy Burnham is currently not a Member of Parliament. Yes, he is the Mayor of Greater Manchester. Yes, he wields vast executive authority over nearly three million people, controls a multi-billion-pound budget, and commands one of the largest metropolitan regions in Europe. But as we all know in London, none of that actually counts as a real job.
We had identified two seats that were absolutely nailed on. Nailed on is a technical parliamentary term. It means we had looked at a map of the North West, pointed at two constituencies with healthy Labour majorities, and decided that the people currently holding those seats would simply vanish into the ether for the greater good of our social circle.
It was a flawless strategy. We had the backing of the right columnists. We had the murmurs of approval in the right Westminster tearooms. The only minor, entirely foreseeable obstacle we forgot to account for was the sitting MPs themselves, who apparently harbour the bizarre delusion that they were elected to serve a full term.
I spoke to one of these MPs on the telephone late Monday evening. It was a profoundly distressing conversation. I politely explained to him that while his years of dedicated public service and strong local ties were all very well and good, Andy was feeling a bit restless and fancied a return to the green benches. I assumed the MP would understand, pack up his desk, and perhaps accept a quiet role on a quango overseeing inland waterways.
Instead, the man became hysterical. He started wittering on about his mandate. He mentioned his constituents. He even had the audacity to bring up his mortgage. I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. The sheer, suffocating parochialism of the man was too much to bear. How can we possibly govern a modern nation when backbenchers insist on clinging to their livelihoods just because thousands of people voted for them?
This selfish refusal to step aside is a symptom of a deeper rot in our political culture. We have entirely lost sight of what parliamentary constituencies are actually for. They are not local fiefdoms designed to give a voice to the regions. They are transit lounges for important men who need a place to sit while they wait for a shadow cabinet reshuffle.
When a grandee of Burnham's stature decides he is ready to return to Westminster, the only appropriate response from a sitting MP in a safe seat is to immediately fake their own death and leave a resignation letter on the mantelpiece. Anything less is a betrayal of the party's future.
We simply cannot have a system where the voters decide who represents them when Andy is quite clearly ready to return.
Thankfully, Andy himself has shown immense courage throughout this ordeal. When the news broke that the two seats had failed to materialise, he sent a message to his allies telling us to hold the line.
Hold the line. I wept when I read it. The Churchillian bravery of the man, sitting in his massive mayoral office, sending a text message to his mates confirming that he would still very much like to be handed a safe parliamentary seat without having to do any of the legwork. It was like reading the dispatches from Agincourt. We are holding the line, Andy. We are standing firm against the tyrannical forces of local democracy.
He assured us that he still has options to return. And he is right. We are exploring every conceivable avenue to bypass the electorate and get him back where he belongs.
Option A involves finding a sitting MP who is perhaps susceptible to hypnosis, convincing them they are a 19th-century cotton baron, and waiting for them to wander off into the Pennines, thus triggering a by-election.
Option B is slightly more complex. It involves asking the Boundary Commission to carve out a new constituency entirely composed of the corridor outside Andy's current office, the local Greggs, and my dining room in Islington. We would call it Manchester Central-by-the-Thames, and it would be virtually uncontestable.
Option C is simply turning up at the House of Commons, pointing at a random backbencher, and declaring that Andy is now them. Given the current state of the parliamentary Labour party, it could be weeks before anyone notices the substitution.
We will not rest until one of these options bears fruit. The alternative is simply too tragic to contemplate. If we fail, Andy Burnham will be forced to continue serving as the incredibly popular, highly visible Mayor of Greater Manchester, effectively exiled to a life of implementing massive public transport reforms and commanding regional policy.
No human being should be subjected to that kind of irrelevance. We must free him from the burden of actual executive leadership and return him to the glorious, shouting impotence of the opposition backbenches. I beg of you, sitting MPs of the North West: look deep into your hearts, look at your careers, and throw them in the bin. It is the only decent thing to do.