At my first Prime Minister’s Questions, I’d barely even stood up before I heard an MP appear to shout ‘fancy a pint?’. The jeers got louder. I stood there, against the noise, the hostility, the insults and the takedowns, and I asked my question.
I asked if Keir Starmer agreed with the MPs who’ve defended their right to drink alcohol at work since I raised the issue in late April. Or whether he agreed with me that MPs shouldn’t be drinking before we vote on things like the climate crisis, disabled people’s rights, housing and child poverty. The Prime Minister wouldn’t answer directly, instead aiming a clumsy political attack at the Green Party.
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable – and I know that the public are in broad agreement. In fact, a poll conducted two days after I first raised this showed that 76% of people agree that MPs shouldn’t be drinking on the job. And I wonder how many more would agree once they realise, like I did, that alcohol is cheaper in Parliament, because it’s subsidised.
Most people, doing most jobs, would be fired if they drank at work. Certainly in the nearly 20 years I worked in plumbing (and various other jobs alongside it) I would have been sacked if I were drinking on the job. But MPs seem to think the rules others have to follow don’t apply to them. I think that’s wrong.
I spent years feeling disillusioned by politicians: my life was a struggle, like so many people. Then everything changed during COVID, when we were all doing our best to look after each other, struggling through restrictions and missing out on so much. I started questioning the systems we live under. We now know that poor decision-making from those in power led to avoidable deaths. We saw politicians drinking and partying while loved ones died alone in care homes. The people who were making the rules were breaking the rules. That made me angry, and that anger still boils in my blood today.
So far, I’ve been careful to say ‘some MPs’, but during Prime Minister’s Questions, hundreds of them, from all parties, were jeering, laughing, and treating it like a joke. It’s a problem that runs very deep. I first started speaking about drinking in Westminster because I had been asked what I’d found strange in my first few weeks in Parliament and I thought it was a workplace in bad need of modernisation.
The first ever Green MP, Caroline Lucas, was speaking about some of this over a decade ago, and making the link between fixing the way Parliament works and restoring trust in politics. The Westminster establishment didn’t listen to her, and yesterday proved they won’t listen to me either. In that time, trust has become even more broken, and things have gotten harder and harder out in the real world. Pubs are closing at an alarming rate and other hospitality venues are struggling to keep their doors open. There are people whose bills have soared so much that a few pints out with mates hasn’t been an option for a long time.
I think of Hatters, the amazing new food hall that’s been opened in Denton by a lovely couple who recognise the value in a welcoming space serving proper good food and drink to a community that works hard. I worry about what the next set of price increases may mean for their survival, when just having a few pints with mates feels so out of reach. Life is being made harder for my constituents because of a system designed to keep everyone in their place, propped up by decision-makers who don’t even need to be sober.
Greens are taking on vested interests. What we’re pushing – wealth taxes, rent controls, public ownership, and the idea that politicians should be accountable – means the establishment is out to get us. This is why people are turning to the Greens in such high numbers. They see that the establishment parties – even the ones who pretend they aren’t the establishment – aren’t on the side of working people. Not when they can’t even imagine staying sober in their workplace, the way most other working people have to.
I was asked if PMQs was the hardest part of my day yesterday. It wasn’t. I also met with young leaders from the Muslim Council of Britain to hear about what they’re doing in their communities in the face of growing anti-Muslim hatred. I talked with a coalition of end fuel poverty organisations, dealing with harrowing cases of people barely existing. And I met women fighting for survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and to end gender-based violence that affects women and girls everywhere.
I find those interactions move me far more deeply than a crowd of out-of-touch MPs screaming at me. I am not popular in Westminster. That’s fine. I’ve been through far worse things in my life. My residents are the people I care about, not the approval of MPs who don’t live in the real world. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to make change.
