Just when X Marks The Box was starting to wonder if politicians were finally "getting it", along comes Sir Nicholas Bufton Tufton - beg your pardon, Sir Nicholas Winterton - to declaim that he should of course be entitled to use public money to travel first class on the train. Apparently "standard" class contains "a totally different type of people." We feel a Sir Humphrey Appleby voice coming on here: "Yes, Sir Nicholas - they're called voters."
Some callers on today's Jeremy Vine programme on BBC Radio 2 were springing to the MP's defence. Well, naturally, he has a point, as "standard" class is full of oiks who may have gone to comprehensive schools and who perhaps smell and have the temerity to be accompanied by children, and they apparently stop him from getting any work done. It's a well-known fact, of course, that NHS managers, head teachers, college lecturers and IT consultants never have to take any work on the train and never have to find a way of using a laptop while putting up with the rest of the world carrying on around them.
Conservative Central Office has predictably gone into a bit of a flutter about Sir Bufton's utterances, and has been issuing damage-limitation statements of the "no, please, come back, ABC1 voters, he doesn't mean you" variety.
Sir Nick ought to try National Express. That would be an eye-opener for him. But he is retiring at the General Election. Just as well - because if he were not, then the voters would probably be giving him a first-class, fast-track ticket to obscurity anyway.
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