It was only a little story, tucked away at the bottom of page 4 of yesterday’s Guardian, but it says a lot about attitudes towards an MP’s job and what it involves.

Boris Johnson has been given a job as shadow minister for higher education, and has resigned from his job editing the Spectator. He is quoted as saying:

It is a fantastic job and I am very pleased and excited. To do it properly will need time and thought, which is why I am leaving the Spectator.

This all seems very reasonable at first glance, but then you think a bit more about it and realise the implications.

He is more or less saying that just being an MP does not require time and thought, so its OK to have a full-time job, but he gets away with it because he is lovable, amusing Boris. He can’t even use the excuse that he manages two jobs by sacrificing his leisure time, since he still finds time to be knocking off Petronella Wyatt and appearing on TV quiz shows in-between.

There used to be a time when being an MP was considered a job for ‘gentlemen’ and there was no salary as such, just a token allowance. Unless an MP had independent wealth he (and most of them were men then) would have to take another job, or at least a few board positions. Decent salaries for MPs were introduced for two main reasons: to allow them to concentrate on their elected job, and to open up parliament for the sorts of person who are not able to pick up the odd directorship here and there – which is most of the population.

I see what my own MP does. Apart from having one of the better attendance records in parliament she is at party meetings for the constituency and branch quite often, she is out campaigning on the doorstep, and at any number of local events. I know this from a combination of seeing her at just about every public event I go to, and seeing how rarely her car is outside her house. I don’t see how she would have time to take even a job delivering the local papers one afternoon a week, let alone a full-time job, without seriously cutting back on how well she does her MP’s job.

Either Boris is superhuman, or he is severely short-changing his constituency. Its about time we stopped seeing him as a cuddly buffoon – its all an act. Here in Crawley we know all about that, having had an MP (Nicholas Soames) who was hardly in the constituency, and I don’t think we would put up with that sort of thing again. We have got used to having an MP who takes the job and the town seriously and would not tolerate anyone in the future who sees it as a well-paid hobby.

Obviously there are plenty who disagree with her politics, voting record or results, which is as it should be, but even they could not accuse her of being lazy or uncommitted.