Not so long ago, the one career advantage to being elected to parliament as a Lib Dem MP was that you were almost guaranteed a place in the party's shadow cabinet while being called upon to do next to nothing. The faintest sniff of real power within the coalition has rather unbalanced that equation, and the Lib Dems have now put forward proposals for the position of MP to be considered a potential job-sharing opportunity.
In theory, this all sounds promising. MPs often complain about their workload and how they never get enough time at home, and if they are going to lecture the country about the importance of family values, then it might help us to take them more seriously if they were to practise what they preach. It may even encourage more women to consider a career in politics.
So fair play to David Cameron for taking the lead by turning the most demanding job in politics into one of the most relaxing by refusing to let running the country get in the way of his "chillax me-time". Though it's less comforting to think the PM appears to be already actively engaged in a job share with his personal trainer and reflexologist. Congratulations should also go to Nadine Dorries for her job swap. Or did no one else notice that while she was making £40,000 for two weeks' work in the Australian jungle in I'm a Celebrity … her constituency work was taken over by Katie Price?
Owen Paterson also seems to have a doppelganger, ready to seamlessly take over at a moment's notice. It's just unfortunate his happens to be a stuffed badger. And think how beneficial some other job shares could be. Team William Hague up with a geography teacher and we might have a foreign secretary who knew the countries of the world. Team George Osborne with anyone; it couldn't be worse than leaving him on his own.
And yet, for all the stress that many MPs claim to suffer from long hours, there appear to be a number of politicians for whom the job is only part-time. While out of government, Ken Clarke, now minister without portfolio, managed to fit in being deputy chairman of British American Tobacco, deputy chairman of Alliance Unichem, director of Foreign and Colonial Trust and a member of the advisory board to the hedge fund Centaurus Capital. And David Miliband somehow finds time to be non-executive vice-chairman of Sunderland Football Club, part-time teacher at Haverstock school and senior global advisor for Oxford Analytica, alongside his work as MP for South Shields. His constituents must be thrilled that all his business interests have been subsumed into "The Office of David Miliband Ltd" and that he is earning more than five times his parliamentary salary through his moonlighting.
