Since he was re-elected as an independent MP in July 2024, Simon Alexander has been listening to his constituents, meeting with them for coffee, supporting local events and engaging with stakeholders great and small. This is on top of his duties in the Houses of Parliament, aka ‘This Place’, where he scrutinises legislation, attends debates and talks to one of the other 649 Members.
On the launch of his weekly column, which resumes ideas he raised in his diary during the 2023/24 Parliamentary session, the man known as Al talks to Jonny Brick about the things he intends to write about every Tuesday as the new term, and new Prime Minister, begins.
Jonny Brick: Hello, Simon. Can I call you Al?
Simon ‘Al’ Alexander: Absolutely yes! I answer to anything that isn’t preceded by the word ‘oi!’
JB: That’s good to hear. How are you? It’s two years this summer since you published your diary This Place.
Al: Is it? I seem to have blinked and two years have gone past. Enjoy your youth while you still can!
JB: I’m 38, Al, the grey hairs and creaky knees are assailing me already. So, have there been any highlights of the last two years?
Al: To answer your question, by the way, I’ve been better but a whole lot worse! (laughs) I suppose it was a shame England couldn’t reach the World Cup final but it was a Pyrrhic victory, wasn’t it? It won’t ‘come home’ until we find a manager who can keep hold of a lead.
JB: Don’t give Thomas Tuchel any dogs, eh? So, at the risk of this turning into that Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch, can you name one highlight of the last 24 months, either personally or professionally?
Al: Yes, sorry. Four candles, fork handles. Sorry! To your question, to the highlights: I genuinely can’t think of too many. Maybe having a real world impact on some of my constituents’ lives, helping them sort a housing issue or get their business out in the community. It’s like crossing a desert, really, my job; you just keep going and try not to think of how hot and thirsty you are. And speaking of hot, the recent heatwaves have not been fun at all: shirt sleeves, plenty of Factor 50, hydration, and realising that quite a lot of my constituents are frightened about next summer. Winter pressures are bad enough, but I agree with some of the health and care workers who are not looking forward to summer 2027.
JB: You mention healthcare, Al. We’ve got a new Health Secretary in Yvette Cooper…
Al: And I wish her well. The first Labour mum to get the job in a generation, I think. My Policy Advisor Vish dug up that factoid, although he did point out that the Conservatives had put Victoria Atkins in post during my year writing my diary.
JB: Vicky the A, you called her.
Al: Yes, Vicky the A, friends with Bob Jenrick. Did you see that TV interview where they both appeared and Ms Atkins said it was practically the first time they had been in the same room since Jenners defected to Reform UK.
JB: Dare I ask what you think of that party and their leader?
Al: Oh, it doesn’t matter what I think of the Hateful Eight, parentheses Not Hateful for Legal Reasons. My Media Advisor Em – who is actually a different Em from the one I had working for me in 2023 and 2024, which is why I call her Em-Dash – Em-Dash wants to call him Nige Al-Faraj, because you can’t tell the difference when you say it aloud.
JB: How droll. And do you still boycott Prime Minister’s Questions?
Al: Is the Pope Catholic?
JB: (pause) I think I can translate that. I hear Kemi Badenoch, who beat Jenrick to the role of Leader of the Opposition, is enlisting her predecessors to help her.
Al: And this has worked, although when you are asking Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron for help, you really need to find a new oar and a new boat (laughs).
JB: Understood. Before we turn to the government, what about the Lib Dems?
Al: That is actually their official name on the ballot paper: What About The Lib Dems. They’ve got six dozen MPs, and Ed Davey wrote that book on care which is outstanding, but nobody will vote for them after the coalition compromises. And as for Nick Clegg, swaggering back into public life over here after working for Facebook, give me a break. Almost as bad as when Tony Blair writes an essay to cajole his old party into action.
JB: And the Greens?
Al: Not an electoral force, and the leader is a bit of a curiosity. I like the Gorton and Denton MP, though, a real person in a sea of former researchers and career lickspittles.
JB: Well, that leads me neatly, as if you had planned it, to the Prime Minister.
Al: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, Burnham. Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub! Fool me seven times, shame on me.
JB: So you’re not a fan.
Al: Oh I am. I thought he did brilliantly to support the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, and he is a genuine fan of football, indie music and localism. I just don’t like that he wrote a book with Steve Rotheram, his fellow mayor in Liverpool, where he basically said that Westminster was a stuck record and it was all ’appening int’ North. We shall see if this new Number 10 at Coronation Street can help rejuvenate the country, or if the civil service will stymie him, like they always do.
JB: I sense a great degree of pessimism.
Al: Well, we have to eat the pudding first, although he’s got about six months to bed in. I think he’s still in pre-season, touring the country, literally putting out fires, responding to events beyond his control like that dreadful suicide of Professor Arday. Complete lynching, it would seem to the reasonable person.
JB: That’s a very serious charge to levy on the press.
Al: Certain writers, and they know who and what they are and who pays them, are deeply compromised now. If they need to be sacrificed for the good of the media, so be it, but I think this phrase ‘suicidal empathy’ needs to be retired quickly. Last thing I heard, empathy was what gave Andy Burnham the party leadership.
JB: Parliament goes back next Tuesday, September 1. That marks three years exactly since you started what was a daily diary.
Al: Yes, still available on Amazon and at the Wordpress site.
JB: I am surprised you didn’t want to start a podcast.
Al: Nobody needs another podcast.
JB: Did you keep writing during the last two years?
Al: When I had the time. The new administration kept me on my toes, though, with all the debates that were always going to pass because of their sizeable majority. I realised pretty early on in the term that it was going to be more useful to shake as many hands and kiss as many babies as I could for that first year. Whenever I sat down to write, the phrase I kept coming back to was ‘could do better’.
JB: Can you give some examples of where they went wrong, in your view, for Sir Keir Starmer?
Al: Who? (laughs) I bet he’ll pop up on some Arsenal fan podcasts, or maybe Starmer at the Bar. I wish him well too, and I hope to run into him in Portcullis House soon. To answer your question: he took a big risk with Rachel Reeves, the first female occupant of number 11 Downing Street. The whole Rachel from Accounts meme was unsavoury, as was some of the targeting of Angela Rayner. But as with Chris Pincher and Boris Johnson, proximity to harm did him in. The Mandelson Rule will apply for every appointment now: Will this person one day force me to resign?
JB: That reminds me, Al: you called David Lammy and Wes Streeting…
Al: Sir Gawes, now in charge of the armed forces, and Sir Galammy, backbench MP for the Spurs. If Streeting botches defence as much as he botched health, he’ll never be PM. And as for Ed Miliband, I bet his heart leapt when the PM told him that he was coming off the Net Zero brief and moving on to the Middle East, Ukraine and the USA.
JB: Yes, did you agree with the PM’s appointments last month, away from the square (that is, Health, Home and Chancellor)?
Al: I’m trying to make Burnley happen: Burnham and Healey, you see. You seem about as convinced as Em-Dash. Rayner won’t be there long, because the usual suspects will turn their fire on her. I am sure the Home Secretary will continue to get a kicking too, then there’ll be more mud thrown at Bridget Phillipson, the Mackem with the Equality brief.
JB: Mm, she made an intervention last week saying the country was racist and sexist.
Al: And good on her. Especially after Southport, which really was quite horrific, and those riots that some want to pin on certain politicians, whom I cannot name for legal reasons. I might have to tackle race, or crime, or the legitimate concerns about immigration. It still comes up on the doorstep, because fear is always a motivator and some people want to monetise it. It’s pretty much the Daily Mail’s business model, when they aren’t comparing the Duchess of Sussex and the Princess of Wales.
JB: Before I let you go, I did want to ask what your priorities will be for this column. You have just mentioned race and immigration, and there are some massive issues that will never not be in a PM’s in-tray: defence, foreign aid, social care, winter pressure on the NHS, the climate emergency, schools standards, economic policy, universities, artificial intelligence, public funding for the arts…
Al: And a partridge in a pear tree. I think something that helped me when I was writing the diary was being aware of what was going on in the committee rooms, in the chamber, in the comment pages of the newspapers. It’s easy to get stuck on problems, in the weeds, but I felt that zooming out was always useful. How will this clause have a real world effect, and which constituent will this new law help?
JB: Plus you’re in several All-Party Parliamentary Groups.
Al: Yes, in whatever spare time I have. As to your question about priorities, whatever is on my mind that fills the word count, you can expect me to write about it. It might be the threat of fascism, or the BBC Charter Renewal, or potholes and bins, or the old standby of statues and symbols. On a very bad week, I’ll have to look at what SovereignTV is saying, especially because the MP for Clacton might be back there by Christmas. It’ll all be over by Christmas.
JB: And so that brings me to my final question: are you, or any of your colleagues in This Place, scared of Count Binface?
Al: I encourage all challengers, whether from the traditional parties or aliens from Sigma IX. My majority isn’t the biggest, but at least it isn’t in the double digits like some members. It’ll be an interesting term, and I cannot wait to write about it. I might even ask Binny to help me draft a Private Members’ Bill about nationalising Adele, or take him doorknocking with me. What a wonderful democracy we are, by the way, for a man with a bin on his head – I mean, an intergalactic space warrior – to stand for election. Long may Binface reign.
You can read Simon Alexander MP’s This Place column every Tuesday at jonnybrick.com