Why on earth would anyone become a British MP?

To understand whatMPMPMP MPMPMP it is like to try to become an you could read memoirs, learned tracts or rule books. It is better to ask s about letterboxes. Every will have spent hours leafleting, and few topics arouse stronger passions. For Lord Mandelson, a former , the most hateful letterboxes are “the ones that don’t open” or those that “snap shut on your fingers”. For Tristram Hunt, another former who is now head of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the ones that “caught your fingers” were “devastating”. For Baroness Davidson, a former member of the Scottish Parliament, people with letterboxes at ground level are“next to murderers in…the hierarchy of bad people”.Being an is a hard job. Becoming one is arguably harder. After the next election, 650 of them will be entitled to sit in Parliament. They will have sacrificed days to door-knocking, evenings to flyering, and weekends to turning up at fetes and smiling at jam. They will have spent thousands, probably tens of thousands, of pounds of their own money on the individually small but cumulatively large costs of campaigning—travel, leaflets, accommodation, assessment days, conferences, dinners and coffee after coffee. The quest for a seat may be, as Isabel Hardman, the author of “Why We Get the Wrong Politicians”, has put it, “the most expensive and time-consuming job interview on earth”.