
Michael Gove got off to a bad start on his first day as the government’s chief whip yesterday. According to the Shadow Leader of the Commons, Angela Eagle, he got stuck in the toilet. She told the House:
He hasn’t had the most auspicious of starts, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, he not only lost his first vote, but managed to get stuck in the toilet in the wrong lobby, and he nearly broke his own whip.”
We’ve all had first days like that, right?
Eagle’s new opposite number, the former Foreign Secretary William Hague, batted this back on Gove’s behalf with great aplomb:
Knowledge of who is in the toilets in whatever lobby is a very important piece of information for any chief whip and I take this as evidence that he was carrying out his duties very assiduously.”