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Ann Treneman

Sketch writer

So farewell, then, Manure Parliament. A solemn wave to those who are gone but not, as yet, forgotten. All in all, 147 MPs stood down before the election, some with honour and others not, exhausted, disillusioned, angry and shamed. On the night, many more joined them. Surely it is symbolic that, on a night when the overall swing to the Conservatives was 5 per cent, Mr Manure himself, David Heathcote-Amory, lost his seat in Wells, Somerset. Mr Manure, who had to pay back almost £30,000 in exes and submitted bills for dozens of sacks of manure for his garden, said: “Expenses damaged all incumbents and perhaps me particularly.” I especially like that “perhaps”.

His was not the only whiffy result. Many were surprised that Jacqui Smith, the first woman home secretary, stood for re-election in Redditch. Ms Smith, notorious for her claim for two porn videos for her husband, not to mention 88p for a bathplug, had fought a bizarre, almost guerrilla, campaign in which she did her best to avoid the press. Her best-known booster was Tony Blair, who popped in for tea one day. I am not sure if that helped or hindered: she lost with a 9.21 per cent swing to the Tories. She can now spend more time with her (second) home.

It was a bad night for former home secretaries. Charles Clarke lost his Norwich South seat by 310 votes to the Lib Dems. I shall miss Mr Clarke, a big beast of the Westminster village in every way, who fought a long and wonderfully personal campaign against Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. How sad for him that, in the end, he went before Gordo. Another Labour defeat was the minister Jim Knight, more talented than most, in the marginal Dorset South. I was not surprised to see that he was promptly made a peer.

I find it hard to imagine politics without Lembit Öpik, the celebrity-crazed Lib Dem just as well known for dating a Cheeky Girl whose big hit was called The Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum) and for believing that Earth could be destroyed by a meteorite. In the end, his career was wrecked by something much more mundane: a 13 per cent swing to the Tories. Hours after losing, Lembit popped up on the TV quiz show Have I Got News for You urging his fellow contestants to hurry up: “Can we get on with it? I’ve actually got an appointment at the JobCentre in about half an hour.” Paul Merton responded: “They phoned earlier, they cancelled.” Lembit loved this. He is a glutton for publicity.

Another shocker was Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister and DUP leader, who lost his East Belfast seat. His defeat came after damaging revelations about himself and his wife, Iris, nicknamed the Swish Family Robinson after reports that they claimed more than £500,000 a year in salary and expenses. Iris, who always used to do a fine line in morality when she spoke in the Commons, had already stood down after it became known that she had obtained £50,000 for her teenage lover to fund his business. It is a sad tale but not without its moral.

In the pantheon of retiring MPs, I must make special mention of Sir Nicholas Winterton, Tory MP for Macclesfield since 1971. He and his wife, Ann, were known as Mr and Mrs Expenses. Sir Nicholas was wildly opinionated, red-faced and rambunctious (last year he slapped the bottom of the Labour MP Natasha Engel in the Commons tea room). But his retirement cannot pass without remembering his supremely ill-judged remarks about why he needed to travel first class: “If I was in standard class, I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction. They are a totally different type of people: they have a different outlook on life. They may be reading a book but I doubt whether they are undertaking serious work or study.”

So goodbye, Sir Nicholas, see you in economy. I will actually miss the rather gentle manner of Sir Peter Viggers, an MP for 36 years, who is now spending more time with his ducks, who never even liked their cute little house. Andrew MacKay, who with his wife, Julie Kirkbride, was another Mr and Mrs Expenses, was amazingly orange. His seat in the Commons, on the aisle, first bench back, will always have a tangerine hue for me. John Gummer, who seems to have been around for ever, is gone but not forgotten after his expenses got tangled up with his attempt to get rid of his moles. And then there is Mr Moat (aka Douglas Hogg), whose final act was to give an interview clarifying that he had not claimed for the moat per se and noting that, anyway, it wasn’t a moat at all but a “broad dyke”. Does that make it worse? After all, there is a certain majesty in a moat.

On Labour’s side, in addition to the expenses villains, there are the lobbyists, not to mention the plotters. Stephen Byers, who once described himself as a cab for hire, is now out in the big bad world, his light on. I will never have to hear the patronising undulations of Patricia “Patsy” Hewitt’s voice again. Geoff “Buff” Hoon, the man who specialised in never being there when it came to Iraq, now really won’t be there. Despite it all I rather liked his plodding pedestrian ways. Other “hall of shame” retirees include Kitty Ussher, a once rising star, who wrote a two-page letter explaining why her London house needed major repairs: “Most of the ceilings have Artex coverings. Threedimensional swirls. It could be a matter of taste, but this counts as ‘dilapidations’ in my book!” And Kitty, let us remember, was a member of the People’s Party.

So where is the good in the good, the bad and the ugly? Almost everybody else, actually. Of particular note is James Purnell, facial hair fashionista, whose sideburns will be missed by me. His shock resignation from the Cabinet almost brought down Gordon Brown. Mr Purnell was the brave one. It could have all been so different if he had succeeded.

For us sketch writers, John Prescott is simply irreplaceable: but he lives on, in the Twitter-sphere, boldly going where no one would have predicted he would. I will miss the bolshie proclamations of Labour’s Andrew Mackinlay and the snide if somewhat forlorn comments of Chris Mullin, who proved to be a better diarist than politician. Others of note to go include Labour’s Bob Marshall-Andrews, a man more or less permanently in opposition to his own side. In September 1997, commenting on an opinion poll that gave Tony Blair a 93 per cent approval rating, he said: “Seven per cent. We can build on that.”

Others to be missed include

• Tony Wright, the much respected Labour MP who coined the phrase “Manure Parliament”. He headed the eponymous committee on parliamentary reforms with tenacity and, dare I say it, wisdom.

• The Rev Ian Paisley, ancient Galapagos tortoise, who always spoke as if he was sermonising, possibly because he was.

• Michael Howard and Ann Widdecombe, linked forever by her “something of the night” comment about him. He was always worth watching, an astute and clever parliamentarian, and she was the only true reality TV star in the Commons: “I always imagined that when I was making my last speech, I would be sad. Instead I find that my uppermost sentiment is one of profound relief.”

• David Howarth, a thoughtful Liberal Democrat, who returns to teach law at Cambridge. “People talk about standing down. I am standing up!” he told me. He is gloomy about politics, saying that it is no longer a “high trust” profession. Like estate agents, MPs now must always be watched like hawks. Inevitably, he said, the result will be that it attracts less trustworthy people.

• Martin Salter, the Labour MP for Reading West, was larger than life and louder than it too. Before he left, I found him in his chaotic office brandishing a “stress banana”, a gift. “I use my banana for pointing,” he chortled. “People say, ‘Don’t Miliband me!’” His office was plastered with pictures of fish. “I am leaving politics to spend more time with my wife, my camper van and my fish, in that order.”

Last but not least in any way is Sir Patrick Cormack, the Tory grandee who bowed out after 40 years. He was a bit of an old buffer but no one doubts that he loves Parliament (which he pronounced “Parl-i-ament”, with a little wiggle). When I stopped by to see him in his magnificent office, which he was emptying out, there was palpable regret in his voice as he talked of his career ups and downs. He had wanted to be Speaker but, when he stood, received only 13 votes. “You take the rough with the rough!” he noted, his pug face crinkling. “Absolutely!”

So, at 71, he left to spend more time with his weekends. “It will be a terrible wrench. It has been my life for more than half my life. It is a very funny feeling at the moment: it is the last of this, the last of that. I am still behaving as normal but all the time I am sort of signing off.” It is hard to imagine the chamber without Sir Patrick. For 40 years, whenever “Parl-i-ament” was sitting, he spent at least three hours a day seated in his place, the middle aisle seat towards the back. In his last speech, he ended with these words of Catullus: “Ave atque vale”. Hail and farewell, indeed. Ann Treneman is the author of Annus Horribilis: the Worst Year in British Politics (2009)