Saint Alan the Renewable

A Labour colleague approached Alan Simpson after today's PMQs and despaired of the rebel Nottingham South MP's luck.

This MP always kept his head down, always turned up to vote the way the Government wanted (half the time not knowing what the vote was about, he said) and still nothing nice was ever said about him.

"But you," the MP complained, "you do everything you can to make trouble for the Government, then say one thing in the House and suddenly you're Saint Alan the bloody Renewable."

I rather like the nickname. The city MP has actually won some leverage from his intervention today.

Read about it in the parliamentary correspondent's column in the Evening Post on Friday.