It’s just been announced Simon Burns has resigned as a Transport Minister to stand in the Commons elect for the vacant Deputy Speaker post.
Burns was first elected to the Commons in 1987, was a Health Minister in the Major Government, returned to the Department under the Coalition, and went to Transport with his old friend Patrick McLoughlin.
No Minister serves forever, and I suspect that Burns will have gazed ahead to the coming reshuffle, looked sideways at the Deputy Speaker post…and the rest is history, or rather the present.
He’s a popular chap, is Burns, and must stand a chance in the contest triggered by the resignation from the post of Nigel Evans. Nadine Dorries is also a contender.
Other candidates include Eleanor Laing and Brian Binley. Burns’s relationship with the Speaker is too well known to repeat here. They would be the ultimate odd couple.