A Member of Parliament Goes For A Stroll

Spotted walking along Brighton seafront last Sunday, Brighton’s (somewhat windswept) Green MP Caroline Lucas, with, I think, her son. So what’s the big deal about that? Well for starters, in all the time that I’ve lived in Brighton and Hove, with it's three MPs, I never saw a single one of them just Going For A Stroll. True, I often saw a harassed-looking Celia Barlow (who?) heading for the train station, but that was my only 'al fresco' spotting of a local MP. In fact, friends tell me that you’d have been more likely to bump into our (former) local Labour MPs at their maison secondaires in the south of France. While it’s true that MPs spend a lot of time dealing with constituents, it seems impossible that they can really understand what's happening in their constituency without getting out and about on foot from time to time – and I don’t mean canvassing in the run-up to an  election. So the message for Dr Lucas and MPs in general? Stroll On.