Westminster is a snakepit of bad food and bizarre politicians

I’m sat seething behind bullet-proof glass. Beneath me, a farce is playing out. My ­employer, John Nicolson MP, is ­being ­challenged in a debate in the House of Commons, led by a Tory called David ­Davis. From my seat in the gallery, I can only see the back of John’s head as he stands to speak, but I can see dozens of the puce, crabbit faces of his ranked opponents on the busy Conservative benches opposite. They have smelt blood and arrived in a shark-like shiver. John has no such backing. A few hardy pals have turned out on the SNP benches to share the onslaught and fire a few desperate barbs back across the floor.

He’s trying to get through a short speech in his own defence. The Tories are howling and baying and booing. In any other workplace this would be seen as bullying.

The House wants John referred to the Privileges Committee, which is one of the most serious things that can happen to an MP.

“Privileges” is reserved for some of the grossest rulebreaking and mendacity. Consequences can ­include losing an entire month’s wages or being forced to have a by-election.

This year’s only other inductee into the Privileges Hall of Shame is Boris Johnson. They’re looking to see if he lied four times to the house about hosting parties during Covid. Serious stuff.

So how the hell had my boss got himself mixed up in this sort of company? I’ll get to that.

John headhunted me for a job with him this ­summer, assisting him with his role as SNP culture spokesperson, and on his Digital Media Culture and Sport committee work.

Well, I’ve been in the role for about 100 days now. And it’s been a journey.

I thought I’d take you, dear reader of the Sunday National, on a quick whistlestop tour of the estate, to get a peek behind the scenes.

We enter through a semi-secret side exit from the Underground station that only Parliament staff can use. It’s unmarked and leaves the crammed ­corridors of the common commuters behind.

I beep my pass and move through a full-body ­turnstile, where men with guns watch me, ­unsmiling. The entire parliament perimeter is guarded by ­heavily armed polis and ram-proof gates.

I imagine it’s a similar vibe to clocking in for a shift on the Death Star.

Up an escalator to ground level, and into a vast atrium with a series of canteens and concessions around the edges. Lifts, stairwells and escalators run off in every direction, giving the place a constant ant-colony buzz. A bustling town square within a gated community.

The canteens. We’ve all seen on social media, or in the news, or heard the rumours about the subsidised food and bevvy that the self-indulging MP class tuck into on the daily.

So, this is largely true. The ­parliament puts up a smoke screen, saying that the houses “do not provide a subsidised service in the commercial sense of the word”.

What they in fact do is run the canteens at an ­overall loss and get the funding gap plugged by ­taxpayers.

I scran a muckle bowl of porridge every morning, which is made with water and costs £1.05. There’s a separate tureen of porridge made with milk, which I leave for the English.

I sit chomping away in the canteen, and I look about me.

It’s superb for people-watching. There’s Dominic Raab. The veins on his ­massive heid throb frighteningly in real life. There’s Kwasi Kwarteng, looking like he might be talking to himself as he scurries across the cafe. Weirdly, there’s Michael Gove, surrounded by young staff who are hanging on his every word and ­howling at his jokes. Mad to say, but he’s got a ­reputation around here as being great crack.

Journalists like Andrew Marr and Nick Eardley are ever sniffing aboot, picking up gossip and taking the pulse of the place.

It’s a compelling sight first thing in the morning, all these faces you half ­recognise fae the telly.

But let me share a cheery secret about this place: the food is genuinely rank. Meals like the elaborate-sounding “seared tuna steak with noodles and veg” taste like a cardboard wedge soaked in tepid brine, atop a mound of mucus. Honkin.

Better yet, in November a food ­cleanliness probe downgraded the ­canteens from five hygiene stars to two, due to the number of mice and rats that live in the kitchens. As I sit with my porridge or lunchtime soup, I can watch mice sprint around the canteen floor or along windowsills, at times betwixt the legs of ministers.

So next time you see some ­fancy-sounding menu fae parliament bouncing around on social media, know that the food you’re subsidising is at least awful, and very potentially has a wee daud of mouse keich in it. Allow yourself a smile.

Downstairs is a basement gym and sauna.

The sauna, actually, is where I had my first political rammy of note.

I was sat in there after a gym session. The Supreme Court had lately returned its verdict, denying us a referendum. Some guy, also in his 30s, came in and sat on the hot wooden planks.

“Awrayt?” he said, sounding like Peaky Blinders. “Aye, fine,” I said.

“Scottish is it? Bad result for you lot eh?”

I just pursed my lips. I wasnae in the mood.

“I wouldn’t let you have a referendum either,” he said.

I wasnae having that.

“Whit do you mean ‘let’?” I said. “It’s no your business to be letting us do ­anything.”

“Nah, nah, I’m hoping to run as a ­Labour MP, right, and we’ll win this next election, and you’ll see. Once Labour’s in, your lot won’t need independence. We’ll sort most of the issues that make you want independence.”

The arrogance! I was incensed.

“What do you know about Scotland’s issues? Have you been there?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Been on holiday a couple of times. Lovely place.”

Outrageous.

READ MORE: Kirsten Oswald to step down as SNP Westminster deputy leader

“I’ve been to Belgium three times!” I spat back. “Think that means I’m ­qualified to run the place? Think I should away over and tell them they’d be better run fae Scotland? Can ye imagine how cracked that’d sound to them?”

I added a few more heated phrases, which I won’t embarrass myself by ­printing here. I don’t like losing my ­temper.

This prospective Labour MP is not alone in his contempt for us as an ­electorate. A Tory MP for middle ­England and a Labour Lord for the English North expressed similarly dismissive views.

The impression I’ve developed is that British elected members want the ­prestige of controlling the entire Union. But they don’t want the hassle of taking Scotland into account.

If we could pipe down, and let them get on with the business of ruling us ­remotely, that’d suit them just fine.

Across the Westminster estate are ­office blocks connected by a warren of ­alleyways and tunnels. My office is a standard room in an ­unremarkable block. It’s here I do my day-to-day work supporting my MP.

This is as good a time as any to address the question; what the hell do our SNP MPs get up to doon here?

Well, travel is the first thing. They travel absolutely relentlessly. Four days London, three days Scotland pretty much on repeat across the year. Flights at 6am, constantly saying goodbye to loved ones, shaving off the stubble with a razor in the office, bags on their backs and bags under their eyes.

It is brutal, and it is not glamorous.

Trying to represent Scotland from the capital city of another country is exhausting and unhealthy.

Behind the scenes, there is a real, ­coherent SNP push to build ­Scotland’s European and international networks.

In 2014, the political and ruling ­classes in Europe and beyond wernae sure about us. There was a coldness to the ­independence project.

Since then, the SNP group here has been on manoeuvres across to Brussels and to the embassies of every nation ­under the sun.

Much of this work seems soft. It’s drinking a glass of wine with the French ambassador. It’s lunching with a Finnish parliamentary delegation. It’s not exactly the gruntwork of independence, ­climbing up tenement stairs with leaflets, or ­hosting Yes stalls in rainy town centres.

But I do suspect that much of this elite networking, this normalising of Scotland as a separate entity in the minds of the world’s movers and shakers, will bear bountiful fruit, come the Yes vote.

The majority of the work of parliament still gets done in the chamber. It’s where the debates occur and where new laws are made and old ones broken.

On Monday, for example, John ­Nicolson and Kirsty Blackman will be in the ­chamber as part of the debate around the Online Safety Bill, a massive piece of legislation that will hugely change our online experiences. It’s actually a good piece of legislation, developed by all the parties in a collaborative effort to make the online world a safer place for children and vulnerable people, and to reign in the Big Tech companies a wee bit.

SNP MP Kirsty Blackman

But so infrequently does Westminster actually work like that.

AS this article began, John Nicolson was being hectored and harangued by a few hundred Tory MPs, who voted for him to be investigated by the Privileges Committee.

John’s crime? He had posted a video on Twitter which the Speaker of the House took exception to.

John’s DCMS committee had taken ­evidence from the former Secretary of State Nadine Dorries. She had told the committee that a reality TV show she had been on had been faked. She said that the “real people” in the show were in fact ­actors. This was not true, and her untruth was taken very seriously by Channel 4, by the people she had lied about, and by the TV production company. The DCMS committee published a report making it clear that Dorries had lied.

Former culture secretary Nadine Dorries

John had referred the matter to the Speaker, to have Dorries held ­to account. The Speaker had refused to refer her to Privileges. John then posted another video to Twitter, telling the public about this decision.

And the Speaker had taken umbrage. There is an unwritten rule that the ­Speaker’s correspondence is ­confidential. Even when it is pertaining to matters ­absolutely pertinent to the public ­interest.

Incredible as it is to say, in the eyes of the broken Westminster system, John was in the wrong, and Nadine Dorries can get away scot-free. And that sums the place up as well as anything.