How do you like your members of parliament? Do you prefer them to be vacuous automatons devoid of wit, humour and anything one might call emotion? Or do you actually prefer them to be people, a little like yourself? Prone to human frailties from time to time, rather than being a deracinated good Boy Scout who would be as interesting, conversationally, as a pamphlet from your local health authority trust?

This question occurred to me when I read of the sacking of the junior minister Andrew Gwynne, the Labour MP for somewhere awful called Gorton and Denton.