Quango - When MPs Get Drunk and Beat Each Other Up

This week, a nation's political cartoonists and columnists high-fived themselves half to death. How convenient: that a bar fight in the House Of Commons came along at the same moment as England was considering introducing a minimum price on alcohol. They all had a brainwave. The same brainwave. At the same time. Take the one story. Combine it with the other… Equals satire. 'Perhaps,' they chortled in union, 'the massively taxpayer-subsidised Strangers Bar should be the first zone in the country to have minimum pricing… haw haw haw!' Yes, it's another little morality play about how feckless everyone at the top is, and how wouldn't it be better if we were all led by real people instead of amoral zombies. Accordingly, the heroes and villains have been cast in short order: the monster of the piece is Eric Joyce MP – the Labour backbencher who was so damn angry that he managed to break a window in Strangers Bar in the time it took for the police to arrive. Many have pointed out that Joyce complaining that 'there are too many fucking Tories in this place' before headbutting one of them was hardly clever. If Joyce had been drinking, say, on a Liverpool sink estate, he might've had more right to be grumpy. This poor capacity for logic, along with the fact that he was also the first MP ever to claim more than £200,000's worth of expenses in a single year, has led the press to cast Joyce as a sort of boorish, giveashit hard-nut. Yet very little attention has been paid to an unwritten law of the universe: that which dictates that no one gets hit in the face if they're not partly inviting it anyway. What, for instance, could be more punchable than this?

Even if you got a gammon and painted it with a composite photo of every daytime Radio One DJ, it couldn't reach the extraordinary levels of passive hateability inherent in Alec Shelbrooke MP. His pink globe topped by his knowingly shitheaded hair is a barrage balloon of smug. The Elmet and Rothwell MP may not have been outwardly untoward to Joyce. But looking at him, you just know that at some point in his life, he's made a young girl in a nightclub very sad indeed. And that, surely, is more than enough excuse. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that he has also eaten a dead baby. Go on, shovel that baby down your gob, Shelbrooke. Num num num. There's only one thing worse than watching someone eat a dead baby, and that's watching it repeat on them. Num num num. All gone? Good. Shelbrooke was not alone in being victimised. The second face Joyce tried to clobber in belonged to the man who was trying to get back to his seat when Joyce refused to yield, Andrew Percy MP. This man:

Andrew Percy, the Conservative member for Brigg and Goole. Big, cardboard suitcase with his name painted in Tipp-Ex on the handle not pictured. Percy thought that he'd outrun the bullies when he went to big school. Only goes to show how wrong you can be. What he seems to have forgotten is that some people are bullied for structural, situational reasons. And some people simply because they might as well have “Smack me up, hard-nuts” tattooed on their eyelids. Percy is a born waffler, who regularly gives some of the more tedious speeches in parliament. He makes much of his humble local comprehensive origins, but at least at private school they teach you to quote Cicero while being boring: he doesn't even have that, droning his way through another C+ essay about tuition fees or Libya with only the National Curriculum to help him along. Now, this is Eric Joyce:

Yes, a gorgeous combination of Eric Cantona, Robert Carlisle and George Clooney. Look at that firm gaze. That steely posture. Those well-researched, firmly-held opinions that beam from his eyes like lasers of pure data. He's a political dreamboat, and if, as many are suggesting, he has to stand down, parliament will have lost at least 20 percent of its good looks. Is it any wonder he was forced to do damage to the Strangers Bar nerd patrol? Inevitably, the pairing of Shelbrooke and Percy was so galvanising that it caused a magnetic field of hateability to develop inside the room, leaving the jug-jawed Joyce out of control of his own fists, which set upon the pair and began destroying them just as surely as if they were receipts for mysterious £500 taxi rides. Show them the evidence and no jury would ever convict Joyce. You might as well try and convict God for making him beautiful: those looks are a force majeure – you just can't insure against them. Follow Gavin on Twitter: @hurtgavinhaynes Illustration by Joss Frank Previously: Quango - A History of Courtroom Sketch Art