THE Conservative MP for Totnes, Sarah Wollaston, has rejected an offer of a junior government job.

Dr Wollaston said she was offered a job as a ministerial aide, known as a parliamentary private secretary (PPS).

But she said that would have stopped her voting against the government and she valued her independence as a backbench MP.

She said that becoming a PPS would have also prevented her tabling any amendments to health bills.

The attached is a comment on the BBC website today, Sunday, February 20, which, in my mind, sums up politics in a nutshell ... ‘here we have a new Conservative MP who appears to have a backbone, in that she’s not going to toe the party line by accepting a position which compromises her responsibility to her electorate’.

I have watched her on Newsnight and she’s an intelligent, articulate lady and should go far. However, I doubt that her refusal to accept the “sop” will win her any brownie points in the mire that is, as ever, conservative government.

Mike Fairclough

(via email).