Ric Holden, sitting alone in a large room in Parliament, bent over to tie his shoelace. He was waiting to raise an issue of national importance: pie and mash. 

A few months ago, Holden was the chairman of the greatest election-winning machine in history, the British Conservative Party. Now he is just a humble opposition backbencher. Some might say his demotion was deserved. He did after all oversee a campaign that set a number of records, including lowest Conservative share ever and most seats lost by a government ever. But those people miss a very important point: although Holden waved goodbye to 250 colleagues in July, he did succeed in saving his own skin. 

When his Durham seat was abolished, he realised that he had always, at heart, been an Essex man, and fled south to the ultra-safe constituency of Basildon and Billericay. Not that it stayed ultra-safe for long. Under his stewardship, the Conservative majority fell from 20,000 to just 20. You could see why he’d felt that a seat with a majority of, say, 19,000 wouldn’t have been enough. 

This all explains why on Tuesday afternoon, Holden was in a room off Westminster Hall where MPs are allowed to raise matters that are likely to be of limited interest. Officially, he was there to ask the government to save a Cockney delicacy by giving it official protected status. Really, he was there to beg the government to save Ric Holden.

“What’s this debate all about?” he began, before giving the answer. It was about Holden namechecking popular businesses that are more popular in his constituency than he is. Say hello to Robin’s Pie & Mash and Stacy’s Pie & Mash, “absolute hubs of the community” that he has been proud to call home for several weeks. As you read this, press releases about the heroic local MP fighting for Essex will be winging their way to local news outlets, full of facts about pies that Holden has culled from Wikipedia.

It was a pity, he said, that Britain didn’t look at some of its traditional products, and do more to celebrate “the special place that they have in our national heritage”. Take, for instance, the ultra-marginal MP, fearful that a gust of wind might remove his majority altogether. This artisanal product, the result of many hours of hard graft on doorsteps in all kinds of weather, deserves to be recognised as uniquely British, as he searches for ways to suck up to his new constituents. 

The status Holden sought for pies was, he said, “around the way a product is produced”. Again, this is a serious point. In his own case, Holden became the Basildon candidate by telling local Conservatives they could have any candidate they wanted, so long as it was him. This was such a popular move locally that the swing against him was twice the national average.

“We’ve seen demographic changes,” Holden went on, “changes in taste.” Was he still talking about pies, or was he now making excuses for the election result?

Mark Francois, representing a neighbouring seat, had come to lend support to the quest to save the Cockney pie. “What a cosmopolitan food it has become,” he said, which probably wasn’t intended as a dig at northerner Holden’s sudden devotion to the dish.  

Daniel Zeichner, the Minister for Food, had been obliged to turn up and listen to all this, which he did indulgently. “I’m so pleased the opposition members have time on their hands to tour the very best hostelries in their constituencies,” he began, before urging Holden to continue his important work. Every MP knows that one day the electorate might come for them, too.

Holden’s desperation to suck up to the voters of his new home presents them with an opportunity

Francois finished the debate by suggesting he and Holden have a competition. “I’ll pitch my pie and mash shops against his, and we’ll see who the winner will be.” It would be an interesting contest, but having seen how Holden got selected, you shouldn’t underestimate his ruthlessness. If Francois’s pie shops burn down one night, we know where to look. 

I sneer, but Holden’s desperation to suck up to the voters of his new home presents them with an opportunity. What else can they get him to say? Can they get him to dress as a Pearly King for PMQs? To support a museum dedicated to the Ford Escort? Might he be persuaded that far from being a Scot, Britain’s most famous secret agent is in fact an Essex man — Basildon Bond?