Spend enough time around the hallowed halls of Westminster, and you’ll soon find yourself sucked into a conversation about salaries. According to SW1 orthodoxy, the poor quality of our politics is largely attributable to the measly pay packets of our public servants. Shell out more on politicians and their bag carriers, and you’ll soon find that the standard of work improves — or so we’re told.

This is, of course, bunkum. While there is some credence to the idea of raising MP’s salaries, parliamentary staffers are already paid a remarkable amount to do remarkably little. Your average parliamentary staffer is an inexperienced university graduate, complete with ill-fitting suit and inflated ego. You’ll sometimes stumble across staffers who’ve spent a decade or so hanging around the Palace, long-since institutionalised; this latter group is particularly tragic, with little to no experience of the real world. Many staffers are frighteningly apolitical, and know only the basics about how our system operates, while their political preferences are largely decided on the basis of which MP bought them a drink most recently.

The morning usually starts at about 10:30, though don’t worry about arriving later. You can always blame the Tube, or say that you were off getting your state-provided laptop fixed. If you work for a particularly old-fashioned MP, you may be expected to carry out some basic secretarial tasks — but more likely, you’ll have a few odd jobs to manage over the course of any given week. You might be expected, for example, to reply to a dozen or so constituent emails, or to gormlessly take notes while your Member is lobbied by one of Westminster’s myriad public affairs firms. At particularly eventful times, you might even be asked for advice or briefing notes, which your Member will largely ignore. When opportunities arise to gatekeep access to your MP, relish them; for the first time in your life, people might just take you seriously. 

Nevertheless, the morning will fly by. You and your colleagues will spend at least half an hour complaining about how hard your jobs are, in between bouts of idle, ill-informed speculation about whatever political rigmarole is currently consuming Westminster’s attention. If it’s a Wednesday, even better — Prime Minister’s Questions provides a useful pretext for an hour slack-jawed gaping at the TV screens which populate parliamentary offices. Conversation about what the cafeteria is offering for luncheon can take up at least another hour — unless it’s the infamous jerk pork, in which case you’ll find broad, consensus support for one of the few culinary highlights of the estate’s otherwise mediocre culinary provision.

As a rough rule of thumb, long drink-sodden lunches away from the estate are permissible, as long as one stays within a fifteen minute walk of Parliament. Feel free to drink as much warm white wine as your heart desires, as long as, when your MP calls and asks where you are, you’re able to scurry back to the office equipped with some plausible excuse. 

Likewise, it’s perfectly acceptable to spend hours gossiping downstairs at Portcullis House, as long as you claim that you were “at a meeting”. If you want to meet with your vapid friends to giggle about the quarrelling, sniping, and shagging that characterises the life of our nation’s political hangers-on, go wild. Your Member will almost certainly be too busy to notice, and will probably spend most of the day out of the office anyway. 

And, after a long, hard day of idling, it’s time to slink off to the nearest watering hole, whether the infamous Red Lion or one of Parliament’s many in-house bars. Naturally, given the subsidised alcohol, the latter is much preferable.

For the female of the species, this is a fantastic opportunity to get leered at by middle aged, middle class, middlebrow MPs, who make up for their misspent youths by creeping around the unfortunate young staffers willing to giggle at their dreadful jokes. Of course, unless you’re particularly new, you’ll know who to stay away from — and if you don’t know, you’ll soon learn. 

For the men, this is a forum for back-slapping, chest-beating, and self-congratulation. You weren’t cool at school, so feel free to indulge in all the bravado you fancy around your similarly spoddy contemporaries. If you’re lucky, you might end up earning a drunken fumble with one of your female colleagues, whose self-esteem might be low enough to tolerate your pathetic advances. Drink too much, flirt badly — and get up in the morning to repeat the whole cycle all over again. 

I should stress that this faintly critical assessment doesn’t apply to MPs’ caseworkers, who tend to be well-meaning middle class women from the provinces. Most of this cohort, while not necessarily political geniuses, wouldn’t hurt a fly, and perform an important role as poorly-paid social care workers. When grumbling constituents write to their MPs about universal credit, or planning applications, or their suicidal ideation, it’s caseworkers who pick up the slack. Whether or not we think that MPs should be responsible for handling cases like these, caseworkers provide a valuable service within the bounds of our current, flawed system. 

In reality, most parliamentary staff are little more than well-paid bag carriers

Nevertheless, this account is unfortunately typical of the parliamentary researchers that I’ve worked alongside. Of course, when asked by one’s parents — or by women at the Red Lion — one’s position is always “Chief of Staff”, a grandiose title that gives the whole sorry affair an ill-deserved West Wing-esque allure.

In reality, most parliamentary staff are little more than well-paid bag carriers who can access a number of generous benefits at the taxpayer’s expense. The good ones find themselves employed elsewhere in Westminster, and fast. Rather than splashing more taxpayer cash on this ever-growing class of nobodies, we should be hiring fewer, better staffers, and making sure that local councils and social services pick up their fair share of administrative grunt-work. Time to put a stop to the absurd gravy-train which employs so many of Britain’s most mediocre graduates.