“In fact I would go so far as to say that the right honourable gentleman is a fucking wanker!”

Pandemonium had broken out in the House Of Commons.

Again.

“Order! Order’” the speaker shouted.

“The honourable member for Grimthorpe North will withdraw that comment immediately. And according to some little known tradition I will now have to invoke a suitable punishment chosen by the Right Honorable member for Casterbridge South before she can return to the House!”

That’s why Julie Eckerslike MP, firebrand and Occasional Lonnie Donegan imitator, was making the long journey from banjo practice down the corridors of power to office of Everard Twislington D’ascoigne, Co-founder of the ERG and notable wanker, to apologise.

It was like being back in school, always in trouble for outspokenness.

She knocked his door, feeling rather surprised that it didn’t have a moat around it. The thought of having to apologise was only making her angry all over again.

“Enter” came his familiar plummy tones from within.

His office was like the library of a stately home. Not like her tatty affair which she shared with the 92 year old mp for Fochriw Central in the Welsh Valleys.

On the walls were thousands of volumes of Hansard, several stags heads and a coat of arms. In the middle sat Everard wearing an ermine lined dressing gown and pyjamas and playing a musical saw.

“Ahhh there you are” he drawled “would you be kind enough to take tea with me?”

“Blenkinsop, do the honours please!”

A butler emerged from the shadows carrying a large tray piled high with ptarmigan sandwiches and earl grey tea in china cups. “We have mugs and, er, meat pies if you’d prefer ma’am” said Blenkinsop snootily.

She sipped politely unsure of the necessary etiquette

“I .....am.......sorry......I ....was.....rude” she stammered reluctantly.

Twislington waved her away! “All part of the heat of battle” he said. “Now tell me, I hear you play the banjo rather spiffingly but do you like skiffle music by any chance?

I wonder if you’d lbs so kind as to join me in a song?”

He struck up on the musical saw again “Oh Wilted Rose, what can I do

Can’t you see my love for you?” He crooned. He didn’t have a bad voice.

It was one of Julie’s favourites and despite her reservations on skiffling with the enemy she couldn’t help getting her banjo out and joining in.

“I caught a train”

To Kalamazoo

Just to stop from feeling blue.”

Timothy Peasebody, Lib Dem environment spokesman mp for Wavering Endlessly and a dab hand, at the tea chest bass shared the office next door with “washboard Joan” McConelly , MP for Ballystubborn and the DUP. They had barely spoken in 20 years but now they heard the clattery din from Twislington’s office they rushed to join the fracas.

And so it was that a skiffle coalition came about, learning and playing songs together and at the same time, finding solutions to some of the biggest problems of Brexit.

Within an hour and between tunes they had hammered out a new brexit deal they agreed on called “Rock Island Line plus”. The deal would allow both a hard and a soft border in Northern Ireland depending what lines you shouted to the customs officials as you passed.

( eds voice: you’ll have to listen to the song Rock Island Line to know what the writer is on about here readers but anyway)

Things went swimmingly until they came to discuss the peculiar jazzlike chord sequence of “My Jelly Roll”. Sadly as skifflers, agreeing this proved beyond them.

The next morning the four MPs were even more vociferous in their lambasting of each other than usual and the speaker wondered what on Earth could ever be done to stop grown men and women squabbling like children.

Sadly, Rock Island Line Plus was never commended to the House and Brexit negotiations continued for another 28 months.