Jimmy Dimly swaps being a failed grandee for the exciting life of a shadow cabinet stooge

All hail our hero's return! The past 12 months have not been kind to James Cleverly.

- John Crace

A man who is used to being the most important person in almost every room he enters. Not so much these days. It was bad enough when the Tories were heavily defeated in the last election. Even Jimmy Dimly had seen that one coming. But the final straw had been the inability of his own supporters to count. Come the leadership election, his campaign team had accidentally voted him into third place in a failed attempt to undermine Kemi Badenoch. Out of the race before it had even really got going.

It was the emptiness he found hardest. The sheer grind of being a nobody. When Dimly had been a cabinet minister he'd had a whole army of staff to keep the show on the road. Every day he would be up by 7am, ready to be briefed on what to say and do.