Tory minister Johnny Mercer has compared new 25-year-old Labour MP Keir Mather to a character from cult Channel 4 comedy The Inbetweeners.
The minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Conservative said Mr Mather had been “dropped into” the Selby and Ainsty constituency and “spouted identikit Keir Starmer lines”, after earlier stating: “We don’t want parliament to become like the Inbetweeners.”
Mr Mather will become the youngest MP in the Commons – the Baby of the House – after overturning a 20,137 Conservative majority to win the north Yorkshire seat for Labour.
The Inbetweeners, which aired in the late 2000s, follows four friends at school who end up in awkward and embarrassing situations as they try to enter adulthood.
Explaining his comments to Sky News on Friday, Mr Mercer said: “I think this synthetic outrage, identikit Labour politician is the opposite of what people like me came into politics for.
“He’s been at Oxford University more than he’s has a job, right? So if you can really apply that to the empathy required to understand what it’s really like in this country at the moment, in terms of the cost of living and all these experiences of these people he’s trying to represent.
“Personally, I don’t think that is conducive to good electoral representation and I’m more than entitled to have that view.”
Labour peer Baroness Chapman of Darlington, who appeared alongside Mr Mercer on Sky, defended Mr Mather as “very considered” and “intelligent” and said: “You’re entitled to have whatever view you like, but there is such a thing as being gracious in defeat Johnny, and you’re being disrespectful to the voters of Selby who’ve made a decision that you don’t happen to like.
“One of the good things about our Parliament is that we have people entering Parliament for the first times in their twenties but also in their sixties, from all kinds of backgrounds, and I think that’s a strength.”
She added that Parliament needed “people who have got real-world, real-life experience turning up and representing their community”.
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Mr Mercer, a former British Army officer from 2002 to 2013 and MP for Plymouth Moor View, has previously been involved in several public arguments with well-known individuals.
Last week, critical messages were exchanged on Twitter between TV presenter Carol Vorderman and Mr Mercer and his wife, Felicity Cornelius-Mercer, about not having a degree education.
Mr Mercer had previously described Ms Vorderman as a “deeply unpleasant person” on the social media site, while Ms Vorderman has posted a number of critical remarks about Mr Mercer’s performance as a minister.
One Twitter user responded by pointing out that former British Prime Ministers William Gladstone and Winston Churchill became MPs at the ages of 22 and 25 respectively.
It was also pointed out on social media that Ross Kempsell, former political director of the Conservative Party, was elevated to the House of Lords on Thursday aged 31 after being included in Boris Johnson’s Prime Minister’s Resignation Honours.
