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Politics is a cruel game. The X Factor really has nothing on politics when it comes to dashing high hopes in a cruelly humiliating public manner. As evidence, consider Mark Prisk's first tweet as an ex-housing minister. ‘Been asked to step aside from housing for a younger generation. ‘Disappointing but it's been a great 11 years on frontbencher [sic]'. Really, if this is talking about Prisk's generation, it's a finely cruel cut. For Mark Prisk, born 1962, seems but a bare year older than incoming housing minister Kris Hopkins, the MP for Keighley, West Yorkshire. Perhaps Lady Thatcher's favourite poet, Philip Larkin, came up with the answer in his poem Annus Mirabilis, which begins, memorably: ‘Sexual intercourse began/In 1963/(which was rather late for me)/Between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles' first LP.' So it seems poor Mr Prisk has fallen victim not so much to sheer generational fate as a case of rather unfortunate timing in making his entry into the world. But that can't be Mr Prisk's fault and is clearly the responsibility of his parents.

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Prisk's Larkin around

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