I’d like to tell you about a guy I know – let’s call him a friend – who went out with a girl – let’s call her Scarlet, the flame haired, sixth-form temptress – for two magical, passion-filled weeks in 1983, before she called time on their relationship, claiming it had run its course.

“You’re a great guy, eh thingy,” she told him, metaphorically reaching into his chest with her blackened claw, and callously ripping out his heart. “It’s just not going to work between us. It’s not you, it’s me. I guess I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment.”

The true cause of the break-up became obvious the following week, when he saw Scarlet, riding shotgun in his best friend’s newly acquired 1974 Ford Capri Mk 1 GXL.

I was reminded of this cautionary tale as I watched Natalie Elphicke cross the floor of the House of Commons last Wednesday, defecting from Conservative to Labour, at the start of Prime Minister’s Questions.

Rishi Sunak wore the same look of post-pubescent humiliation and betrayal that was etched across the face of poor old thingy all those years ago.

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Natalie Elphicke is not your run-of-the-mill politician. Where others see potentially career-ending scandal, humiliation and failure, Natalie sees only opportunity.

When her husband Charlie, whom she married in 1995, was accused of sexually assaulting two women, she stood by him dutifully, dismissing the allegations as fabricated, and motivated by political opportunists.

Elphicke was “attractive and attracted to women” she said of this pie-faced, grope-a-minute Torybot, “an easy target for dirty politics........

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