Dorothy Byrne: How about 20 MPs being tormented in a TV house of horror? I’ll get my popcorn

I have had a brilliant idea for a television programme, inspired by Matt Hancock’s arrival in the jungle for I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!

We take 20 UK Members of Parliament and put them into a house for several weeks. There will be cameras in every room and we tell the MPs that their every movement is being filmed. However, we don’t film any of it. We just leave them there and for several weeks, the rest of us are spared having to listen to their drivel and lies. They think we are watching them day and night but we are getting on with our lives in perfect happiness.

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng would be put in charge of the household finances, so they’d soon run short of supplies. Each night, a different person would have to share a room with Suella Braverman, their sleep disturbed by shouts of: “Take them to Kigali!” as she dreamed of sending people to Rwanda.

James Cleverley, who just told gay football fans to “be respectful” to the traditions of Qatar, would be held in solitary confinement in a hut in the garden and forced to read about the violent assaults on gay and trans people administered by the Doha authorities.

Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Steve Barclay, Therese Coffey and Matt Hancock himself, all recent Secretaries of State for Health, would have to spend every morning hanging on the phone being told: “You are now number 261 in the queue. If your symptoms are serious, you are probably going to die before you speak to a doctor so you might as well hang up now.” Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn would have to share a bed. All alcohol would be banned.

The only trouble with this idea is that, once you start thinking of the great tortures you could inflict, you almost want to watch the series.

Some of you may remember a Channel 4 series, Tower Block Of Commons, which filmed four MPs living in deprived areas. One was Nadine Dorries who later, when Culture Secretary, claimed to a Commons Select Committee that the so-called deprived people she met were all actors. This extraordinary allegation has been investigated and totally disproved.

As Dorries had been threatening the privatisation of Channel 4, it was a particularly significant falsehood and SNP MP John Nicolson has just called for her to be blocked from entering the House of Lords.

But really it was the deprived people who were forced to live with an actor. Consider most voters’ idea of what a politician should be – an informed and responsible person, imbued with a strong sense of public service, who offers their outstanding talents to the people of their country. Would anybody say Nadine Dorries is any of those things?

The last time I wrote this column, I likened Liz Truss to the Black Death for the potential ravages she might wreak on Britain if she became Tory leader.

I thought I’d maybe gone a bit far. Now I see myself as a modern-day Cassandra. But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. As a direct result of her election, my little book, Trust Me I’m Not A Politician, has been reprinted and I keep being invited to speak at literary festivals.

Her persona as a contemporary manifestation of Margaret Thatcher was fake. Unlike Maggie the grocer’s daughter, her father was a maths professor and her mother a graduate of one of the UK’s finest educational establishments, the very same Cambridge University college of which I am now president.

But some claim the criticism is unfair; they insist Truss was not dishonest, just a little deranged. So, was she lying to herself or to the rest of us? You decide.

Dorothy Byrne is former head of news at Channel 4 and now president of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.