Patrick Mercer's Conservative Front Bench Seat 2003-2007

Conservatives across the country are today singing the blues for the Front Bench Seat of Patrick Mercer MP, which has died at the age of four in what is being reported as an unsavoury racist incident.

Patrick Mercer's Front Bench Seat was the lovechild of former Tory leader, ex-Scots-Guardsman and professional mute Iain Duncan Smith's need for a shadow cabinet member who didn't look as if he belonged in an 18th Century lunatic asylum and former army officer and ex-BBC Defence Reporter Patrick Mercer's desire to find a position where, if he bided his time, he could really shoot his mouth off.

It was a sign of the regard in which Mr Mercer was held that he retained his Front Bench Seat under three successive Conservative leaders - though this may have been due in part to the fact that in recent years the Tories have rarely given their chiefs enough time to put their lucky gonk on the leader's desk, let alone get round to reshuffling their shadow cabinet. Given the high degree of sensitivity and intelligence which has traditionally been displayed by British Army officers (only some of whom like to attend "natives and colonials" parties dressed in Nazi uniform) many were surprised when Mr Mercer failed to say anything outrageous at all for many years, preferring instead to leave foolish generalisations and ill-thought-through off-the-cuff remarks to Boris Johnson.

Mr Mercer's great moment - and his Front Bench Seat's darkest hour - finally came in March 2007 when his mouth took the opportunity of an interview with Times Online to begin channelling the spirit of Ron Atkinson, suggesting that during his time in the army he had come across "a lot of ethnic minority soldiers who were idle and useless, but who used racism as cover for their misdemeanours" and that, in the army, a "chap with red hair" would get a "far harder time than a black man".

From the moment that Conservative leader David Cameron became aware of Mr Mercer's remarks (or at least from the moment he became aware that they'd been made publicly and to a journalist) the death of Mr Mercer's Front Bench Seat was inevitable. Confirming The Seat's passing, friends of Mr Cameron told reporters that to claim he had overreacted was "utter rot" and that in his time as Tory leader he had known "a lot of Conservative MPs who were idle and useless but who used claims of 'political correctness gone mad' as cover for their misdemeanours".

Patrick Mercer's Conservative Front Bench Seat will be buried without ceremony at St Enoch's Church of the Rivers of Blood and as far away from Mr Cameron's shiny New Tory image as the spin doctors can manage.