Mainly though, it’s because I can listen to an iPhone full of my own music on the empty train. The Soulsetters, Juan Amelbert, Mary Jane Hooper, Margie Hendrix and other great R&B tracks are livening up the journey. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind my four year old using the phone as the most expensive games console in Europe to play Animatch. I don’t mind the scratches, the weetabix crustaceans, the constant low battery. Sometimes though, it’s just nice to get and hour to yourself.

The experience is made all the more joyous by these luxurious Bose QuietComfort 3 Acoustic headphones. Not to be recommended for use when crossing busy roads or riding bicyles but great for train and plane journeys.

Far from giving the new Speaker a problem, the commune of desolation shared between all MPs provides an opportunity to enact a programme of parliamentary reform that the previous post-holder could only dream of.

Though he or she will process wearing 17th-century buckles, the new Speaker will have to march in the modern age if they are to rebuild the trust of electors. Part of the way to achieve this requires radical change to the way Parliament is reported.

All candidates for the speakership declare that Parliament should be more transparent and accountable. If they mean it, they should start with the anachronistic institution of journalists known as the parliamentary lobby. It’s a closed shop. A club. A bizarre Petri dish of rivalry, personal enmity and the occasional fistfight. It needs major reform.

Other than under-appreciated reforms introduced by Alastair Campbell – a daily account of the discussions held at the morning briefings between the Prime Minister’s spokesman and lobby-pass holding journalists, little has changed to the parliamentary reporting system since 1870, when Speaker Dennison gave special access rights to a small group of parliamentary writers.

I laughed in disbelief when told on my first day as an MP that “if you want to keep a secret, say it on the floor of the House of Commons“. But other than for the most important front-bench speeches, it’s true. Driven by the decreasing space allocated to Parliament in their papers, lobby journalists report only a fraction of Westminster discussions. Where, for example, can you read of recent debates on extreme solar events or addiction to prescription medicines? These and others were not reported because they were not the big story of the day – and all because a cartel of political editors convened over afternoon tea to decide that this was so.

Last month, Sri Lanka was the big story. This month, alas for the Tamils, it wasn’t. So Siobhain McDonagh’s debate on 12 June over the plight of 300,000 Tamil refugees was barely noticed.

The 238 pass-holding lobby journalists do not have an outlet for lesser stories, so they end up, pack-like, having to chase the same one or two stories each day.

Yet it is a stark reality of life in the internet age that parliamentary reporting no longer has to be constrained by column inches. The new Speaker should log on to see what is possible. See, for example, Ispystrangers.org. There you will read of discussions as wide-ranging as NHS provision in Cornwall and job losses on a missile range in South Uist.

The problems for the lobby are also compounded by absurdly out-of-date “you must wear a tie in the gallery” rules.

David Miliband has called for an end to unattributable briefings. He’s right. In the internet age there is no such thing as a secret. Over the next few months I will argue for a technologically enabled democracy, from e-petitions to digitally encoding each clause and amendment to every Bill. This will further open up Parliament.

Crack open the lobby cartel. Let in a new generation of online commentators. Share access to lobby briefings with a more diverse group of reporters. Rip up the lobby rules and put all briefings on the record. Do this, and a new Speaker can genuinely be part of a new era of accountability.

I’m sure that Total, the owners of the site, are exasperated by some of the wild cat strikes that have taken place in the last six months - they’re not on. Yet the idea that Total can resolve the matter by refusing to talk to the entirely reasonable General Secretary of the GMB union, Paul Kenny, is ridiculous. And to sack workers - a lock out - will simply escalate the dispute to a scale that I suspect Total have not anticipated.

Partnership is always better than industrial strife. And one thing is for certain. If Total and their contractors, Jacobs, refuse to talk, they’re in for a long and protracted dispute where no-one will win.

They should pick up the phone to ACAS today.

Parliamentary democracy is on its knees. Lachrymose MPs haunt the corridors of power in a collective despondency that disables us from agreeing the comprehensive changes that are necessary. The rupture at the core of British democracy can only be healed with a radical programme of constitutional reform, reinforced by the authority of the people in a referendum.

This is the moment for sweeping, radical change – an elected House of Lords, weekend voting and devolution of power out of Whitehall and into local communities. But there is one change that would make perhaps the most difference: how we actually vote and send people to parliament. I believe the alternative vote system will help rebuild the trust and authority given to our elected representatives. And if the European election results show mainstream parties one thing, it is that the democratic status quo is no longer an option.

During the first parliament of this government, I ran the campaign for first past the post from the offices of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. Our campaign was based on a passionate belief that a new voting system would lead to more control over the candidate selection process by political elites – harming the prospect for working class representatives.

Labour’s first term in office was characterised by a paradoxical approach to political power. On one hand there was the biggest redistribution of power for a century through devolution and a bill of rights. Yet there was also a huge consolidation of political control of the Labour party machine tothe centre. Many believed the party was run from 10 Downing Street. Intoxicated by the euphoria of Labour in power, different strands of representation in the party – my union included – let this happen.

The more I became a willing ­participant in Labour’s efforts to prove the iron law of oligarchy, the more trenchant I became in the view that if working people were to retain a voice in parliament, the current system of first past the post should be defended. It was the one issue on which my union ­completely disagreed with the then prime minister, Tony Blair. The ­vehemence with which we held our views led, in part, to proposals for electoral reform being held up for a decade.

Yet for the current system there is now a more important challenge, one that has led me to fundamentally reassess my views. Vast swaths of working people in Britain now think parliament is irrelevant to them and their families. MP Jon Cruddas is right when he says that this is as much about policy as it is our democratic framework. But he is also right to say that we can no longer ignore the institutions of representation when it comes to re-engaging working people.

Our voting system is the source code of the power wielded by MPs. It bestows the authority of the people on their representatives. Yet few MPs can claim support from more than 50% of their electors. AV enables ­preference (ranked) voting, ensuring an MP can claim authority of a majority of their voters. AV also allows voters to protest – through the support of small and single-issue groups, while also choosing to support a larger party, if they so wish. Unlike some other voting systems, it allows the retention of a geographic link between MP and electors.

Though Westminster watchers often overlook this relationship, most MPs believe that the responsibility to be a local area advocate is what keeps a system rooted in common sense. Many MPs who currently support first past the post do so because they want to retain a local link. I believe that when they explore the merits of AV more fully, they will reassured that this important element of our democracy will be preserved.

Changing the voting system is not the only solution to parliament’s waning authority. I recently left the daily grind of ministerial life having had 18 months immersed in conversation with the UK’s digital pioneers. I’m convinced that our economic future is dependent on developing a set of economic and regulatory arrangements to hothouse our digital natives – the under-30s for whom the internet is not a new technology.I hope to spend my time on the backbenches arguing for a digitally enabled democracy. There are technologies that did not exist when Labour was elected in 1997, that if adopted, will allow a new Speaker to lead parliament into a new age of transparency and accountability.

This will pose a huge threat to the vested interests in the political parties, civil service and government. But it will also offer opportunities. The recent blitzkrieg attack on the PM, by the ­loudest liberal voices around the ­editorial table of the Guardian, will have less significance when our elected ­representatives can make their case using their own publishing platform, be it blogs, message boards or even Twitter.

But the centrepiece of a new reform act should be a change in voting system and a move to elect our second chamber. And legitimacy should be conferred on these changes through a plebiscite.

1. The four of us watched a Sky movie together and the phone didn’t ring once.
2. I found myself singing whilst using the shaving mirror this morning.
3. Reshuffle gossip, what reshuffle gossip?
4. I’ve not read a word in a Sunday paper.
5. BRMB not Radio 4. Disney Cinematic not Marr.

And more importantly, I’ve just ordered: Learn to Program Using Ruby, by Chris Pine. Sure, it’s just a primer but the last time I coded, it was in Sinclair BASIC.

The sense of privilege I have felt as one of your Ministers since 2007 hardly needs stating. But I also want to tell you what an enormous pleasure it has been. In 18 months at the Cabinet Office I would like to think that I have helped our government to think about information in new and better ways. I have tried to be a champion for the digital community, where lie some of our best and brightest talents and much of our nation’s future success.

You are a politician completely dedicated to the service of the public, and a man of the very highest personal integrity. I have seen how the application of courage and commitment to patient, measured intelligence makes good government. As Chancellor of the Exchequer for a decade, you led this country’s economic rebirth. In defiance of world economic cycles, you led us through a period of sustained growth and prosperity which is unprecedented in our history. As Prime Minister you have led the world’s response to the gravest economic crisis it has ever known.

However spitefully your character is traduced and your triumphs degraded by Labour’s enemies, they can never erase these towering achievements to your name. To have had the opportunity to serve the public as one of your Ministers has been an honour, for which I thank you.

As I told you some time ago, though, I feel that the time has come, at the reshuffle, for me to return to the backbenches and to my constituency. The pressure on my young family has been painful and I do not want to ask them to endure it any longer.

I would still like to make a contribution as a campaigner, helping you to lead Labour into the next general election, which I know we both believe Labour can and must win. We both came into politics for the same reasons; a passionate belief in decency, justice and fairness for ordinary people and an equally certain conviction that only Labour has the courage and the competence to make it happen.

That is why I will remain alongside you as we fight and win the next election under your leadership. Though not, with some wistful regret, as a member of your government.