There are lots of things in life that we accept which can even seem normal until we say them out loud. Only then do people question why a situation we’ve allowed to persist, often for years, hasn’t been scrapped long before.

So let me say mine out loud: my workplace serves alcohol all day long and drinking while at work is generally considered fairly normal.

That’s odd, isn’t it? Most people’s work canteen doesn’t sell small bottles of wine. Nor have two pubs which are open and well used for those who fancy a quick pint in the afternoon. It’s not considered normal for most people to have a bottle of wine at lunch with someone they work with, or to spend evenings drinking in the same bar as your boss and their friends.

And yet all of these things happen regularly on the parliamentary estate.

This is partly because there is a genuine blurring of the lines between work and life when you sign up to be an MP or a political journalist. Having spent more than a decade working in Parliament I know first-hand that what you do in working hours just isn’t enough to be top of your game.

I’ll never forget a conversation with a former colleague who asked me, when I first joined the lobby, what I had thought about an interview on the Today programme that morning. My reply – that I hadn’t heard it because I had been at the gym – drew........

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