The exchange between Frank Field and Alistair Darling in this article on the BBC News website gives me one more reason to love Frank Field.

A promising figure in the early Blair administration, Frank Field was re-shuffled out of cabinet fairly early on, due to actually having good ideas and daring to challenge the leadership. As I remember anyway.. I was only 13 at the time, so I freely admit I may not have perfect recall of this. However, he went on to become an active backbencher, the kind of politician who actually makes a name for themselves by working to improve things for people. Something of a maverick in his party, but one that raises their own profile by actually doing their job as a representative of the people. Rather than by being appointed to high office and having no time for such trivial things as they’re too busy cocking up national policy. Ahem.

And while admittedly he was onto something of a winner with his fight against the proposed scrapping of the 10p tax rate, which Everyone with a capital E seemed to consider A Bad MoveTM on the part of the government, the fact that he admits that personally dislikes Gordon Brown only increases my admiration of him.

Genuine honesty is so rare in politics. We’re reduced to the meeja telling us: “We’re fairly sure X hates Y”. I can’t help feeling that politics would appeal so much more to the general public if politicians came out and said “Well actually, we dislike each other intensely, but we’re doing our best to work together.” And then, when policies didn’t work, we’d know why and who to blame. And we wouldn’t have to put up with all this waffle about circumstances, funding, political climate and so on.

Alistair Darling was very gracious in his acknowledgement of Frank Field’s apology, but if only he had had the balls to say: “We made a mistake, and now we’re worried you’re going to trash us in this by-election. We’re very sorry, please vote for us. Everyone knows the Tories I rubbish.” Or something.

You never know… it might just work…