Political Mathematics

Many years of interacting with MPs, advisors and policy makers has made me very sceptical when any of them start to use numbers to illustrate a point: the latest of which is the London Mayoral hopeful Rory Stewart who claims in this week's Sunday Times to have slept in 50 different homes around London as part of his ‘Come Kip With Me’ scheme.

However, as he apparently only launched his campaign in the second week of February, a whole 27 days before Sunday, this means that Mr Stewart would have to have slept in almost two homes a night every night, never spending an evening at home, for his claim to be true.

He also says that “you learn an amazing amount because you’re spending 14 hours with somebody”, which means he wants us to believe that he's spent 700 hours in other people’s homes over the last 27 days.

Which is an admirable amount of effort when there are only 648 hours in 27 days ….