Dear Michael...

...I just want to say ba-bye as your parliamentary career enters the twilight zone.

We didn't get to know you very well and what we did find out wasn't very edifying. You were the worst education secretary for a long time - and, dear gawd, some of your predecessors, like Thatcher - were pretty grim. The plan to turn all English schools into academies - what was that about? With a bit of luck, England will never hear about it again.

Despite being brought up by Labour-leaning parents in Aberdeen, you have managed to turn yourself into a Tory. Your parents were not, as Sky news tried to tell us, 'fishmongers.' There's a wee difference between running a fish shop and being a fish wholesaler in Aberdeen. I wonder if your parents are still talking to you after you telling a porkies about their finances.

You had some great universities available to you here but decided to go for - where? - Oxford or Cambridge? I don't remember which. Most Tories go to one or other of these establishments. There your ambition no doubt helped you to mix with the right kind of people. It didn't take you long to get rid of the Scottish accent anyway. And then you worked as a journalist in London for a while before going into politics. By then, you had acquired a wife. Looking at your record, I'm wondering if you have the fiendishly clever intellect but she has the people skills and the common sense.

But at least I can thank you for shafting Boris Johnson, David Cameron and George Osborne. It's a pleasure to see their little game of politics (because that's what it was) reduced to nothing by an outsider. The people who replace them in some cases may have nicer shoes but they will exactly the same vicious, manipulative, overweening Tory hacks that we've become used to.

You yourself have a problem, Michael. You're not PLU. I've been around the west of Scotland long enough to have met some of the Tory People Like Us. I managed to avoid meeting Thatcher but I went with a colleague and friend when she reported Norman Tebbit to the police for shooting at hares across a public road. (He got off with a caution). I watched several times as the 'Jura people' (Lord Astor et al) were loaded on to the plane ahead of the rest of us 'just to get them out the way.' I was on Colonsay when Lord Forsyth drove his landrover into the ditch and nobody stopped to help him. If you know anything about island communities, you'll realise that is not a good sign. I think it might have been the fact that he got the Royal Navy to come and take him to Oban to meet the queen that upset people. In Ayrshire, I helped a headteacher deal with the lady of the manor whose 8 year old daughter had learning problems that she thought the local school could sort out in a few weeks, where the posh private school she was attending in Oxford had failed.

 You're not in their league, Michael. And they don't appreciate people who take liberties. I hope you have good contacts. Is Rupert Murdoch a pal?

But at least you still have a job and a good salary coming in as an MP for the next few years - until your constituency decide they can do better.

So good luck to you - and don't let the door hit you on the arse on your way out.