Clive Efford - MP for Eltham and Greenwich and Woolwich?

Where exactly is Nick Raynsford MP? That's the question we've been asking ourselves since we saw the front page of this week's News Shopper. The paper reports on the death of man in Woolwich during a police arrest and carries an inset and quote from the MP for Eltham, Clive Efford?

Why is Efford sticking is nose into business outside his own constituency we wonder? It's not as if he has a remit on matters of law and order or criminal justice. Besides being a backbench MP the only other position he holds is the Transport Select Committee.

Our initial thought was that he might be filling in for Raynsford, so we called Greenwich & Woolwich Labour Party (yes that was us), and asked whether Raynsford was ill. Apparently he's not, in fact he's a "hard working MP". What was interesting is that they knew nothing about Efford and the News Shopper story.

So what does all this mean? Well, given the comments here, perhaps Efford is looking to his post-Parliamentary future already? It's an open secret that there is little love loss between Eltham and Greenwich Labour parties, we imagine there will be some angry phone calls between some of them tonight.