But for some reason or other, Jimmy did not attain his heart's desire, and he is compelled to sit on the front Opposition bench.

This would not seem an affliction to ordinary men.

Indeed, the desire to sit on one of the front benches may be regarded as the root of all evil in Parliamentary nature--the desire to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge which is as fatal to nature born without original political sin as that disastrous episode in the annals of our first parents.
[Sidenote: A recollection of Disraeli.] One of the most curious episodes in the career of Disraeli was that he insisted on sitting on the front Opposition bench before he had ever held office--an act of unprecedented and unjustifiable daring which throws a significant light on that habit of self-assertion to which he owed a good deal of his success in life.

For what a seat on the front Opposition bench means is, that the holder thereof has once held office in an administration, and so is justified for the remainder of his days in regarding himself as above the common herd.

But Jimmy isn't as ordinary men.