He may have lost his job as lord chancellor and member of parliament for Cheltenham following July's election, but Alex Chalk was in good spirits on day one of the Conservative party conference.
Chalk and newly-elected solicitor MP Sarah Bool were special guests at a drinks reception hosted by the Law Society and Bar Council to celebrate the legal sector's contribution to the economy.
Bool told the room her experience as a commercial property solicitor has already helped in her new job as MP for South Northamptonshire, using her legal skills and analytical approach to challenge a local plan in relation to a controversial development. Praising the legal services sector's contribution to the economy, she said the sector would have her full support in the years to come.
Chalk was up next. Or has he jokingly described it: 'From the politically living to the politically dead.'
As well as praising the legal sector's contribution to the economy, Chalk praised it for driving social mobility. He fondly recalled being told by a headteacher that a young boy who watched him in action as a barrister at the Old Bailey won a place at Cambridge to read law.
To highlight the challenges he faced as lord chancellor, Chalk told a shocked crowd that the entire budget for the Ministry of Justice was spent by the Department for Work and Pensions in two weeks. 'Relatively speaking it's underfunded. We do have to keep fighting for it.'
Could we one day see Chalk return from the 'politically dead?'
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