"A culture of cynicism has grown up with an understanding that some of the burgeoning allowances could be siphoned off as the equivalent of salary." "The public recognise that these sorts of allowances should be properly designed to cover the additional costs of living in London. No mortgage interest payments. No re-mortgaging at will. No pocketing of capital gains on the sale of a tax-payer funded second home. No payment of additional monthly grocery and food bill. All of the aforementioned are surely the purpose of a basic salary."
Mark Field MP didn't write these things yesterday or last month but last July. Read his full piece here.
The Daily Mail has a story that Esther Rantzen has been inspired by Martin Bell and is considering standing against the expense-abusing Labour MP Margaret Moran in Luton South. Tim Montgomerie has written elsewhere on ConHome this morning that unless we clean up our worst MPs, we face a barrage of independents standing against sitting MPs. Tim is right about that, but thought should be given to where it happens.
Let's start with the case at hand: Luton South and why it is not the same as Tatton.
Martin Bell beat Neil Hamilton because his independent status allowed other parties to get behind him to unseat a sitting MP with a huge majority.
In Luton South, there is an excellent local Conservative candidate in Nigel Huddleston who was on the way to beating Moran even before the scandal of her expenses broke. Nigel should now ask Esther to come out and campaign for him if she wants to clean up politics!
An independent simply is not needed in Luton South. As the Daily Mail points out, Moran already faces "a furious backlash in her constituency" and the "narrow 5,650 majority" means Nigel must be odds on favourite to win even if Moran decides to stand again, which is surely open to doubt given her dreadful behaviour.
Independents can never quite deliver the impact at Westminster that traditional MPs can but are great where mainstream politics has failed. It will not do so in Luton. Esther should let Nigel run in Luton and she should stand where she is needed. There are plenty of sitting MPs that she could target. According to the Sunday Times, yesterday, nine out of the top-ten expense claimants are Labour (and all of the top five). Maybe there is someone there to set her sights on where an independent would be needed to clear out the dead wood as was needed in Tatton.
If it was up to me, I would encourage her to consider the constituency of Speaker Martin as one good place to begin!
Both have this morning welcomed the re-election of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. David Miliband sees it as a sign that incumbents can stay in power. 'Who said the recession is bound to punish governing parties?' he asks. Guido prefers to see it as a triumph for capitalism in India. Guido is right, of course.
Labour has wrecked our economic prospects:
"In 2010, according to the European Commission’s latest forecasts, the UK government will be spending 52.4 per cent of gross domestic product and receiving just 38.7 per cent of GDP in revenue. It will, as a result, have a gigantic general government deficit of 13.8 per cent of GDP. Worse, the UK’s cyclically-adjusted deficit will be 12.2 per cent of GDP. These are numbers one would expect in a time of war. Only five of the 27 members of the European Union are forecast to have a higher share of public spending in GDP than the UK in 2010: Sweden (57.3 per cent); Denmark (57 per cent); France (56.4 per cent); Finland (54.3 per cent); and Belgium (also 54.3 per cent). But only six EU members will have a lower revenue share than the UK: Romania (33.3 per cent); Ireland (33.5 per cent); Slovakia (34.1 per cent); Lithuania (34.8 per cent); Latvia (36.2 per cent); and Spain (37.3 per cent). Just one member will have a bigger deficit than the UK: Ireland, on 15.6 per cent." (Martin Wolf in the FT).
Major Packer wants to raise £1m. He's raised two-thirds of that so far. Click here to help him hit his target for Help The Heroes.
Iain Dale launches his pilot radio station tonight. All the details are here.
I don't know how Iain has the time for all he does. He constantly on TV reviewing the papers. He blogs on politics. He blogs on West Ham. He's the driving force behind the Total Politics magazine. And now he's doing this!
Good luck to him. I know he'll be brilliant at it.
A PoliticsHome poll found yesterday that support for Alan Johnson has increased sharply among voters. Perhaps more significantly 70% of Westminster insiders back Johnson as the best man to replace Brown.
Analysis of today's expenses revelations put him alongside Ed Miliband and Hillary Benn as a trio of what Anne McElvoy calls "budget ministers" who have claimed modest expenses.
We can expect Downing Street to start briefing against Mr Johnson from now on.
On Saturday I wrote about the ten things Labour had to look forward to in opposition.
One of them was the re-emergence of the Labour Left.
And right on cue Ken Livingstone pens an article for the London Evening Standard calling for nationalisation of the construction industry and a £15bn cut in defence spending.
I agree with every one of those words from The Spectator's James Forsyth. Read his full post here.
3.25pm The BBC's swing man saying Margaret Thatcher's hardline on immigration killed the National Front.
2.45pm Jack Straw in 1979...
2.40pm: There was nothing subtle about the way the BBC greeted Jeremy Thorpe's defeat in North Devon:
1.25pm: Asked if he'd accept a seat in Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet Ted Heath responds "depends". He disagreed with Mrs Thatcher's policy on Scottish devolution and never joined her government. The Great Sulk followed.
1.15pm Mrs T retains her Finchley seat:
1pm: A rare Tory casualty of the night was Teddy Taylor who lost his Scottish seat and missed the opportunity to move from being Shadow Scottish Secretary to the real thing (the Tories did relatively poorly in Scotland in a taste of worse times to come):
11.40am: The BBC calls it for Britain's first woman Prime Minister:
10.45am It's striking how important "prices" were to voters in '79:
***
The BBC Parliament Channel is rebroadcasting the Corporation's coverage of the 1979 General Election.
Nothing much to report yet except...
Robin Day smoking a cigar in the BBC studio.
All of the BBC reporters at the various counts have been men although Angela Rippon is in the HQ studio to provide periodic updates.
Frank Bough talking about "old biddies" getting confused about their voting slips.
A Gallup poll for the BBC reminds us that Tory policies were more popular than Mrs T herself...
...wait for opposition.
Here's a taste of what they're going to face:
Hat tip to Tea with a Tory.
At the time of writing...
Christopher Galley, the Home Office whistleblower who fed Damian Green with the leaks that got him into trouble with Bob Quick's anti-terrorist police, has lost his civil service job. Martin Bright thinks that the Conservative Party should help find him new employment: "I believe there is a duty of care on the part of those who directly benefit from the work of whistleblowers towards those who have taken risks on their behalf... [the Conservatives] should help Christopher Galley back into employment immediately."
Do we agree?
One of those quizzes helps you decide. Take it here. My result is below. The most interesting thing is, perhaps, the quiz authors' view that the Tories are pretty neutral on EU integration. I also have a big quarrel with the BNP has neutral on the right/left scale. I'd put them clearly on the left. (And for the avoidance of any doubt I shall be voting Conservative in June!).
1.45pm: I'm told there's this Vote Match too.
The Shadow Home Secretary backed the campaign with these words: "Ryan Giggs is the outstanding British footballer of the last generation. His achievements deserve to be recognised with a knighthood."
Also backing the campaign is Salford's Labour MP Hazel Blears: "Ryan Giggs, as well as an outstanding record on the pitch, has a proud record of voluntary work off the pitch, including with young players in Salford. He is a positive role model in so many ways that he deserves the recognition of a knighthood."
I should say at this point that the campaign and the website behind it - MustBeRed.com (I know, I know, I know) - is a new hobby blog that I'm contributing to. Pete Hoskin from The Spectator's Coffee House and Patrick Casey from PoliticsHome are also involved. I'm grateful to Michael Crick for suggesting the website name. I hope Michael will contribute to the site from time to time.
If you happen to be a United supporter please follow MustBeRed's updates on Twitter. More about the 'Sir Ryan Giggs campaign' here.
Details here.
A PS to my earlier defence of blogs.
Oliver Kamm (of whom I am an admirer) writes that "Blogs are in the main a vehicle for the politically committed to speak to the likeminded."
I know where he is coming from and I do think blogs can be introspective but (1) they have generally improved internal party debates and (2) the overall impact of the internet has been to widen most people's exposure to different views.
When I was growing up I got most of my news from the BBC and from either The Daily Telegraph or The Times. Occasionally I read The Daily Mail.
Today, because of the internet, I enjoy many more sources of news and comment. I read part of almost every online newspaper every day - not least The Guardian and the FT.
It's also true that I don't just read centre right blogs but also a number of left-leaning blogs. My favourites are Tom Harris, Liberal Conspiracy, Martin Bright, Matthew Taylor and - just for light entertainment - Kevin Maguire.
Because of LabourHome and LibDemVoice I am also much better informed about the debates within other parties.
I'd be interested if people would leave comments on their own reading patterns. Have they narrowed or widened because of the internet?
Apparently I'm a sad little boy who sits at my bedroom computer all day. That was Stephen Pound MP's non-defence of smeargate on Sky News earlier when I was debating with him. He didn't even try to defend Labour but went on the attack... against bloggers. And blogs are supposedly the puerile ones?
Mr Pound certainly isn't alone. In the Daily Mail Stephen Glover attacks the blogosphere as a "modern monster".
In The Times Stephen Pollard writes this:
[A good friend of mine was smeared not so long ago by Stephen Pollard. As far as I'm concerned he has no moral authority to write such a thing.]
It's clear that politicians and the old media feel threatened by the internet and for the reasons I set out in today's Guardian they are right to be worried. So what's the defence of blogs?
The so-called quality press isn't so great. When I was effectively Chief of Staff to IDS The Times rang me up about outdated allegations that Iain was misusing the government car. There was no evidence of this (because he wasn't) and I carefully put a Times reporter and the Editor of The Times in touch with the Government Car Service who confirmed that they had no worries. Did that stop The Times splashing the story on its front cover? Of course not. How many other times has the quality press misrepresented people? Most people in public life have at least one story of misrepresentation or inaccuracy.
The internet provides a right of reply... and fast: At least with the internet people don't have to wait one, two or three days in the hope that a newspaper might eventually publish a correction or a letter putting the other perspective. Sloppy journalism can be countered immediately by the blogosphere. Fisking is one of the internet's greatest triumphs.
I'm quite struck by the strength of opinions that Sky News is allowing its political reporters to express on its blogs. In front of camera, on TV, they behave like BBC reporters - probably for legal reasons but online they aren't holding back.
Niall Paterson describes the "Draper and McBride to dress this up as an exchange of emails between friends" as "utter rot". He continues: "[McBride] was Brown's man, and his actions reflect the way in which Gordon Brown operates politically."
Peter Spencer writes of McBride: "Nothing will have become his life (as someone once said) like the leaving of it."
Unfortunately the BBC's Nick Robinson is on his hols so we can't compare what for understandable reasons would undoubtedly be more measured.
The second item on BBC1's 6pm news tonight was the idea that every person in Britain will have to pay £1,250 in tax to close the Labour deficit (Iain Murray blogged on it earlier). Putting aside the alternative possibility of spending cuts for a moment, the £1,250 tags bobbing above the heads of the people passing the camera was quite an arresting image. The bulletin is on iPlayer here for, I think, the next 24 hours.
Barack Obama has just told told a rapturous Prague crowd that he wants to see a world without nuclear weapons. I'm not sure it's an ambition I share. It's certainly not an ambition supported by Margaret Thatcher. She called it "infantile" in 2000.
By massively increasing the horror of war the possession of nuclear weapons by rational states has made war much less likely. Nuclear weapons are probably the most dreadful things man has ever invented but they cannot be disinvented.
I certainly oppose nuclear proliferation but do not see any reason why expansionist, aggressive states like Iran and North Korea will abandon their nuclear ambitions if America and other free nations adopt the moral high ground and disarm. There are strong reasons to think that they will have an added incentive to get a nuclear capacity.
Yes, let's reduce the amount of nuclear weapons in the world but I hope President Obama will tread very carefully on this one.
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