MPs' expenses: Gordon Brown plays The Godfather

Gordon Brown sounded decidedly sinister yesterday when asked how Labour would stamp out sleazy activity by its MPs. “Any MP who has misbehaved will be dealt with,” the Prime Minister growled, in finest capo di capi mode.

Yes, but how exactly will he work out who deserves his as yet unspecified punishment ? Well, he’s fallen back on that good old Labour standby, the internal disciplinary panel, which held its first meeting yesterday.

Given the scale and complexity of this scandal, you might expect this panel to be manned by a judge, or at the very least an ex-judge, plus a QC to lead the cross-examination and certainly an accountant to make sense of the numbers and the tax implications.

So who have they got? Well, there’s Cath Speight, the chairman of the party’s National Executive Committee, who became an AEU shop steward 28 years ago and a full-time union official more than a decade ago. Then there’s Ann Black, another NEC member, who is a computer programmer at Oxford Brookes University.  And last but not least there is Sir Jeremy Beecham, who first became a councilor more than 40 years ago and has been a big cheese in local government for donkey’s  years.

All worthy people, no doubt, but are they really qualified to undertake a forensic and complicated investigation into the expenses claims of wayward Labour MPs? What do you think?