Dan Hannan went viral and wowed the YouTube generation with his speech. For a moment he seemed to have eclipsed Douglas Carswell, who was with Hannan the co-author of The Plan. In the short time Carswell has been in parliament he has made some impact with his coherent critique of the political status quo. He is independently minded and often described as a maverick; he has already managed to upset the Conservative Party establishment, turn down a PPS job offer designed to stifle him, upset the powerful defence industry lobby and break with parliamentary convention by championing the ousting of a disgraced Speaker. Not bad work.
He has a slim majority of 920. Guido expects the voters of Harwich and North Essex to return him with acclaimation at the general election…
He presided over a period which saw parliament develop a culture of corruption. Not just the universal tendency of politicians the world over to travel on a taxpayer funded gravy train. He himself was compromised by being one of the most outrageous examples of personal enrichment at the public’s expense while pretending to be a public servant.
He also repeatedly failed in his duty to defend the rights of parliament against the power of the executive. He should not be allowed to retire with the dignity of a peerage, he has disgraced the office of Speaker.
The grassroots of all the main parties are pretty outraged with their parliamentary representatives. ConservativeHome polled readers who overwhelmingly wanted troughing Tories punished and deselected. LibDem activists lobbied their Federal Executive over Chris Rennard’s dishonesty. Labour activists including prospective candidates and elected councillors have written to the party’s governing NEC to change the rules to allow troughing MPs to be deselected more easily.
Clegg has been lucky in that none of his MPs have so far been accused of flipping properties. The difference between the reactions of the party leaders is clear. When Cameron became aware that Andrew MacKay was on the fiddle, he immediately dispensed with his senior adviser before the sun rose. Cameron went further yesterday and told Conservatives to sack their local Tory MP if they had their snoughts in the trough. Guido will stick his neck out and say that by contrast Gordon will do whatever he can to hold onto Nick Brown, his troughing chief whip, come what may. No wonder over 100 Labour activists have described the prime minister as “negligent” in his response so far to the unfolding revelations about the allowance system.
The Labour Party whips office has been revealed to be corrupt through and through, yet it is supposed to police the PLP’s behaviour. Labour’s chief whip Nick Brown has claimed tens of thousands of pounds without producing a receipt. Gordon Brown sits in cabinet with James Purnell, Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith and Geoff Hoon. Each of them has defrauded the taxpayer and milked the system to an extraordinary degree. As long as they sit around the table he presides over a cabinet of crooks.
FoI : Downing Street Gives Me Some Emails - Iain Dale
Expensegate: Naming a Scandal - New York Times
Little People No Longer Look Up to the Big - Rachel Sylvester
Taxodus : Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich - WSJ
Grassroots: Take Whip from Fiddling MPs - LabourHome
In the Name of God… Go, Call Election Now - Sun
Indy Defaults on Bonds, Has Until Late June - Reuters
Hurrah for the Unlovable Free Press - John Lloyd
Five Things Cameron Must Do - ConservativeHome
Public Deserves Purge of the Guilty - Andrew Rawnsley
Five Non-Fiddling Labour MPs - LabourHome
Gordon Brown’s Expenses - City Unslicker
MPs Already in Top 1% of Earners - Chris Dillow
Who Should Be Speaker? - Comment Central
Walter Meers, Veteran AP reporter said…
“There are too many excursions into trivia, too much play for the public opinion polls, too many words about who’s ahead and who’s behind. There’s a reason. That is what people want to know.”
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