In case you missed it, England won a Test match today and four soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Anyway back to expenses.
The Telegraph concentrates again on Labour in further revelations on Saturday. On doubt the story will dominate the news agenda over the weekend. Interestingly, Alan Johnson has come out of all this rather well. Moving on.
Several points. One, forgetting the YouTube fiasco, do these revelations vindicate Brown’s desire to sort the expense issue out and not wait for the Standards Committee to report?
Two, the public may well react in a negative way towards the main political parties in the forthcoming elections. This could well drive votes to the minor parties, particularly the BNP, giving them seats in these peculiar circumstances.
Three, back to Brown. The Telegraph’s revelations could well have an influence in helping Moses survive. If (and it is a big if at the stage) some MPs are forced to resign, causing by-elections, it well deter a Cabinet revolt. Furthermore, if the minor parties do well in June, Labour could well argue with some justification, that the expenses issue has distorted the results.
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It was right and proper to publish this data - there is clear public interest and the redacted data would have concealed a lot of the wrongdoing.
ReplyDeleteThe outcome of this will be an entire generation of politicans contaminated by sleaze. They will glow toxic yellow every time they are seen in public. Straw, Hoon, Blears, Bradshaw, Woolas, Smith..... A lot of MPs will not survive the constituency selection process, let alone the general election. I doubt there will be any resignations, they will try and brazen it out and trouser as much as possible in the next 12 months.
Only Alan Johnson seems immune at the moment.
The Tories may not fare well either, but they're not in government and Cameron will handle this better than Brown.
It needed done...the pigsty needed to be scrubbed clean and this was the only way.
I share your point about by-elections, in fact I took issue with Jackie Ashley when she first raised this. However do you think it makes it easier for Brown to survive?
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