We’re mid-way through the campaign for the European Parliament elections – though, as yet, discussion of Britain’s role in the EU has not been the, erm, dominant story. But, still, there have been five polls to date in May specifically asking for the public’s Euro voting intentions, so let’s check out what they’ve been saying:
Here they are in chronological order:
Con 36%, Lab 25%, Lib Dem 20%, Ukip 7%, Green 4%, BNP 4%, Nats 4% (YouGov all naming party, 10th May)
Con 37%, Lab 22%, Lib Dem 19%, Ukip 7%, Green 4%, BNP 4%, Nats 5% (YouGov certain to vote, 10th May)
I don’t mean, “Why did he think the public should pay for them?” but “Why did he need 16 bed sheets?” I mean, what would you do with 16 bed sheets?
That’s enough to change your sheets every day for a fortnight, without doing any washing, and still have a couple spare. Even if the country voted in a referendum to give MPs as many sheets as they like, 16 would still seem a bit excessive. So what …
As Lib Dem president Ros Scott has alluded, this is indeed a sad week for British politics. Yet again sleaze has smeared the political canvas, but this time the stuff is flying about at such speed that even we Liberal Democrats seem to be in the thick of it. However, it seems the electorate agrees that, while we are in it, we’re not quite as bad.
But should we rejoice in the likelihood of coming second in next week’s opinion polls? I rather suspect not given that it will come at the expense of the rise in the BNP …
Over at The Observer, Nick Clegg argues, after a tumultuous week in politics, that the public must be given more power than the politicians. Here’s an excerpt:
We are in the eye of the perfect storm: an economic crisis followed by a total collapse of public faith in politicians. One way or another, MPs’ self-serving expenses will now, thankfully, be changed for good. But this must be a moment for fundamental change, not just tinkering to eliminate the worst excesses of the past. The uncomfortable truth is that these revelations are merely the tip of an iceberg – our whole political
Welcome to the first Sunday outing for The Voice’s new daily post series highlighting two big stories from the media and two “must read” blog posts from Liberal Democrats. As it’s a Sunday, there’s also a bonus extra supplement. If you spot anything for future posts, do let us know on [email protected]
2 Big Stories
Indian elections
The big election story of the week is India: massive democracy, increasingly influential in the world and located right next to some of the world’s trouble spots which most make their impact felt here in the UK.
The election results, which have been coming through on Saturday, are looking good for the Congress Party. Indian politics are sufficiently complex and different from the UK’s that for Liberal Democrats it isn’t a simple matter of cheering on one party in particular, but overall it looks like religious extremists are faring poorly. The BBC has an extensive write-up of news as it came in, including the person with a majority of over 350,000, the political analyst who commented that expert predictions turned out to be less accurate than astrologers, the Twittering candidate and links through to lots more detail.
Parliament and Labour in race to the bottom
It’s a tough call at the moment as to who is taking the worst battering: Parliament’s reputation or the Labour Party, who are plumbing new polling depths and now bumping along in the low 20s. There are stories aplenty in the Sunday papers, but the one I’d pick out is The Observer’s round-up as it contains perhaps the oddest comment from a Minister:
“This has been Gordon being too scrupulous: it’s not that he doesn’t get it, but he has felt you have to take parliament with you,”
Silly me, I thought he’d tried to bounce Parliament with his expenses reform proposals and had to pull key parts after it turned out hardly anyone supported them.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
Is our electoral system partly to blame? Mark Reckons asks the question and does some analysis, concluding that the safer an MP’s seat, the more likely they are to have abused the system – and of course our electoral system means that many MPs have safe seats.
Our political system is still getting some things right
Meanwhile, Caron’s Musings rightly highlights that there is more to our political system than MPs’ expenses and lists some of the good things that MPs have done in the last week.
Sunday Bonus
For a bit of Sunday enjoyment, here’s a great spoof advert from last year’s American elections:
If there’s an advantage that comes from not being either a current MP, nor an aspirant MP, it is at least that I can ask a question like this without being lynched by the baying mob.
And I’m not going to delve in here to the issue of ‘cheque-book journalism’ – everyone will have their own views about when it’s justified and when not. My personal view is that, though the issue of MPs’ expenses is very clearly in the public interest, for the Telegraph to have paid a source some £100,000 for seemingly stolen information which includes personal and …
Cleaning, food, interest, mortgage, payments, repairs… those are the sorts of things that this debate has been about so far: the more often a word appears
Required reading for your Saturday morning if you want to understand exactly how we’ve got to where we are, from investigative journalist Heather Brooke in the Guardian:
I did one request for travel information (refused), then for the names and salaries of MPs’ staff (this was blocked personally by Speaker Michael Martin) and then finally one for information on second homes. Initially I asked for the details for all MPs, but this was refused, so then I narrowed it down to 10 – the leaders of the parties and a few ministers.
Blimey, you catch up on your Wire Season 4 viewing and all hell breaks loose. It is with heavy heart and limp jaw that bring you Richard Younger-Ross:
His expenses files show he claims on his Additional Costs Allowance for his £1,556 monthly rent but has also put in receipts for a series of high-cost furnishings.
In May 2004 he put in an invoice for a £1,475 chest of drawers and a £725 free-standing mirror bought at John Lewis. They were made from solid cherrywood by the leading French furniture maker Brigitte Forestier.
Today’s election broadcast from the Conservatives simply features David Cameron talking to camera about MPs and their expense claims. The message is meant to be about him facing up to the problems and talking frankly about them.
But listen to his language:
I want to start by saying sorry … sorry for the actions of some Conservative MPs…
principle of thrift should apply to Conservative MPs too. So from now on I want them to claim what is reasonable to do their job…
Members of my Shadow Cabinet, including Michael Gove, Oliver Letwin and Andrew Lansley, have agreed to pay back money…
The Liberal Democrat President, Ros Scott, has emailed out the following message to party members:
It has not been a good few weeks to be a be a politician. Liberal Democrat parliamentarians have made mistakes and errors of judgement. I would like to apologise to you – the members of our party that tirelessly contribute so much to our cause – for those mistakes. At the meeting of the Federal Executive on Monday we will discuss the issues of expenses and the party’s reaction to it. I can guarantee it will be a full and frank exchange of views.
As if my shopping list for Nick Clegg’s priorities wasn’t already long enough, I also think this whole expenses furore is the absolutely perfect hook for the root and branch electoral reform the Liberal Democrats have been advocating since the dawn of recorded time.
It’s maybe not one for immediate execution, while public anger abates and basic reparations and undertakings are being made (see my previous post).
But the kind of systemic corruption that has been exposed over the past week is clearly linked to our topsey-turvey electoral and constitutional system. Cicero explains in
Let’s start by giving praise where it is due – Nick Clegg may not have done the truly brave thing and published everyone’s expenses before the Telegraph could, but he did haveone real, concrete response ready for the expenses scandal and it was this: Liberal Democrat MPs will pass all gains from their second homes back to the taxpayer on sale. Talking of concrete, I was impressed by the “ton of bricks” imagery, which clearly went down well with the Metro.
The Liberal Democrats at Westminster are engaged in two main tasks. In both Houses, the details of individuals’ claims are being gone through to ensure that they comply with existing Parliamentary rules. Nobody is going to be hung out to dry on the say so of a newspaper. The second task is to reform the existing system, something
Our daily review and preview of the day’s big stories…
2 Big Stories
MPs’ expenses dominate the headlines … again
Another day, another bleak day for Parliamentary politics. Former Agriculture minister Elliot Morley was suspended from the Labour party for claiming £16,000 in expenses on a mortgage he had paid off. Meanwhile, Andrew MacKay, a senior aide to Tory leader David Cameron, resigned after claiming tens of thousands of pounds in second-home expenses on a London property that his wife, Tory MP Julie Kirkbride, designated as her main home. And as if that wasn’t enough, the House of Lords took the exceptional step …
This news release popped into the Voice’s inbox from party HQ late this afternoon – Nick Clegg has today written to Gordon Brown and David Cameron to call on them to declare that they will accept in full the recommendations of Sir Christopher Kelly’s investigation into MPs’ expenses.
Two days ago, like m’colleague Alix, I was nervously braced, fully expecting that at least one Lib Dem MP would be exposed by the Telegraph as a major expenses-sponging freeloader. The downside of the party having grown to 63 MPs was, surely, that one of them would have made a catastrophic error of judgement, one so serious it would result in their being publicly shamed.
The party as a whole, and in particular Nick Clegg as leader, would then have the painful task of working out how they should be disciplined (withdrawal of the whip, compulsory reselection?), almost certainly …
Not the kind of stern injunction I was expecting to come out with after a day of Liberal Democrat expenses revelations, I must say. I was all prepared to be angry, disappointed, humbled and even-handedly condemnatory. It has become a sort of communally agreed ceasefire in the political blogosphere and the media in the past few days – no-one’s allowed to query, say “eh?” or doubt the word of the Telegraph. That would be being cocky and partisan. One must only observe the same humilities as everybody else. Shock horror expressions must be worn at
We-the-taxpayer already pay our MPs a salary of at least £60,000 a year, and provide them with an allowance for a second home to cook and eat in.
I don’t think, therefore, there is any justification for a separate allowance for food costs. But if there is, one can anyone explain why one MP can feed themselves on around £100 per month …
This headline is just beyond parody. I kid you not: Steve Webb sold one flat and bought another, claiming £8,400 stamp duty
What?? He SOLD a flat, what, and then BOUGHT another? Treachery! Infamy! Off with his head!
Of course, he could have rented and saved us the £8,500. And under Clegg’s original set of proposals for expense reform, rejected by Cameron and Brown, that would be exactly what would have happened. As it is, we’ll have to make do
So far as I can work out, teneleven Lib Dem MPs have been identified by the Telegraph as having expenses claims to answer. Yesterday evening, there was talk of a dozen, so either the figure was exaggerated and we’ve seen all there is to see, or else they’re holding back a couple of the worst for a …
Has a £30 subscription to Sky Sports at his second home. Pay attention, football fans, Sky Sports =/= necessary to perform the duties of an MP. Not a huge sum, but still. 2/5
Now, at the time of writing Alan Reid’s page isn’t linked from the Telegraph’s main Lib Dem Expenses feed page, and to be honest I wonder if that’s because they’re bloody ashamed of it. They ought
There’s no peace for a blogger this morning. Earlier today I gave Andrew George, whose flat is sometimes used by his daughter, a stern 4/5 for piggy-wiggyness. My basis for this was that, whatever the precise ratio of usage between Andrew and his daughter, I didn’t want to pay for something that was for her benefit as well as his.
“Not in the same league,” said Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight last night, of Liberal Democrat expense claims, as compared to those of the other two parties.
Well, ok, as Norman Baker pointed out on the programme, no moats, no swimming pools, no house flipping and no Margaret Moranesque holiday homes. Yet. But there are still some pretty rotten apples. And it’s worse for the Lib Dems, precisely because we have campaigned on this issue for so long. So, who are the Lib Dem piggy-wiggies?
Well, firstly, the Telegraph has released details concerning twelve of
Of course, I realise that’s not entirely the point – to have ill-advisedly claimed even the most minor items brings the system and Parliament into disrepute, allowing the media and our opponents to say we’re all the same. And as Hywel notes in an LDV comment thread below, ‘“Not as corrupt as other MPs” …
Sir Menzies Campbell’s expenses claims show that he brought in the designer to fit out his small flat in Dolphin Square, a few hundred yards from the House of Commons.
He justified the claims by saying he had not used his full second home allowance in previous years.
The refurbishment claim under the Additional Costs Allowance included Roman blinds worth £528.75, five cushions costing £176.25, four bedside
Tomorrow is “our” big day. I know Stephen has just posted on this, and I wouldn’t like to suggest that Lib Dem Voice is anything other than a smooth, slick uni-messaging operation, but I’d just like to have my twopenny’s worth before the revelations begin. You can do that when you have posting privileges.
First of all, I say “our” day, but actually watching the expenses scandal unfold has been the first non party-political experience I’ve had of watching the news for some time.
I’m self-employed, surviving on family hand-outs and on the dwindling work
David Allen A clear, credible, principled strategy from the Yorkists! Makes a welcome change.
Sadly, followed by twenty below-the-line posts, providing nearly twenty ve...
Simon McGrath so we get a permanant increase in costs for these subsidies based on ( alleged ) windfall profits. Its another big increase in spending -how is it to be paid ...
Peter Davies @Kira CollinsThat assumes we want to help people more with their energy bills than with all the other bills they may be struggling with. There is no reason why ...
Rob Heale Agree that we need to focus on strategy and have clearer messaging:-
1. We MUST prioritise membership recruitment in all we do, including PPB's, most leaflets...
Kira Collins Disappointed. The most obvious means of reducing energy bills is to remove VAT. Relatively straightforward to do and does not adversely impact on the attractive...
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The pine martens of Shropshire
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Should Labour reconsider the Brexit red lines?
Raising a flap about letterboxes
Restrained
David Allen 
Simon McGrath 
Peter Davies 
Rob Heale 
Kira Collins 