Chaytor in chokey

Log it in your diaries, CoffeeHousers: on this day – Friday, 7th January, 2011 – a former MP was sent to jail for abusing the parliamentary expenses system. Yes, David Chaytor has been sentenced to eighteen months for, ahem, “false accounting” his way to £18,000 of taxpayers’ cash. He’s the first former parliamentarian to be sent down since Jeffrey Archer in 2001.

As fallout from the expenses scandal goes, it’s probably the most searing example yet. But the question now is whether there will be any fallout from the fallout, so to speak. While Chaytor’s punishment draws a line under his involvement in this sorry saga, it could yet turn expenses into an immediate political issue again – reminding the public of just how despicably some MPs acted, and how angering it all was. The ongoing trials involving Elliot Morley, Jim Devine, Eric Illsley, Lord Hanningfield and Lord Taylor could open the old wounds even further.