The expenses scandal has delighted the Tories — it keeps Brown in power

James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics

To step into the House of Commons nowadays is like gatecrashing a wake. In happier days, its corridors were full of MPs quietly plotting. Now, the scene is members being offered a supportive squeeze of the shoulder by a colleague. The ones being consoled are those who have been ‘Legged’ — to use a phrase — ordered to repay substantial sums of money by Sir Thomas Legg. There is no gloating over the fate of these unfortunates; too many MPs know it could have been them.

For scores of MPs, such concerns have supplanted normal politics. One shadow cabinet minister told me recently that he had spent ages on the phone trying to get companies to produce receipts for work that he had done five years ago, before coming to the realisation that there were better uses for his time and just refunded the money. But if Legg’s final repayment demands and the Kelly review finally begin to allow parliament to move on from the expenses scandal then politics could start moving again — and at pace.