Westminster

Unlike Ben Brogan and Iain Martin, I don’t have a vested interest: British Airways weren’t going to be flying me anywhere this Christmas. Having spent days roasting on the aprons of the world, I’ve ceased to entertain the notion that BA is capable of flying me anywhere. I suspect the million or so who face the prospect of the grimmest ever escape to the sun will develop a similar antipathy. Cooked up by Len McCluskey, who cut his teeth with that doyen militancy, Derek Hatton, this strike has tragedy written all over it. As Billy Hayes and the posties proved, the unions rarely realise their unshakeable terms and conditions these

It’s a pity the Spectator has already run a political scandals supplement: the Telegraph’s latest scoop is a sordid classic. The Telegraph allege that Tory MP David Curry has claimed £28,078 on a second home from which his wife had banned from using after Curry used it as a rendezvous for assignations with a local school mistress. Curry is standing down at the next election and could make a packet if he sells the taxpayer funded property. There is a further complication. Until last night, Curry was the chairman of the parliamentary standards and privileges committee, the authority that decides how errant MPs will be punished. The committee was rightly criticised

Even before the Queen had trundled back to Buckingham Palace, Mandy had let the cat out of the bag. Speaking on BBC News he said of the Gracious Speech, ‘All these laws are relevant … and achievable. It will be for the public to decide whether they want them or not.’  There you have it. The greatest power in the land admits the Queen’s Speech is Labour’s manifesto. The response to the Gracious Speech is an enjoyably ragged parliamentary occasion, full of ancient traditions and even more ancient jokes. Frank Dobson proposed the Humble Address and spoke with pride about his Holborn constituency where the anti-Apartheid movement had been born.

This snippet from Jon Snow’s latest blog-post (with my emphasis) is jaw-dropping: “To add to matters, I have learned that the Labour party is now going through its ranks of peers to determine where their ‘principal residence’ is. This after years of wholesale abuse of the system in which lords and ladies of all persuasions have claimed distant holiday homes to enable them to get the accompanying unreceipted travel expenses. I have also learned that ‘arrangements’ have been made to allow serving ministers in the Lords to claim a residence out of town ‘for necessary respite’, retrospectively protecting ministers and law officers who may have claimed for such provision.” It’s

This week’s interviewee on the BBC’s Straight Talk with Andrew Neil is Peter Hain. One of the topics for discussion is Labour’s disengagement with its core vote and the rise of the BNP. Hain admits that this can be ascribed to Labour’s failings and Westminster’s disengagement with voters. Certainly, Labour’s failure on housing and migration has been a major factor in Griffin’s rise. But there is nothing to suggest that Labour has the political strength to re-engage. Even after the recent furore, there have been no new initiatives on housing or migration, just pitiful contrition in the place of action. Hain’s outright refusal to share a platform with the BNP

Rachel Sylvester’s essential Times column describes the ‘Court of Public Opinion’ as a lynch mob that must be placated by MPs embracing the Kelly Review. She writes: ‘The real problem about expenses is that they have made it harder for politicians to show leadership about the things that matter far more. The verdict of the court of public opinion is too harsh on many MPs. But unless they accept it, serve the sentence and move on, they will never be able to convince the voters to listen to them on anything else.’ Even if MPs accept the Kelly Review in its entirety, grovel, flagellate and repent, the Court of Public

Next week is going to be dominated by Sir Christopher Kelly’s scheme for reforming MPs’ expenses and allowances. The party leaders are trying to force these reforms through, believing that it would be disastrous for the reputation of politics if MPs don’t accept these reforms in full. But the leaks about what Kelly will propose suggest that some of his ideas are ill thought-out and should not be accepted in full. Take the proposal that all MPs whose constituency station is within 60 minutes of a London train station will not be allowed to claim support for a second home. But this ignores the time it takes an MP both

Here’s one for Coffee Housers: is this government sleazier than John Major’s?  Asked that question on the BBC News channel’s Straight Talk with Andrew Neil this weekend, Martin Bell has no doubts.  “I think this one is worse,” he says. But that’s not the end of it.  The former independent MP thinks that the parties need to start looking towards their front benches if they’re to properly cleanse the taint left from the expenses scandal: “But I do think it is going to require the assisted departure of all frontbenchers of both parties who have claimed unreasonable and disproportionate expenses.  And if you look back over the dramas of the last four

As far as the BNP is concerned, Nick Griffin has already won this Question Time debate. It’s not about whether he does badly or well – he simply wins from the publicity. He’s been on Channel Four news, got an interview in today’s Times, all will be splashed all across the tabloids tomorrow – and that’s before we consider the Question Time slot itself. Then, he will win because, as we emphasise in the leader of this week’s magazine, millions watch Question Time. For every 50 people who think he disgraced himself, there may be only one person who thinks he might have a point. But, for Griffin, that will

The 1922 committee of Tory MPs is meeting now and the word is that there will be a concerted push to defend the right of MPs to employ their relatives; something that MPs on all sides fear the Kelly review will try to ban. In a Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion way, it is easy to say that MPs shouldn’t be able to employ family members. But there is no doubt that there are a lot of relatives, and spouses especially, who are working extremely hard for their salary. Given the hours MPs work and the fact that they have to be in two places, one can see why