Cameron and Clegg v the system

My Saturday column in today's Newcastle Journal takes as its theme the current controversy over MPs expenses and the conduct of House of Commons business generally and the way in which both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both sought to exploit that.

As the more perceptive observers of Tory politics have already noted, Mr Cameron is clearly seeking to position himself in the vanguard of a growing public desire for the modernisation of our political institutions. So, too, in his different way, is Mr Clegg.

In this sense they are both "running against Westminster" in the same way that Barack Obama and to a lesser extent John McCain are running against their own party establishments.

It's not good news for Gordon Brown, who fluffed the opportunity to seize the reform mantle last summer by bringing forward a rather timid constitutional reform package, long before the "dodgy donations" affair put paid to his ambitions to restore trust in British politics.