Nothing gets politicians so worked up as a Boundary Review

THIS week, The Journal reported that there had been more than 900 objections lodged with the Boundary Commission over its plan to alter the face of the region’s one real rock solid Tory enclave – the parliamentary seat of Hexham.

The plans, drawn up last September as part of the government’s proposal to reduce the size of the House of Commons by around 50 seats, would see historic country boundaries crossed in the name of ‘equalising’ the size of constituencies across the country.

If the proposals go ahead, the North-East will see its overall representation in Parliament fall from 29 to 26 with no part of the region unaffected by the changes.

For some of the region’s MPs, it is likely to mean the end of the political road, while those that survive are will find themselves standing for re-election in constituencies almost unrecognisable from their existing ones.

In nowhere than Hexham has the opposition to the government’s plans been more intense.

All three main parties – including the Conservatives and their sitting MP Guy Opperman – have come out against the proposals, with the 950 letters of opposition equalling the number received in all the other 28 North East constituencies put together.

What the opponents of the changes find particularly galling is the fact that the proposed new constituency will breach the historic county boundary between Northumberland and County Durham, with Haltwhistle moving into a newly-created seat of Consett and Barnard Castle.

Other proposed new constituencies in the region – for example Newcastle North and Cramlington – will see the traditional divide between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas breached, although, perhaps surprisingly, these seem to have aroused much less opposition to date.

But the ongoing debate over Hexham could prove to be a microcosm of a much larger battle over the government’s proposals which could yet influence both the timing and the outcome of the next general election.

In my column last week, I speculated that Nick Clegg’s proposals for House of Lords reform could ultimately prove to the rock on which the Coalition founders, with Conservative peers, who want to maintain the second chamber’s built-in Tory majority, threatening to derail his plans.

What does that have to do with Parliamentary boundaries, I hear you ask? Well, potentially quite a lot.

For the Lib Dems are threatening to retaliate against the potential loss of their leader’s cherished Lords reform plans by scuppering the Tories’ attempts to reduce the number of MPs.

Now at first sight, you might think this was yet another ill-judged policy intervention by the Lib Dems that is likely to prove about as big a vote-winner for them as their support for the Euro.

Years of mounting public cynicism about politicians – capped by the MPs’ expenses scandal – have created a climate in which any party advocating a reduction in their numbers is likely to be on pretty firm electoral ground.

But politicians are never so exercised as when their own jobs are under threat – and for that reason alone, a Lib Dem revolt against the boundary review proposals could have a very real prospect of success.

A small number of Tory MPs affected by the changes – some of them only elected for the first time in 2010 and whose parliamentary careers face being cut off in their infancy – might even be persuaded to join such a rebellion.

This is not just about the Lib Dems getting their own back on the Tories, though. There is undoubtedly an element of calculation in the party’s stance.

It is estimated that the boundary changes will be worth an extra 20 seats for the Conservatives at the next election – some of which will undoubtedly come at the expense of their Coalition partners.

The changes will therefore make it much more likely that there will be a majority Conservative administration next time round, and correspondingly much less likely that the Lib Dems will again be in a position to hold the balance of power.

Killing off the boundary review might yet be the Lib Dems’ best hope of hanging onto their ministerial limousines. And it might even win them a few votes in Hexham.

Local paper reveals Brown is to stay on as an MP

I have to say I was gratified to read this story today, and not just because it gave us a great top story on HoldtheFrontPage this morning.

In my view, Tony Blair's decision to quit as MP for Sedgefield in 2007 in order to swan off round the world making millions of pounds was completely deplorable and an insult not only to his constituents but to the House of Commons.

My heart sank on Tuesday evening when Boulton and Co started suggesting that Gordon would do the same following his resignation as Prime Minister and Labour leader, but of course I should have known better.

Gordon always had that loyalty to his own people that Blair lacked, and there is no way a man with a public service ethic as strong as his would not wish to continue to serve his constituents as a backbench MP. Well done to the Fife Free Press for correcting this ill-informed national media speculation.

Kelly has gone too far

Yes, MPs brought the expenses affair on themselves, and yes, the system needs to be reformed - but reforming it on the basis of a 'blood sacrifice' will not necessarily produce a better Parliament. Here's today's Journal column.

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Ever since the start of the MPs expenses affair, it has been clear that no one political party has had a monopoly on sleazy behaviour.

From Tory knight Sir Peter Viggers’ duck island to Labour ex-minister Elliott Morley’s mortgage claims, the scandal has engulfed those on all sides of the political divide.

You might expect from this that the net effect of the whole debacle in terms of the opinion polls would be pretty well neutral.

But that is not in fact how the public has seen it. In fact, polls have consistently shown that the public regards Labour as far more culpable than the Tories in its handling of the affair.

In a sense, that is inevitable given that Labour is the party in power.

After all, as I have noted previously, the government had every opportunity to spot this car crash coming down the tracks, and every opportunity to reform the expenses system before the extent of the abuse became clear.

But of course, it didn’t, and fearful of the hostile opinion polls, the Prime Minister is now falling over himself to implement the clampdown on MPs expenses that he should have brought forward a year ago.

The net result is that Mr Brown was left with very little wriggle room once standards chief Sir Christopher Kelly had published his own recommendations on how to reform the system this week.

Mr Brown and the other party leaders have already made clear they expect MPs to implement Sir Christopher’s proposals in full – but to my mind, this is not necessarily a good thing.

At the risk of provoking a furious backlash from Journal readers, I am not sure that effectively banning most MPs from purchasing second homes does not amount to something of an over-reaction.

The statute books are full of bad legislation, hastily passed in the aftermath of a moral panic, of which the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1995 is perhaps the most notorious example.

We seem to be on the verge of making a similar mistake with MPs’ expenses, inventing rules designed to produce a ‘cathartic moment,’ or worse, a ‘blood sacrifice,’ rather than considering the most sensible system going forward.

For me, the key question is: will what is being proposed improve the quality of Parliament?

In this region, we are set to see perhaps the biggest exodus of political talent in a generation, with parliamentarians as diverse and distinguished as Jim Cousins, Alan Milburn and Chris Mullin all set to leave the Commons.

Their departures will, in my view, leave a hole in the region’s body politic that may take some years to fill.

But if on top of that, the new expenses regime causes some genuinely public-spirited individuals to conclude that they can no longer afford to represent us, it will be a sad day indeed.

My worry is that we are seeing an example the law of unintended political consequences, whereby a measure designed to clamp down on the political gravy train ends up primarily penalising MPs of no independent means.

There is a risk that we will end up with a situation in which the only people who can afford to be MPs are those rich enough to be able to buy second homes in London without the help of a mortgage.

If so, it will mean history will have come full circle since the days before the Labour Party was formed in order to provide parliamentary representation for the newly-enfranchised industrial working class.

Perhaps, at a time when Eton College seems set to regain its reputation for supplying the British ruling elite, we should not be so surprised at this.

Who will clean up Parliament?

Who will be the one to clean-up politics in the wake of the MPs expenses scandal? David Cameron? Gordon Brown? Or perhaps new Speaker John Bercow? Here's today's Journal column.

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So was it a petty act of revenge by Labour MPs who know they are going to lose their seats and want to leave as poisoned a legacy as they can for David Cameron and the Tories?

Or was it a long-overdue attempt to provide a fresh start for a House of Commons tarnished almost beyond redemption by the MPs’ expenses scandal?

If the truth be told, the election of one-time Thatcherite radical John Bercow as the 157th Commons Speaker this week was probably a bit of both.

While some of the MPs who voted for him on Monday undoubtedly did so to make life uncomfortable for the Tories, who by and large detest their former colleague, others genuinely saw him as the candidate best-placed to provide a “clean break” with recent events.

Okay, so I wanted Sir Alan Beith to win, and I thought Margaret Beckett would win, but it is clear the former Foreign Secretary suffered from a backlash in the final days against what were seen as government attempts to install her.

As one sketch-writer who wrote a delightful account of the election using horseracing metaphors put it: “Mrs Beckett was deemed to have made excessive use of the whips.”

I was right about one thing, and that was that the election would be determined by whether Labour MPs decided to swing en bloc behind a single candidate

In the end they did, but that candidate was not Mrs Beckett, but Mr Bercow, who at 46 becomes the youngest Speaker since the 19th century and the first person of the Jewish faith to hold the post.

Already the new Speaker has made his mark. Indeed, anyone watching his first Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday might have concluded that he, not Gordon Brown or Mr Cameron, was the real star of the show.

Ticking off braying MPs for making too much noise during the weekly half-hour joust, he told them: “The public doesn't like it and neither do I."

On another occasion, he told the Tory backbencher Michael Fabricant to calm down as "it is not good for your health".

And he cut short a rambling question by the Labour backbencher Patrick Hall on housing, telling him he had “got the gist” of what he was saying.

I suspect Mr Bercow is right in thinking that the public will be generally sympathetic to his attempts to bring what he calls “an atmosphere of calm, reasoned debate” to the parliamentary bear-pit.

But he is walking a difficult tightrope. Just as spin doctors are not supposed to become the story, neither are House of Commons Speakers.

Although it is understandable that he wanted to make a splash with his first PMQs, he will need to learn to fade into the background if he is to avoid becoming a political football like Michael Martin.

To paraphrase Dr W.G. Grace, if he starts to believe that the public have come to watch him umpiring rather than the MPs performing, then his days in the Chair will be numbered.

The central conundrum facing Mr Bercow is ultimately the one that did for Mr Martin – is the Speaker merely the servant of the House, or should he or she in some way seek to be its master?

The truth is that Mr Bercow will somehow have to be both – seeking to nudge the House in the direction of reform, while ultimately reflecting its wishes.

Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Brown, at least, do not have that dilemma. Each of them is seeking to persuade the public that he is the man to “clean up politics” in the wake of the expenses scandal.

Sadly for the Prime Minister, it is a contest which currently he is decisively losing.

From the start of the expenses row, Mr Cameron has led the way in taking action against his own recalcitrant MPs, and this week he ordered them to pay back another £125,000 to the taxpayer.

The Tory leader seems to be preparing the ground for a large-scale clearout which could see up to half of the current crop of Conservative MPs stand down at the election.

In a speech this week, he also sought to link the need for reform with the need for people to regain power over their own lives, highlighting the drift towards the “surveillance state” under Labour.

Mr Brown has concentrated more on wider constitutional reforms, but has been predictably outflanked on this score by Mr Clegg, who has the advantage of leading a party that genuinely believes in it.

In a speech this week, the Prime Minister said voters wanted to see his government clean-up politics, help people through the recession, and – wait for it – “put forward our vision.”

But the fact that Mr Brown is still talking about setting out his “vision” two years after coming to power is surely emblematic of the failure of his administration.

Nowhere has this failure been more acute than in the field of restoring trust in politics, which was supposed to be the big theme of his premiership in the wake of the loans for lordships scandal and the general moral decay of the Blair years.

If cleaning-up Parliament had been part of Mr Brown’s confounded “vision” in the first place, Parliament would probably not be in the mess it is in now.

Could it be Prime Minister Bercow one day?

At the risk of giving the Tories another bout of apoplexy, there are some interesting historical precedents surrounding the election of very young House of Commons Speakers in terms of what happened in their subsequent careers.

The year 1789 is chiefly remembered for being the year of the French Revolution. But it was also the year the Commons elected two thirty-something Speakers who both went on to occupy Number 10 Downing Street.

The first of these was William Grenville, who was elected Speaker at the ripe old age of 30 and held the office only very briefly before quitting to become Home Secretary.

In his place was elected the 32-year-old Henry Addington, who remained in the Chair until 1801 when he suddenly found himself elevated to the Premiership in place of his childhood friend Pitt the Younger, who declared that Addington was the only successor he could countenance.

In the meantime, Grenville had gone into opposition, along with his close ally Charles James Fox. But in 1806, he was summoned by King George III to head up what was termed the Ministry of All Talents, though unfortunately for him, it only lasted a year.

Even further back, in 1715, one Spencer Compton was elected to the Commons chair at the age of 42 - four years younger than John Bercow is now. He served as Speaker for 12 years until 1727, when he was elevated to the House of Lords as the 1st Earl of Wilmington. In 1742, he succeeded Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister.

Bercow has said he will do nine years in the Chair, effectively two full Parliaments plus the toe-end of this one. That will make him 55 when he stands down - younger than Gordon Brown was when he became Prime Minister in 2007.

The only remaining question is: If Bercow did decide to pursue a post-Speakership career, would it be as a Tory or a Labour MP?

Who will win the race for the Speakership?

By all rights it should be Sir Alan Beith, but it probably won't be. Here's today's Journal column.

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It is often the case with politicians that nothing so becomes them in their conduct of an office as the leaving of it, and this week, House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin proved he was no exception.

For nine years, he has presided uneasily over a Chamber which elected him to the post for quite the wrong reasons in the first place, and has had good cause to regret that choice moreorless ever since.

The errors of judgement have been legion, from his early refusal to call MPs who had failed to vote for him in 2000, to the ill-starred attempt to block freedom of information requests over MPs’ expenses last year.

Yet at the same time, it is impossible not to feel some sympathy for the doughty old Glaswegian, especially over the manner of his dismissal by MPs seeking a convenient scapegoat for their own moral failures.

It was inevitable that the outgoing Speaker would allude to that in his valedictory speech on Thursday, lamenting the lack of leadership shown by the main party leaders in failing to reform the expenses system sooner.

Predictable too were the treacly tributes paid to Mr Martin by the very people who brought him down – not least Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg who praised his “great authority.”

Some will call it hypocrisy, but in reality it’s just the way of the world. Just as we don’t speak ill of the dead, so in politics people tend not to speak ill of the political living dead.

Since his resignation last month, much of the anger and hostility that had built up against Mr Martin has dissipated, as it invariably does in politics. One day soon, no doubt, they will praise Gordon Brown for his “great leadership” too.

So who should replace him in Monday’s election? Well, there are ten candidates – seven Tories, two Labour members, and a lone Liberal Democrat in the shape of our very own Berwick MP, Sir Alan Beith.

The Tories are a fascinatingly varied bunch, ranging from a candidate in John Bercow who is a Labour MP in all but name, to one in Sir Patrick Cormack who is the epitome of the old ‘knights of the shires’ who used to dominate the Tory benches.

In between, they have the “bicycling baronet,” Sir George Young, two serving deputy speakers in Sir Alan Haselhurst and Sir Michael Lord, and the backbench maverick Richard Shepherd – all four of them making their second attempts on the job.

Finally, there is the Tories’ “interim candidate”- former Home Office minister Anne Widdecombe, whose intention to use the ten months between now and the general election to clean up Parliament is surely beyond even her formidable talents.

On the Labour side, there are two wildly contrasting contenders – the 37-year-old former junior minister Parmjit Dhanda, and the vastly experienced former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.

Two weeks ago, Mrs Beckett was begging Mr Brown in vain to make her a full member of the Cabinet once again, yet her subsequent emergence as a serious runner for the Speakership shows once more just what a political survivor she is.

Mr Dhanda, bidding to become the first ethnic minority Speaker, has fought an equally remarkable campaign, attracting highly positive reviews for someone so relatively inexperienced.

Finally there is Sir Alan, also running for the second time and the man with surely the hardest task in the race, in that he will need to attract most of his support from MPs of a different party to win.

So who should get the job? Well, a lot depends on whether MPs take a high-minded view of the needs of Parliament, or whether, like the last Speakership election, it becomes dominated by faction-fighting and tactical considerations.

In the wake of the expenses scandal all the contenders, in one way or another, are running as “pro-reform” candidates, but only one of them can point to a consistent record of being pro-reform over the course of four decades.

As he put it in his manifesto: “Public anger has created both a need and an opportunity for wider constitutional change, which is something to which I have been committed throughout my political life.”

There is little doubt in my mind that if MPs want a parliamentary reformer who really means it, they should elect Sir Alan Beith on Monday.

But will he get it? I have to say I think it’s unlikely, based on the fact that for all the talk of putting Parliament first, the two big parties still have a tendency to vote tribally in these sorts of situations.

At one point, Labour MPs looked set to try to impose Mr Bercow, who is disliked on his own benches, in revenge for the Tories’ role in bringing down their shop steward, Mr Martin.

There has been less of such talk in recent days, but the desire to dish the opposition is always a factor in politics and even though it is the Tories’ “turn” to provide the Speaker, both their leading candidates have been tainted by the expenses row.

Sir Alan Haselhurst was found to have charged his £12,000 gardening bill to the taxpayer, while Sir George Young claimed the maximum £127,000 in second home allowances over past two years.

If the next Speaker is to be a Conservative, Sir George still appears to be the one most capable of winning cross-party support, but one factor that cannot be ignored is that Labour still has by far the largest number of MPs.

If those MPs decide to swing behind one candidate en bloc, as they did with Mr Martin in 2000, that candidate is going to be very hard to beat.

My judgement therefore is that the next Speaker will be the candidate who can secure the most support from Labour MPs, while at the same time attracting a significant number of votes from the other parties.

On that basis, I am going to stick my neck out and say that the likeliest winner of the race to be the 157th Speaker of the House of Commons is Mrs Margaret Beckett.

The big, unanswered questions

Who will be the next Speaker? Will there be an October election? And will we get proportional representation? Just some of the many unanswered questions that have arisen from the MPs expenses scandal. Here's today's Journal column.

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For most of the past two years, the biggest unanswered question in politics has been whether Gordon Brown will survive to lead Labour into the next election, and it is a question that is still awaiting an answer.

But seldom can any week in politics have thrown up as many unanswered questions as the last one, a week which has seen the first defenestration of a House of Commons Speaker for 300 years and talk of a “quiet revolution” in our political system.

Several careers besides those of Michael Martin have already ended. Several more are hanging by a thread. And the pressure for a wholesale electoral clear-out of the "Duck Island Parliament" is growing.

We now know the true, appalling extent of the scandal over MPs' expenses. What we can still only guess at at this stage is its longer-term impact.

First, there are the small-to-middling questions, mainly concerning individuals. How many more MPs will be forced to stand down at the next election? Who will lose their jobs in the next reshuffle? Who will be the next Speaker?

Then there are the slightly broader questions. How will the public’s anger at the behaviour of the political classes feed through into voting habits? Will the “incumbency factor” that has always favoured sitting MP go into reverse? And will the next election herald a new wave of independents?

Then of course there is the question of when that election will finally be held, and whether Mr Brown will pay the political price for failing to reform the system until it was too late.

Finally, perhaps the most far-reaching question of all. Will the expenses scandal ultimately result in an historic reshaping of our parliamentary democracy, or alternatively bring about its final demise?

In terms of the questions around the futures of individual MPs, the North-East is as good a place as any to start.

Will Tyne Bridge MP David Clelland, controversially reselected in preference to neighbouring MP Sharon Hodgson, now fund himself deselected after claiming for the cost of buying out his partner’s £45,000 stake in his London flat, despite his very full and frank explanations of the reasons behind the move?

Will Durham North’s Kevan Jones and other “squeaky clean” MPs who voluntarily laid bare their expense claims be rewarded for their candour, or will they find themselves tar-brushed along with their sleazier counterparts?

And will Sir Alan Beith crown a notable career of public service by achieving his ambition of the Speakership - or will the fact that both he and his wife, Baroness Maddock, claimed second home allowances on the same property ultimately count against him?

On that last point, I have to say it would give me great pleasure to see the long-serving Berwick MP in the Speaker’s chair, although if he were not standing down from Parliament, Sunderland South’s Chris Mullin would be an equally admirable choice.

If the truth be told, the North-East should have had the Speakership last time round. The region had three candidates in Mr Beith, David Clark, and John McWilliam, all of whom would have done a better job than Michael Martin – though some would argue that is not saying much.

Ultimately Mr Martin fell not because of shaky grasp of Commons procedure or even last week's ill-judged attacks on backbench MPs, but because his continual attempts to block the freedom of information request over MPs expenses caused this whole debacle.

Just imagine for a moment that Dr Clark had got the job. Would he have fought the provisions of the freedom of information legislation that he himself pioneered? Of course not, and our Parliament would now be much the better for it.

But enough of the ancient history. What on earth will happen to the House of Commons now?

One oft-heard prediction this week is that we will end up with a chamber full of Esther Rantzens, Martin Bells and toast of the Gurkhas Joanna Lumley, and it's certainly one possibility.

We are living through such an extraordinary period of “anti-politics” that there could even be a return to the situation that existed before the rise of the party system in the 19th century – the “golden age of the independent House of Commons man” as one historian called it.

But while celebrity politicians may well play a part, I think the next election is just as likely to throw up more “local heroes” like Dr Richard Taylor, who defeated an unpopular Labour MP over hospital closures and is now himself even being mentioned as a possible Speaker.

Should that election now take place sooner than spring 2010? Well, there has to be a very strong argument for saying that, just as the Speaker who resisted reform for so long has had to go, so too should the Prime Minister who failed to grasp the nettle.

When a Parliament has lost moral authority to the extent that this one has, a clear-out becomes almost a democratic necessity, and Cromwell’s words to the Rump Parliament – “In the name of God, go!” - once more have a certain resonance.

Against that, there is a case for allowing passions to cool. In the words of one commentator: "If an election were called next week, Britain might well end up with a Parliament for the next five years that is defined entirely by its views on claiming for bath plugs, rather than on how to get the country out of the worst recession in 70 years."

Mr Brown will no doubt still try to hang on until next May, but in my view an autumn 2009 election has become significantly more likely in recent days.

As far as the longer-term implications of the scandal are concerned, there is already talk of radical constitutional reforms including an elected second chamber, fixed-term Parliaments, more powerful select committees, and even proportional representation.

I'll believe it when I see it....but if a consensus does emerge that radical parliamentary reform is the way out of this mess, it stands to reason that the party that will most benefit will be the one that has consistently advocated such reform for the past 40 years.

The Liberal Democrats have long been the recipients of the "anti-politics" vote, and on this issue as well as that of the Gurkhas, their leader Nick Clegg has looked over the past fortnight like a man whose time has come.

Sir Alan Beith is not the only Lib Dem for whom this crisis may prove an historic opportunity.

Will Labour MPs back Bercow?

Now that Michael Martin has finally gone, after what were surely two of the most ill-judged Commons performances of modern times last Monday and again yesterday, the question turns inevitably to the identity of his successor.

The key strategic questions for MPs will be what kind of Speaker they want to follow Gorbals Mick, and whether anyone currently tainted by the expenses scandal should be ruled out. To my mind, there are three options:

1. A "reforming Speaker" who will help draw a line under the expenses scandal and present a new, modern face to the electorate. In this event, the standout candidates from each of the main parties would be Tony Wright, John Bercow and Vince Cable. Cable, who still sees himself as David Cameron's first Chancellor, has already ruled himself out, which could allow fellow Lib Dem Sir Alan Beith to come into his own.

2. A "safe pair of hands" who can unite the House and pour balm on the current turmoil. In this event the overwhelmingly most likely choices are either Sir Alan Haselhurst or Sir Menzies Campbell, but both are vulnerable to criticism over their own expense claims.

3. An "interim Speaker" who will mind the shop until the next election, after which more far-reaching choice can be made. This would have to be someone who has already announced they are standing down, so Ann Widdecombe or Chris Mullin are the likeliest options if this route is followed.

One rumour currently sweeping Westminster is that Labour MPs are getting behind John Bercow, which could constitute sweet revenge as Bercow is not wildly popular in the Tory Party. By contrast, a lot of Tory MPs - and bloggers - are keen on Frank Field, who has about as many fans in the PLP as Joey Barton has in the Newcastle dressing room.

At this rate, the Speakership election on 22 June could bring (another) whole new meaning to the term "flipping."

Are all politicians crooks?

Some would say a resounding yes to that question, especially in the wake of the latest MPs expenses scandal. But we wouldn't have known about it at all had it not been for another politician's pioneering legislation. Here's today's Journal column.

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A former Journal colleague of mine had a fairly straightforward view of politicians – one which, though I didn’t necessarily always share it, was at least admirable in its consistency.

It was, in essence, that they were all crooks, and that it was basically the role of the press to ensure the public were made aware of this indisputable fact of life.

It may surprise some readers to know that he and I had many a tussle over this question, my own default position being that, for all their faults, politicians are no more intrinsically good or evil than the rest of us.

Looking at the continuing controversy over MPs expenses, though, I do begin to wonder whether my old friend might have had a point.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown occupies the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of his view of the politician’s role. Like many of his generation and background, he has always believed he is in public life to “do good.”

In his case, it’s probably genuine. Mr Brown has been called many, many things in the course of his long career – but no-one has ever accused him of having his snout in the trough.

This week we saw Gordon at his do-gooding best, trying to fix the world’s economic problems with the help of his fellow G20 leaders and their trillion-dollar rescue package.

Mr Brown is one of those rare people who still believes in the power of politics to change the world. If he is right in this instance, he may yet confound the sceptics and win that unprecedented fourth term in power for Labour.

But whatever the long-term political impact or otherwise of this week’s G20 summit, the Prime Minister certainly could have done without the distraction of the latest expenses scandal.

When I saw last Sunday’s newspaper headline about Jacqui Smith claiming back the cost of adult movies, my first thought was that it’s either going to cost the Home Secretary her job, or alternatively leave the paper’s editor facing a large legal bill.

To date, it has done neither, but it has certainly focused minds on the need for reform of the system like never before.

The three main party leaders have all now agreed to speed-up an inquiry into MPs expenses by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, but some fear the recent spate of revelations has already reduced Parliament to a laughing stock.

Should Mr Brown have sacked Ms Smith? The temptation must have been very great, but as it happens, I think he has done the right thing by not giving in to it.

To have dismissed the first female Home Secretary in our history on the basis of her husband’s taste for adult movies would have had the Labour sisterhood truly up in arms – with some justification.

Rather than make a martyr of her by acting precipitously – as Tony Blair once did with Peter Mandelson - he has left her in place in the expectation that events will run their course.

I suspect Ms Smith will make it easy for him and fall on her own sword. She has a wafer-thin majority in Redditch, and barring a major electoral turnaround, her career in frontline politics is almost certainly drawing to a close.

But the issue of course goes far wider than the fate of one individual Cabinet minister. It is not so much a problem for Mr Brown’s government as for the entire political class.

I cannot improve on the analysis provided by a pro-Labour blogger, Shamik Das, on the Labour loyalist website Labourlist.co.uk this week.

“It isn’t just the perceived financial impropriety that appals taxpayers as the fact that many MPs simply do not believe what they are doing to be wrong. So out of touch with their constituents are they, that they actually believe the taxpayer should pick up the tab for bath plugs or pay-per-view films,” he wrote.

“While the vast majority of MPs undoubtedly go into politics for the right reasons, it is the alarming ease with which they forget where they’ve come from and how their constituents live that is the most depressing aspect of this sorry affair.”

One who certainly seems to have forgotten where he came from is Speaker Michael Martin, who showed once more this week that he is less the custodian of the dignity of Parliament than a shop-steward for greedy MPs.

Displaying his unerring ability to shoot the messenger, he told the Commons he was “deeply disappointed” that 1.3m expense receipts from MPs which had been handed to a private contractor had now been leaked to the media.

You might have thought that the holder of his office would be more “deeply disappointed” by the behaviour of the MPs who have tarnished the reputation of the House over which he presides, but no.

Mr Martin is more concerned about catching whistleblowers – always in my experience a sign that an institution has lost touch with the people it is supposed to be serving.

One final point to make about all this, though, is that it demonstrates the impact that has been made by that initially much-derided creature, the Freedom of Information Act.

When the former South Shields MP and public services minister Dr David Clark first produced this piece of legislation in 1997, it was rubbished even by Cabinet colleagues, yet it has become a vital weapon in the hands of those seeking to uphold the public’s right to know.

It may be making life difficult for the political class – but in terms of exposing wrongs that need addressing, FoI has already had a hugely positive effect on our political culture.

Even my cynical ex-colleague might have conceded that Dr Clark was a politician who did some good.

The answer's in the Post, Gordon

Wednesday's suspension of hostilities at PMQs showed Brown and Cameron in a good light - but with the Royal Mail row threatening the mother of all Labour rebellions, politics will soon be back to normal. Here's today's Journal column.

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Over the course of recent years, it is fair to say that the weekly gladiatorial joust that is Prime Minister’s Questions has not always shown the British system of government at its best.

Although seen as vital for party morale, the exchanges between the two main party leaders frequently generate more heat than light while more often than not leaving the public cold.

The clashes between Gordon Brown and David Cameron over the past 18 months have proved no exception to this general rule.

In truth they have been less about policy and more about psychology – a series of confrontations in which the opposition leader has sought to get under a notoriously prickly Prime Minister’s thin skin.

But it is this evident personal edge to the Brown – Cameron rivalry which made the suspension of hostilities in the Commons Chamber on Wednesday of this week all the more remarkable.

For the best part of two years, they have kept their relations at a purely perfunctory level, avoiding the customary courtesies that take place between a Prime Minister and an opposition leader.

Yet on Wednesday, the two men set aside their personal and political differences as they found themselves united by the common bond of grief they share.

The death of Mr Cameron’s six-year-old son Ivan, seven years after the loss of Mr Brown’s own first child, reminded both them and us that there is more to life than politics.

The personal is of course political, and there can be no doubting the part that their respective private traumas have played in forming the political outlooks of the two men.

Mr Brown has spoken openly in the past of how his experiences of the NHS after losing an eye in a rugby injury as a teenager helped shape his politics from an early age.

More recently Mr Cameron too has made clear the important part he believes the health service plays in the life of the nation - based on the significant part it has played in his own life.

Much of what the Tory leader does in politics is pure positioning, but not this. This comes genuinely from the heart.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether this week’s events will lead to any lasting thaw in the frosty atmosphere between the two party leaders.

Will they start to treat eachother with greater respect, now that each of them knows the other has shared their deepest personal tragedy?

I suspect the public would probably welcome that, but a year out from a general election, it’s probably not going to happen.

Mr Cameron may well now view Mr Brown in a more sympathetic light, but that won’t stop him trying to get the Prime Minister to admit that the recession was his fault.

What would the two men have talked about this week, had Wednesday’s clash gone ahead as normal?

Well, former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir Fred Goodwin’s £650,000-a-year pension certainly. It is becoming increasingly clear that the government may have missed a trick here.

But probably the big issue of the week would have been the government’s plans to sell off a 30pc stake in the Royal Mail.

Mr Cameron’s objective in this would have been clear: to drive a wedge between Mr Brown and the growing army of Labour backbenchers who are bitterly opposed to the plan.

There are broadly speaking three points of view in the Commons on the future of the Royal Mail. One is that it should be privatised – the view that is held by almost all Conservative and most Liberal Democrat MPs.

Another is that it should remain entirely in the public sector – the view held by 130 backbench Labour MPs who are determined to thwart the proposed legislation.

In this context, the government’s “third way” of part-privatisation might seem like an acceptable compromise – but it is hard to find anyone who believes in it outside the government.

As the rebel former minister Peter Hain has pointed out this week, it is not easy to see where a parliamentary majority for any of these positions currently lies.

The Commons arithmetic is such that if even a third of the 130 Labour rebels vote against the plans when they come before the Commons in June, Mr Brown will have to rely on the votes of Tory MPs to get them through.

Which essentially means that, on this issue at least, Mr Cameron has the Prime Minister by the short and curlies.

An added danger for Mr Brown is the fact that not everyone in his government – notably deputy leader Harriet Harman – appears to be wholeheartedly behind the proposed sell-off.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that, like banking bonuses, this is yet another issue on which Mr Brown’s would-be successors are carefully positioning themselves.

For all these reasons, I expect Mr Cameron to try to keep this issue uppermost on the agenda when he returns from compassionate leave the week after next and Prime Minister’s Questions returns to its familiar format.

He knows that Mr Brown can ill-afford to fall out with his party at this point in his troubled premiership and that a rebellion of the magnitude of 130 MPs could prove terminal.

Last week I posed the question whether the government can carry on much longer in an atmosphere where Labour MPs were indulging in ever more open speculation about the succession as the Prime Minister’s authority steadily drained away.

For Mr Brown, the answer to that could be in the Post.

Fairness agenda gets lost in the melee

The Queen's Speech is normally one of the highlights of the parliamentary calendar - but the fact that this year's found itself rather drowned-out shows just how much the political agenda has shifted. Here's today's Journal column.

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In any normal year, the Queen’s Speech to the State Opening of Parliament – officially known as the Gracious Address - would be one of the key events in the political calendar.

Admittedly, Gordon Brown has somewhat diluted its impact over the past couple of years by introducing a Draft Queen’s Speech in July – much as the Pre-Budget Report has somewhat diluted the importance of the Budget.

But even so, the Speech was still seen as one of the big parliamentary set-piece occasions, the point in the political year when a government sets out its agenda and tries to convey a sense of what it is all about.

Until this week, that is. For of course, this year is no normal political year – and this year’s rather truncated legislative programme was certainly no normal Queen’s Speech.

Even within the context of the week’s political news, the Speech seems to have been overshadowed by other, more immediate issues.

On Monday, for instance, we had the statement to the Commons by Childrens’ Secretary Ed Balls setting out the findings of the preliminary inquiry into the Baby P tragedy.

The report was as damning as they come and led to the immediate suspension of Haringey Council’s director of childrens’ services, Sharon Shoesmith – though she remains unaccountably on full pay.

Mr Balls may not be the most empathetic of politicians, but he does at least do firm and decisive well – and this Commons statement showed him in his best light.

Then we had the ongoing and increasingly bitter controversy over the arrest of the Tory frontbencher Damian Green and the raid on his Commons office just over a week ago.

No-one seems to have come out of this episode particularly well so far. For House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin, in particular, it seems to have turned into the story from hell.

Already under fire from MPs for having allowed the police to raid parliamentary premises in the first place, his troubles intensified this week when he was forced to admit that they had done so without a warrant.

It would, in my view, set an incredibly unfortunate precedent if MPs felt obliged to defenestrate him – but perhaps instead Mr Martin should now make clear he will be standing down ahead of the next election.

The position of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith seems less under threat, but she seems scarcely less culpable than Mr Martin in her handling of the affair.

To cut a long story short, it seemed she knew that the police were investigating the leaking of confidential Home Office documents, and knew that the said documents were being passed to the Tory Party.

What she claims she didn’t know was that Mr Green was the Tory frontbencher specifically under investigation by detectives, or that he was about to be arrested.

Whether she should have known is the key point at issue here. At least two of her predecessors – the Tories’ Michael Howard and Labour’s John Reid – clearly think she should.

All of that said, I have my doubts as to whether the Conservative Party will itself come out of this sorry affair with its reputation enhanced.

Much will depend on the motives of the “mole” and whether, as Business Secretary Peter Mandelson alleged on the BBC’s Today Programme, he was leaking material to Mr Green in order to further his political ambitions.

Occasionally in political journalism, you come across a story that starts out by looking highly embarrassing to one side and ends up with the other side having egg on its face.

I have a slight hunch that this could turn out to be one such case.

But if the Baby P inquiry and the Damian Green affair were not enough to squeeze the poor old Queen’s Speech off the front pages, we then had the reduction in interest rates to their lowest level for 57 years.

Since this will actually put money back in peoples’ pockets in the form of lower mortgage payments, it is far more likely in my view to kick-start economic activity than last week’s 2.5pc cut in VAT.

But the swift change of direction by the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee – it is only last year that rates were still going up – is almost worthy of a Private Eye-style apology.

“For years, we along with the rest of the UK political establishment may have given the impression that inflation is the worst thing can happen to the economy. In fact, we now realise that deflation is much worse, and apologise for any misunderstanding.”

So at the end of the day, was there actually anything in the Queen’s Speech worth writing about? Well, yes, although it was probably just as notable for what it left out as for what it included

What it did include was the remnants of what Mr Brown in his party conference speech in September termed the “fairness” agenda.

This included a Bill aimed at getting people on lower incomes to save more with the government promising to contribute 50p for every £1 saved up to £600.

And back on the agenda, to some surprise, was the measure to give employees the right to request flexible working hours, which many suspected Mr Mandelson had killed.

Perhaps significantly, though, the Speech did not include Mr Brown’s much-vaunted Constitutional Renewal Bill, which would among other things have given MPs the final say on going to war.

This was once a key plank in Mr Brown’s reform programme and was actually the subject of his first statement to the Commons as Prime Minister.

That it now no longer even merits a place in his government’s legislative programme is just one small illustration of how events have altered Mr Brown’s priorities and how the political agenda has shifted.

And the fact that it went almost unnoticed by the national media surely only serves to underline the point.

It's not that I don't care, honest....

To anyone who has come here this week hoping or expecting to find my thoughts on the Damian Green affair, or the Queen's Speech, or the suspension of Sharon Shoesmith, or the interest rate cut, or anything else for that matter, may I offer my apologies.

They were all subjects worthy of a blog post and, had I had more free time this week, I would certainly have done covered them.

That said, I am in one sense relieved that I didn't rush into print with my thoughts on the Green controversy. As a democrat, my initial instincts would obviously have been to defend the Tory frontbencher's right to leak confidential material, and to question the political wisdom of Gordon Brown's refusal to condemn the police action.

Now, I'm not so sure. Yes, Jacqui Smith should have known what was going on in her own department. Yes, Michael Martin should have known the police didn't have a warrant, but my gut instinct tells me that we've not heard anything like the whole of this story yet, and it would not surprise me in the least if it eventually turned itself inside out, leaving the Tories as the ones with egg on their faces. As I said, just a hunch.....

Mandelson should answer Commons Questions

So says the Business and Enterprise Select Committee whose job is to monitor the activities of Lord Mandy's new department. But not just him. In my view, anyone should be able to be quizzed on the floor of the Commons, whether they are a member of either House of Parliament.

Here's what I wrote on the Guardian Politics Blog earlier today:

In my view we should go further, and make it possible for people to answer questions in the Commons without needing to be a member of either House of Parliament. This would achieve two things. Firstly, it would enable Prime Ministers to appoint the very best people to their Cabinets without them needing to become MPs or peers. Secondly, it would move us closer to the classic Separation of Powers doctrine on which the US constitution is built. The Prime Minister would continue to be the person who can command a majority in the House of Commons, and would thus invariably be an MP. But he would be able to appoint anyone he liked to his Cabinet in the knowledge that they remained accountable to Parliament through parliamentary questions and (more powerful) select committees.

To see the whole discussion in context, see Andrew Sparrow's original blogpost here.

Pitt the Obscure

My second monthly "Where are they now?" contribution to Total Politics magazine can now be found online HERE and deals with the short parliamentary career of Bill Pitt. Hopefully this won't persuade him to attempt a political comeback, unlike last month's subject, Walter Sweeney.

Two fingers to the electorate

As promised, my weekly column in today's Newcastle Journal focuses on Mr David Clelland's little local difficulty, the row over MPs expenses - and what it all tells us about trust.

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Over the course of his political career, David Clelland has been a notable servant of the North-East, both as an MP for the past 23 years and as leader of Gateshead council before that.

But in spite of – or perhaps because of – his doughty work on behalf of the region, the Tyne Bridge MP has only twice hit the national headlines.

The first was ten years ago, when he left his wife for his then secretary Brenda Graham, now the second Mrs Clelland, although media interest in the “story” proved thankfully short-lived.

The second was this week, when it emerged that he had told a constituent, Gary Scott, where he could “stick” his vote at the next election after he sent Mr Clelland a letter of complaint about the government’s record.

Mr Clelland’s actions have engendered widely differing reactions. Some have cited his behaviour as evidence of the “arrogance” of the political class and the growing gulf between MPs and the public.

To those of this persuasion, MPs are “servants” rather than “masters” and should behave as such, no matter what the provocation.

Others have seen Mr Clelland’s dismissive response as an indication that Labour has given up on the next general election already.

As Mr Scott himself told The Journal: “Labour are struggling for supporters as it is but if they don’t want voters who dare to question policies, they are finished.”

But on the opposing side of the argument, there are those who have applauded Mr Clelland’s honesty in speaking from the heart rather than sending the standard stock reply: “Thank you for your letter, the contents of which have been noted.”

Surely, they argue, we want our MPs to be human beings, not machines? It’s a fair point.

Still others have hailed Mr Clelland a hero for striking a blow for MPs who long to be able to tell vexatious letter-writers where to get off.

Said one MP’s researcher: “They regularly write book-length tomes on everything from climate change to Big Brother and expect the MP to address each and every point - all of which takes time away from helping constituents in true need.”

For my part, I would in the natural scheme of things have a fair degree of sympathy for this point of view, and indeed for Mr Clelland personally.

By and large, he has been a good thing for the North-East – most notably in campaigning for both a fairer funding deal and a stronger political voice for the region over the course of many years.

One thing, though, makes me stop short of a more whole-hearted endorsement – the fact that, on Thursday night, he voted to keep the discredited system of MPs allowances.

This, to me, says rather more about Mr Clelland – and the other 171 MPs who voted alongside him – than a minor spat with a constituent.

For the benefit of those who missed it, MPs were presented with a report from a special committee recommending the end of the so-called “John Lewis List” which enables them to claim expenses for new kitchens and TVs.

The review committee also wanted to replace the so-called £24,000 allowance for the upkeep of second homes.

In the event, MPs voted by 171 to 143 to keep both, although many more abstained.

Overwhelmingly, it was Labour MPs who voted in favour of retaining the current system, even though Prime Minister Gordon Brown had indicated that he favoured reform.

Conventional wisdom might suggest that North-East MPs, who have to live away from their constituencies during the week, would naturally tend to support generous allowances for second homes.

Other regional parliamentarians besides Mr Clelland who voted to keep the current system included Nick Brown, Kevan Jones, Stephen Byers and Ronnie Campbell.

But significantly, it was by no means a universal view among the Northern Group of Labour MPs, with Sir Stuart Bell, Vera Baird, Helen Goodman and Chris Mullin all backing the proposed reform.

It is also worth noting that Sir Alan Beith, whose constituency is further away from London than any MP in England, let alone the North, also supported change.

What we have here, then, is not so much a regional divide as a clash of values – between MPs who think it is fine to charge the taxpayer for new tellies and those who would draw the line at that.

Perhaps at a deeper level, too, it is a clash of values between those who care what the public think of them, and those who are happy to tell the electorate to “stick it” – to coin a phrase.

In the context of the overriding need to rebuild public trust and confidence in the political system, Thursday’s vote was not just perverse, it was stupid.

Yes, MPs need a certain amount of taxpayers’ money to do their jobs, but for them to insist on their right to buy TVs and sofas on the public purse – particularly at this stage in the economic cycle – was just asking for trouble.

It was not, of course, backbench MPs who were primarily to blame for the loss of public trust in politicians that has occurred over the past decade and a half.

It started with the Tory sleaze of the mid-1990s and intensified as a result of New Labour’s spin and sleaze over the past 11 years under both Mr Brown and Tony Blair.

Yet here was a rare opportunity for backbench MPs to do something about it, to actually start to rebuild the frayed bond of trust between them and the people they purport to represent.

By spurning that opportunity, it is not just Mr Clelland who has given a metaphorical two fingers to the voters.

And ballots to you too, sir

Veteran North-East MP David "Stick your vote" Clelland was among the 172 MPs who voted to keep the "John Lewis List" in Thursday night's vote on the expenses system. What does that say about him, and about the other MPs who voted against reform?

I'll try to give some answers in my Newcastle Journal column tomorrow.

Decline and fall

Some people will regard this as sad. Indeed it is. But it is also a warning of how membership of the House of Commons can destroy people who aren't really mentally equipped to deal with it. When I first met her as a newly-elected Labour MP in 1997, Helen Brinton, as was, was a relatively normal human being.

Fathers made redundant

Last night's votes on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill were, for me, perhaps the most depressing outcome to a parliamentary debate since Labour MPs went back on their 2001 manifesto pledge not to introduce tuition fees.

I have blogged previously about the hybrid animal-human embryo issue, but to be absolutely honest, what really wound me up about the Bill was not this, but the fact that it effectively denied the importance of fathers in bringing up children.

I did not oppose this simply because I am a Christian, but because it cuts across everything in my own experience both as a father and as a son.

It is blindingly obvious to all sensible people - those not consumed by political correctness - that the absense of fathers and other male role models has been a major contributory factor to social breakdown in some of our most deprived communities.

If MPs - and we are talking all three main parties here - want to deny children the right to grow up with a father, that is their lookout. In one sense it is scarcely surprising, since they also voted last night to deny hundreds of children a year the right to any life at all.

Just don't ever let them tell you again that they are putting "the family" at the heart of policy, or that "the interests of the child" are paramount. Patently, they are not.

Gordon listens

I'll have more to say on it later in the week no doubt, but first impressions of today's Draft Queen's Speech are fairly positive.

More help for first-time buyers, a savings scheme for eight million low earners, more flexible working rights for parents, action to tackle underperforming schools - you cannot say that the government is not listening to peoples' everyday concerns in bringing forward such ideas.

Okay, so some of the ideas have previously been proposed by the Conservatives, but that's politics. You could argue that the Conservatives have been not exactly been shy of emulating Labour policies over recent years, particularly since David Cameron became leader.

Media reaction tommorrow morning will be interesting. Will the papers treat these proposals on their own merit, or will they just decide that everything that comes out of the Brown government is thereby automatically damned? Watch this space....

The nauseating hypocrisy of Peter Kilfoyle

I used to have a lot of time for Peter Kilfoyle. He should in my view have been made Chief Whip after Nick Brown was moved from the post in 1998 and after his resignation from the government the following year he played a valuable role in speaking up for the interests of Labour's forgotten heartlands, although such was Tony Blair's obsession with Middle England it didn't ultimately achieve much in terms in of the overall direction of government policy.

So I was even more amazed to read his early day motion tabled last Wednesday which has so far obtained nine signatures from MPs of all three parties, at least one of whom should have known better.

It reads:

That this House notes recent media commentary on the rolling programme of maintenance involving the Speaker's rooms; notes that £8.2 million has been spent on the renovation of the Press Gallery; also notes that the media pays nothing for the use of the premises, nor for London telephone calls; is bemused that 10 male members of the lobby have a car parking pass for the Palace of Westminster; is conscious of the annual subsidy to the Press Bar of £210,000; and therefore calls upon members of the Press Gallery to apply to themselves the same standards that they would demand of others.

This edm is so mendacious and misleading, so full of half-truths and innuendo that it deserves a damned good fisking, so here goes.

Half-truth: "This House....notes that £8.2 million has been spent on the renovation of the Press Gallery"

Fact: The Press Gallery essentially had the refurbishments forced on them. Back in 2003, when I was a member of the Gallery Committee, it was told that its offices no longer complied with Health and Safety Legislation, and would therefore have to be upgraded. This being the case, the Committee reluctantly went along with the refurbishment plan and tried to shape it as best it could, although it was abundantly clear from the start that the House authorities were working to a particular agenda, namely removing as many of the Gallery's communal facilities as possible and maximising the amount of office space.

This, in the end, is precisely what happened. The Press Gallery dining room was lost, the gallery library was moved to a much smaller area, and the gallery bar was infamously combined with the cafeteria. In the words of the syncretistic lobby hack Bill Blanko it now has all the atmosphere of an airport terminal.

Half-truth: "This House...notes that the media pays nothing for the use of the premises, nor for London telephone calls."

Fact: Kilfoyle knows perfectly well that if the media were to be charged market rates for the use of office accommodation in Westminster, the regional press, including Kilfoyle's own Liverpool Echo, would cease to have a presence in the Commons altogether. It is frankly unbelievable to see a man who has previously posed as an advocate for the interests of the English regions making this argument.

Half-truth: "This House....is bemused that 10 male members of the lobby have a car parking pass for the Palace of Westminster

Fact: What Kilfoyle doesn't mention is that many MPs now have two car park passes. This enables them to park their second cars in the Palace underground car park permanently. The Commons authorities actually stopped handing out new car park passes to journalists several years ago. The ten that remain are held by extremely long-serving lobby men. Each time a journalist passholder leaves or retires, their pass is now reallocated as an additional pass for an MP.

Half-truth: "This House.....is conscious of the annual subsidy to the Press Bar of £210,000."

Fact: Peter Kilfoyle has regularly benefited from the availability of subsidised ale in the Press Bar. By my reckoning only John Spellar and Phil Woolas (whose job it was to patrol the Bar and find out what hacks were writing about the next day) were more regular attenders than Kilfoyle in the years 1997-2004. Maybe he's sobered up a bit since then.