No change in the weather for Labour

I'm finally back from my late-summer break so without further ado here's today's Journal column rounding up the events of the past week and some of those which occurred while I was away.

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Sometimes, the end of the summer holidays and the start of the new political season in the autumn can herald a change in the weather – in the political as well as the meteorological sense.

Governments or parties which have been going through a bout of unpopularity often come back rejuvenated, as people forget why they were unpopular in the first place.

But such is the trough of unpopularity in which Gordon Brown’s government has been mired for so long that this was never likely to be one of those kinds of Septembers.

Indeed, with the hugely damaging controversy over the release of the Lockerbie bomber still continuing to rumble on, Mr Brown’s position has, if anything, worsened over the course of the summer break.

The primary complaint against the Prime Minister’s handling of the issue is not so much whether he did or did not agree to exchange Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi as part of a new trade deal with Libya, although that may very well have been the case.

Rather, it has been his reluctance to speak out about an issue of such fundamental importance, when contrasted with his eagerness to comment on, say, the demise of Jade Goody or the fortunes of the England football team.

Mr Brown’s attempts to palm off all responsibility for the decision onto the SNP-led Scottish government have been exposed for exactly what they were – an abdication of leadership.

His close ally Ed Balls’ declaration on BBC Radio this week that “no-one in the government” had wanted to see al-Megrahi released has only further added to the impression of a government trying to face all ways at once.

Neither has it been a good summer for the government in terms of its handling of the conflict in Afghanistan, with the eight-year political consensus over the war visibly starting to fray.

Ministers have been accused both of failing to provide adequate resources for British troops on the ground, and of conducting a smear campaign against Army chiefs who dared to point this out.

Whoever was behind the negative briefings – and Veterans Minister and Durham North MP Kevan Jones has denied claims that it was him – the perpetrators demonstrated spectacularly poor political judgment.

People are not fundamentally interested in whether the new Army chief’s daughter is a Tory activist, or how much his predecessor claimed on expenses. They want to know whether our boys in Helmand are getting the tools they need to do the job.


The government’s dismal performance over the summer – its ratings only went up when Mr Brown was on holiday – contrasts sharply with that of David Cameron’s Tories in the first week back.

There was nothing particularly sophisticated or even original about Mr Cameron’s speech on Tuesday in which he pledged to cut back on MPs’ perks including subsidised food and booze. Indeed some might even see it as cheap populism.

But what it did show once again is that Mr Cameron remains far more in tune with the public mood over MPs’ expenses than the government has been.

Likewise, his decision to demote Shadow Commons Leader Alan Duncan was a long overdue punishment for a politician who has continually demonstrated that he simply does not ‘get’ what the public are angry about.

Mr Cameron is now riding the wave of the “anti politics” vote that, in former leader Charles Kennedy’s day, was once the preserve of the Liberal Democrats.

As well as ending the gravy-train which entitles MPs to the cheapest beer to be found anywhere in London, his speech this week pledged a cut in their numbers, the abolition of the unelected regional assemblies, and fresh curbs on quango spending.

The amount of money saved – about £120m a year – is but a pinprick compared with the £175bn budget deficit facing the country – but that’s not really the point.

No, what matters is that Mr Cameron is being seen to take a lead in reforming what the public now views as a corrupt political system - something Mr Brown has continually failed to do.

So with the Tories looking increasingly like a government-in-waiting, what, if anything, can Labour do to fight back?

Post-Megrahi, a collective despair appears once more to have gripped the party, with many MPs and activists resigned to election defeat next year, yet seemingly unable to conceive of any course of action which could avert that.

The backbencher Jon Cruddas summed up the party’s predicament in a speech to the think-tank Compass this week in which he argued that the government no longer knows what it stands for.

“There are plenty of initiatives and announcements but no sense of animating purpose, no compelling case for re-election,” he said.

One blogger this week posed the question whether another coup attempt against Mr Brown this autumn was possible in view of the Blairite plotters’ failure to unseat him last May.

Well, against the current backdrop, it doesn’t only seem possible, it seems inevitable.

The stark reality of the situation is that there is currently as much chance of the public giving Mr Brown another five years in Number 10 as Colonel Gadaffi putting Mr al-Megrahi on a one-way flight back to Scotland.

In other words, the summer break has come and gone – and for the Prime Minister, absolutely nothing has changed.

Toxic Tories rain on Cameron's parade

David Cameron and George Osborne want us to think the Tories are the "new progressives" of British politics - but they can't stop reminders of the party's 'nasty' past from reappearing. Here's today's final Journal column before my summer break.

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A few years ago, I posed the question as to whether voters of a leftish inclination would be better off with a Conservative party that sought to appeal to them, than with a Labour party seemingly only interested in pleasing those of a right-wing persuasion.

The conundrum arose as a direct consequence of David Cameron’s mission to “detoxify” the Tory brand following his election as Tory leader in autumn 2005.

For Mr Cameron, it meant focusing his energies on winning over left-of-centre voters concerned about public services and the environment, at a time when Labour’s Tony Blair continued to be more anxious about keeping traditional Conservative supporters on side.

Since Mr Blair moved on, Labour has thankfully stopped defining itself in opposition to its core voters, but as Shadow Chancellor George Osborne showed this week, the Tories remain as keen as ever to try on their opponent’s clothes.

The point was certainly not lost on stand-in premier Lord Mandelson, who in a masterly performance on Radio Four’s Today Programme on Wednesday, managed to dodge questions about his own prime ministerial ambitions by putting the boot into Ms Osborne at every opportunity.

“I think my old friend George Osborne is involved in a bit of political cross-dressing and I don’t think it’s going to fool anyone,” he said.

That “my old friend” was a reference to the fact these two have previous form. Nearly a year ago, each was accusing the other of trying to procure a donation to their respective party’s funds from the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

After briefly looking like he may have to resign from the Cabinet for a third time over a sleaze-related issue, Lord Mandelson decisively won that battle with a counter-attack that came close to ending Mr Osborne’s own frontbench career.

But putting personal rivalries to one side, what was really interesting about Mr Osborne’s audacious “we are the progressives” speech this week was what it told us about the underlying political consensus in the country.

And this, in turn, is perhaps the one thing that can still give Labour grounds for hope as it approaches the coming election battle.

Throughout all the troubles and travails of Mr Brown’s premiership over the past two years, the Prime Minister and his supporters have continued to clutch at a single straw – the fact that even though his government is wildly unpopular, there has been no fundamental shift in the climate of public opinion towards the Tories.

Mr Osborne’s speech this week proves the point. Rather than make the case for “conservative” values as Mrs Thatcher might have done, the Tories still feel the need to fight on what is essentially Labour ground.

As it is, Mr Osborne’s speech on Tuesday demonstrated the extent to which the word “progressive” has lost virtually all meaning in contemporary political debate.

It used to denote a form of taxation which sought to redistribute resources from the better-off to the worst-off, but since all parties subscribe to this to a greater or lesser extent, this definition does not help us much.

The central claim of Mr Osborne’s speech was that Labour’s “opposition to meaningful public service reform” meant it had “abandoned the field of progressive politics.”

While the Shadow Chancellor seems to be using “progressive” here to mean “reforming,” most Labour supporters would argue that a reform is only “progressive” if it actually helps the worst-off.

But this is more than just an arid debate about labels. The nature of Lord Mandelson’s response to Mr Osborne would suggest that Labour too believes “progressive” is a word worth fighting over.

And of course, Lord M. is quite right to point out that, in terms of its effect on the worst-off, the Tories plans for £5bn of public spending cuts would hardly be “progressive” in their human consequences.

The difficulty for Labour, as I pointed out a few weeks back, is that no-one now seriously believes that they won’t also be forced to make cuts of similar magnitude.

Maybe the argument, in the end, will come down to which of the two parties can convince the public they are wielding the axe with the greater reluctance.

Part of Mr Cameron’s problem, though, as he continues to try to persuade the public that the Tories have changed, is that old reminders keep popping up of their ‘nasty party’ past.

We already knew what Shadow Commons Leader Alan Duncan really thought about MPs’ expenses from his performance on Have I Got News For You a few weeks before this summer’s scandal broke.

“It’s a great system, isn’t it?” the one-time property millionaire told Ian Hislop as he struggled to contain the smug grin spreading across his face.

Mr Duncan claimed at the time that he had been joking – but the fact that he was later captured on film whingeing about MPs having to live on “rations” does rather give the game away.

Potentially even more damaging for Mr Cameron, though, were the comments by the prominent Tory MEP Daniel Hannan about the National Health Service.

Interviewed on US television, Mr Hannan backed Republican critics of President Obama’s plan for universal healthcare by saying he "wouldn't wish the NHS on anyone."

As Labour’s big hitters queued up to twist the knife yesterday, Mr Cameron was himself forced to take to the airwaves in a frantic bid to reassure the public once again that the NHS is safe in Tory hands.

Some are already seeing a Tory victory next year as a done deal - but episodes such as this show that Mr Cameron’s big rebranding exercise still has a way to run.

Some Tories more equal than others

Heartfelt thanks to Slob for sending this one over - it echoes my sentiments about Mr Duncan entirely. His contempt for the public ought to have been clear from his infamous HIGNFY appearance and it's a mystery to me why Cameron hasn't fired him.

More in my weekly column tomorrow.

Why Johnson will still take over in the end

Gordon Brown may have survived the Cabinet crisis and the Euro-elections debacle, but Alan Johnson is still in the driving seat to lead Labour into the next election. Here's today's Journal column.

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Shortly after coming to power in 1997, the newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair asked his political mentor, Roy Jenkins, to carry out a wide-ranging inquiry into the voting system.

Lord Jenkins’ report, published the following year, recommended a form of proportional representation for Westminster based on the so-called ‘alternative vote’ in which candidates are ranked in order of preference.

Mr Blair, whose party had committed in its 1997 manifesto to holding a referendum on the voting system, was genuinely torn as to how to proceed, with Robin Cook and Paddy Ashdown among those urging him to cross the Rubicon.

But in the end, he was talked out of it by an alliance of senior figures within his own Cabinet, and Labour’s plans for voting reform were kicked, seemingly permanently, into that bit of St James’s Park where they can’t quite get the mower.

The senior Labour figures in question included the then deputy leader John Prescott, who has always been hostile to PR, and Jack Straw, who put the boot into the Jenkins Report in the Commons almost before the ink on it was dry.

But among them also was Chancellor Gordon Brown, as ever playing to the Old Labour gallery in his efforts to undermine Mr Blair and shore up his own power-base within the party.

More than a decade on, and facing the loss of the power he has dedicated his adult life to acquiring, Mr Brown has decided voting reform might be worth another look as part of a wide-ranging package of constitutional measures to restore trust in politics.

But as the Good Book says, you reap what you sow, and Mr Brown’s apparent deathbed conversion to PR has surely come too late to be taken seriously, still less as a means of relaunching his troubled premiership.

On the one hand, one can admire Mr Brown’s resilience in attempting to bounce back from last week’s Cabinet crisis and Sunday’s Euro-election drubbing by launching a set of proposals which would transform the British system of government.

On the other, you can simply view him as deluded. After all, this is a man who cannot even order his own Cabinet around, let alone carry out what would be the biggest set of constitutional reforms since Magna Carta.

The tragedy for the Prime Minister is that constitutional reform – or cleaning up politics in tabloid-speak - really could have been his “Big Idea,” had he been bolder about it at the start of his premiership.

Now, nearly two years on, it simply looks like a belated reaction to the continuing tide of parliamentary sleaze on the one hand, and on the other, Mr Brown’s desperate need to find some sort of purpose to his remaining in power.

There are essentially two reasons why the Prime Minister survived the coup attempt led by former Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell when he stormed out of the Cabinet a week ago last Thursday.

The first and most obvious is the that Labour MPs do not want to be pitchforked into fighting a general election which they know they would lose.

Rightly or wrongly, the idea that a new leader would be obliged to hold an immediate general election has taken hold at Westminster, and the line was being heavily spun by Mr Brown’s supporters last weekend.

Looked at from this perspective, the point at issue for Labour MPs at their crunch meeting on Monday evening was not so much whether the Prime Minister should stand down before the election, as when.

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that there is no way the Labour Party is going to allow Mr Brown to lead it into the next election, for the simple reason that it knows there is no way the public is going to vote for another five years of him.

But given that the election has to be held next Spring anyway, there is an inescapable logic to delaying any change in the leadership for now.

If, say, the change were to be delayed until the New Year, it would enable a new leader to take over close enough to the election not to have to bring it any further forward.

What Mr Brown has done over the past week is not so much “seen off” the threat to his leadership, as earned the right a dignified resignation at some point between the party conferences and Christmas.

But the second reason why the Prime Minister survived was quite simply the identity of those trying to unseat him - “wrong plot, wrong plotters” as one MP put it.

Whatever Mr Brown’s shortcomings, the great majority of Labour MPs do not want a Blairite restoration in any shape or form, and as soon as it became clear that the coup was essentially a Blairite enterprise, the whole thing was doomed to failure.

Mr Purnell is undoubtedly a bright lad, but he suffers from the considerable drawback of looking like Tony Blair’s junior research assistant, which indeed he was until he became an MP.

Likewise Ms Blears is a doughty campaigner and a highly effective communicator, but her nickname in the PLP, Mrs Pepperpot, gives some idea of the level of esteem in which she is held by her colleagues.

In a revealing BBC radio interview on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband said Mr Brown would remain in power because “the main contender Alan Johnson” was supporting the Prime Minister.

This tell us three things. First, that Mr Brown is now dependent on Mr Johnson’s support. Second, that Mr Johnson can take over any time he wants. Third, that when that time comes, Mr Miliband will support him.

The Labour Party has finally reached a settled will on the future of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but it is not that he will lead them into the next general election for good or ill.

It is that he will be replaced, at a decent interval and in a suitably dignified way, by the man he has just appointed Home Secretary.

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.

Trouble down at the farm

Animal Farm is one of my all-time favourite books, so I was delighted to see this week's offering from Slob.

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."

The week that changed Westminster

The expenses scandal is an indictment on the whole political class rather than one individual or party - but ultimately it will be Gordon Brown who pays the price. Here's today's Journal column.

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If there has been a single, over-riding theme that has characterised British politics over the past decade and a half, it has been the long, slow collapse of public trust in those who govern in our name.

It started with cash for questions under John Major, continued with legislative favours to Labour donors under Tony Blair, and reached a new depth with the dodgy dossiers which sent British troops to war in Iraq on a false prospectus.

After that shameful episode, we probably thought we had seen it all – but the cascade of revelations about MPs expenses over the past eight days has taken public contempt for politicians to a new and potentially dangerous level.

It has truly been a game-changing week in British politics, and for the House of Commons, it is already clear that nothing will ever be the same again.

It began with the publication of the Cabinet’s expense claims last weekend, with Communities Secretary Hazel Blears bearing the brunt of the criticism both inside and outside the Labour Party.

Faced with some stinging rebukes from some of her own colleagues, she later agreed to repay £13,332 in Capital Gains Tax on the sale of her second home, but any slim chance she may have had of becoming Britain’s second woman Prime Minister has probably gone.

This, though, was just the hors d’oeuvres. By the end of the week, MPs were not just paying for their sins by writing cheques, some of them were paying with their jobs.

And it’s not over yet. Andrew Mackay may have been forced to quit as an aide to Tory leader David Cameron, Elliott Morley has been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party, and Shahid Malik has temporarily stepped down as a justice minister – but no-one seriously believes they will be the only casualties.

So where does it all leave us? Well, amidst the mayhem, four specific conclusions can so far be drawn.

First, the Tories have been shown by and large to be more greedy than their Labour counterparts, as indeed I suggested might very well be the case on these pages a week ago.

Okay, so Labour has its fair share of Maliks, Morleys and Phil Hopes, all of whom claimed large amounts to cover the costs of their second homes.

But so far as I am aware, neither they nor any other Labour MPs have so far claimed for cleaning moats, repairing swimming pools, mowing paddocks, manuring their vegetable patches, or adding porticos to the front of their houses.

Secondly, though, the past week has also revealed Mr Cameron to be a more instinctive and decisive leader than Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

When confronted with the scale of the problem in his own party, it would have been very easy for the Tory leader to go into defensive mode – but instead, he seized the moment by telling his MPs it was payback time.

His own Shadow Cabinet led the way by repaying more than £17,000 worth of claims on items ranging from chauffeurs to repairing a broken pipe underneath a tennis court.

Mr Brown has defended his more softly-softly approach on the grounds that he is trying to “build consensus” on a way forward - but there is no doubt which of the two leaders has looked more in tune with the public mood.

Thirdly, the affair has demonstrated beyond any remaining doubt that Michael Martin’s nine-year tenure in the House of Commons Speaker’s Chair should now be brought to a close as expeditiously as possible.

I have written previously of his tendency to see himself more as the shop steward for MPs than the guardian of the dignity of Parliament, and events this week proved the point.

Anyone who has followed Mr Martin’s career will know that he has always adhered to a fairly simple philosophy – that whenever anything goes wrong, it is invariably the press that is to blame.

His attacks on backbench MPs who dared to question his decision to mount a leak inquiry over the expenses revelations showed a man out of time, out of touch, and totally out of his depth.

Fourthly and potentially most damaging of all, it is already clear that this episode will have a baleful impact on the public’s attitude to the mainstream parties in the run-up to next month’s European elections.

As senior a figure as Norman Tebbit has already openly called for a “plague on all their houses” vote on 4 June, suggesting only the fringe parties are worthy of support.

Lord Tebbit probably came within a whisker of being thrown out of the Tory Party over his remarks, but I suspect they will nevertheless resonate with large numbers of people.

The UK Independence Party is confident it can beat Labour into fourth place, while more worryingly, the current febrile atmosphere might very well see the election of Britain’s first British National Party MEPs.

I wrote that week the expenses issue was an indictment of the political class as a whole rather than any one individual or party, but nevertheless, it is Mr Brown who stands to be the biggest loser.

It is not as if he couldn’t have seen all this coming. Before it all blew up, the Commons authorities under Mr Martin spent months trying to block a freedom of information request to make MPs expense claims public.

Had Mr Brown been true to his instincts, true to his stated intention to restore public trust in politics on entering No 10, he could have taken the bull by the horns, gone to the papers himself with the information and sacked all the transgressors within his party.

But of course that would have required real leadership. And we now know that this is the kind of leadership which is beyond him.

Riding the gravy train

Actually, I think Nigel Farage and UKIP will be the main beneficiaries...but here's Slob's take on it anyway.

What would he have made of it?

I've not got time to wade into the MPs expenses row in detail as yet, although I have made my views on Mr Speaker Martin clear on Iain Dale's blog.

But meanwhile, on the day that, 15 years ago, Britain lost a great Prime Minister in waiting, a thought occurs: what would he have made of it all?

The changing face of politics

Did Margaret Thatcher save Britain? Can Hazel Blears really become Britain's second woman PM? And could the MPs' expenses revelations ultimtately rebound to Gordon Brown's advantage? Just some of the questions addressed in today's Journal column.

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All general elections bring change, but some general elections bring more change than others, and there is a pretty universal consensus that the one that brought the most change in recent times was the one that took place 30 years ago this week.

For better or worse, Margaret Thatcher's victory over Jim Callaghan in that 1979 contest has cast its shadow over moreorless everything that has happened in British politics in the ensuing decades.

There is still, to my mind at least, a debate to be had about the Thatcher legacy. The widely-held view is that she “saved” Britain, which is the fundamental reason why the Labour Party subsequently found it necessary to take on most of her ideas.

But in many ways we were a more contented society back then, and while the “opportunity economy” which she ushered in may have made some people considerably better-off, it has not necessarily made people happier or more secure.

Anyway, for those lucky enough - or should that be sad enough? - to have access to the Parliamentary Channel via Freeview, there was the chance to relive it all again last Monday, as the channel replayed all 17 hours of the BBC's election coverage.

I flitted in and out of it between DIY jobs and the snooker, the main points of fascination for me being the impossible youth of David Dimbleby and other BBC presenters, and hearing Labour politicians speaking with genuine working-class accents.

Superficially, there would seem to be obvious parallels between that time and this - a failing Labour government, a faltering economy, an experienced but somewhat shop-soiled Prime Minister, an untried Tory leader whose time nevertheless looked like it had come.

But that's way too easy. In truth, Mr Brown would probably kill for the kind of personal ratings enjoyed by Big Jim, and Labour's predicament then - popular leader but unpopular policies - is moreorless the reverse of the position the party finds itself in now.

Either way, one politician who clearly had Margaret Thatcher very much in mind this week was the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, who enlivened the Bank Holiday weekend by launching an astonishing attack on Mr Brown.

She told the Observer that the government had shown a "lamentable" failure to get its message across, and that the public no longer believed any government policy announcements.

Ms Blears has since denied her comment should be seen in any way as a criticism of Mr Brown's leadership, but this is hogwash.

The giveaway was her use of the words "You Tube if you want to," a phrase which anyone over 40 will immediately recognise as an echo of the Iron Lady's famous soundbite: "You turn if you want to, the Lady’s not for turning."

Ostensibly, Ms Blears was of course referring to Mr Brown’s laughable performance on YouTube when he grinned his way through an announcement of a clampdown on MPs expenses.

But the subtext was clear: Ms Blears was suggesting that she is the new Margaret Thatcher, a plain-speaking, down-to-earth woman impatient with silly fads such as using internet video channels to make policy statements.

So can Hazel Blears really become Britain’s second woman Prime Minister? Well, I thinks she thinks so, although her last place in the 2007 deputy leadership election is hardly an ideal base from which to launch a successful leadership bid two years on.

That said, Mrs Thatcher herself is the supreme example of a rank outsider who propelled herself into the leadership ahead of more experienced and more highly-thought-of rivals.

In any case, to give Mr Brown his due, he promptly ignored Ms Blears’ protestations by going straight back onto YouTube to do a campaign broadcast for the European elections on 4 June.

But any hopes the Prime Minister may have had of regaining the political initiative in the run-up to those elections were hit by yesterday’s revelations about the Cabinet’s expense claims.

Although no rules appear to have been broken, stories about Mr Brown paying his brother £6,577 to cover the cost of cleaning services, Jack Straw overclaiming for his council tax, and Ms Blears juggling claims between three homes are hardly helpful at this juncture.

Whatever explanations ministers may offer, many voters are now conditioned to believe all politicians are guilty until proven innocent. – a sad state of affairs no doubt, but one which the political elite has largely brought on itself.

The wider political impact of these revelations may well depend on what is uncovered when the Daily Telegraph gets round to publishing the expense claims of the Tory frontbench, as no doubt it will do in the next few days.

Who knows, if it turns out that some of them have broken the rules while Mr Brown’s team stayed largely within them, it may even rebound to the Prime Minister’s advantage.

Indeed, at least one conspiracy theorist has already suggested that Brown Central could have orchestrated the whole thing as a way of staving off the anticipated Labour meltdown on 4 June.

If a real spin genius like Alastair Campbell was still at No 10, I’d be tempted to believe that, but it’s way too clever for the blundering bunch of incompetents that currently surround the Prime Minister.

The expenses issue is, at bottom, more an illustration of the changing relationship between politicians and the public than an indictment of any particular individual or party.

Old parliamentary stagers like Middlesbrough MP Sir Stuart Bell may look back fondly to the “age of deference” when MPs were implicitly trusted and the public left them alone to do their work.

But thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and more generally the public’s desire for greater transparency in our political system, those days are gone for good.

It’s just another of the many ways in which politics has been transformed since the day Margaret Thatcher walked into 10 Downing Street all those years ago.

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.

Prince of Darkness continues to weave his spell

Apologies for lack of blogging this week - a combination of illness and extreme busy-ness - but here's my weekly Journal column, focusing inevitably on the so-called Corfu capers.

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It is no exaggeration to say that, of all the men and women who have influenced the course of political events over the past 16 months of the Brown premiership, the one who had possibly the greatest impact was Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.

It was his audacious plan to slash Inheritance Tax for all but the very-super-rich unveiled in his 2007 conference speech that, more than any other single factor, persuaded Mr Brown not to call a general election that autumn.

Many thought it finally marked the 36-year-old Mr Osborne’s arrival as a genuine player in the front rank of politics - a “Big Beast” in the old Tory parlance.

But if so, the events of the past week have reopened some of the old doubts in the party about whether Mr Osborne’s exalted position in the Tory hierarchy is a case of too much, too young.

The tale of the "Corfu Capers" is an intriguing demonstration of how high society and its tangled network of relationships can impact on day-to-day political events.

It all began when former Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson, then a European Commissioner, made some critical comments about Mr Brown to Mr Osborne while they were both staying at the Greek villa of their mutual friend, Nathaniel Rothschild, this summer.

When a few weeks later Mr Brown made the dramatic step of restoring the newly-ennobled Lord Mandelson to his Cabinet in his reshuffle, what had been merely a juicy piece of gossip became political gold-dust.

A story duly appeared in The Sunday Times in which it was claimed that the new Business Secretary had “dripped pure poison into the ears of a senior Tory” about the Prime Minister during the holiday.

Mr Rothschild was furious at what he saw a breach of confidence, and got his own back by deciding to reveal what else Mr Osborne had got up to on his holidays.

Specifically, he claimed that Mr Osborne and the Tory chief executive Andrew Feldman had tried to solicit a £50,000 donation to Tory funds from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, while visiting his yacht.

Mr Osborne has denied this, but "friends" of Mr Rothschild has now made clear that if he continues to query his version of events, he will destroy him, suggesting he has written witness statements from others who were present.

There is no suggestion that it was Lord Mandelson who tried to persuade Mr Rothschild to exact revenge on Mr Osborne.

It seems the merchant banker was simply so enraged by the breach of confidence that he decided to administer what one close associate called a "slap on the wrist."

However Tory leader David Cameron's office was warned following the Sunday Times' story that the Business Secretary knew something "explosive" about Mr Osborne and that the Shadow Chancellor should "be careful."

Mr Osborne has been forced to learn two hard lessons. First, you don’t breach confidences. Second, you don’t mess with Mandelson.

It seems unlikely as yet that the Shadow Chancellor will have to resign, and even though Mr Brown has said he hopes "the authorities" will investigate, it is not entirely clear whether any actual offence has been committed.

But it does focus attention on the Tories' readiness for government and specifically on whether they have yet got the make-up of their senior team quite right.

Already this question has been thrown into relief by Mr Cameron's failure to restore David Davis to the Shadow Home Secretaryship even though his successor Dominic Grieve seems ill-fitted for such a cut-and-thrust role.

Now the focus is on Mr Osborne - and whether someone who looks and sounds a bit less like a merchant banker might be a more convincing advocate for the Tories in the midst of the current crisis.

There has been persistent talk in Tory circles that if he wins the next election, Mr Cameron intends to bring Ken Clarke into a front-line role in government, possibly as Leader of the Commons.

But if he really does intend to employ the 68-year-old bruiser's considerable talents, he should not waste time hanging around for polling day.

He should bring Mr Clarke in now - preferably as Shadow Chancellor so he can deploy all his Treasury experience against Labour as the economic crisis continues to unwind.

Mr Clarke has long harboured a grudge against Mr Brown for the way he failed to give the Tories any credit for stabilising the economy between 1993 and 1997. What better way to get his own back.

The Corfu affair also focuses attention once again on the whole issue of political donations, demonstrating that no party is immune from the problem.

Last year we were all agog over whether Newcastle businessman David Abrahams had channelled donations to the Labour Party through associates in the city. Now the spotlight is once again back on the Tories.

What it shows is that attempting to rid British politics of sleaze is a bit like trying to abolish sin

Unless and until we move a situation where political parties are state-funded, these sorts of controversies will surely continue to recur.

For me, though, what has really elevated this story beyond the realms of run-of-the-mill political tit-for-tat has been the involvement - however innocent - of Lord Mandelson.

It has been yet another fascinating example of the Prince of Darkness's almost unique capacity for causing mayhem, even if it is sometimes inadvertent.

We saw this in his Cabinet career with his two resignations. We have seen it in the way he can both electrify and terrify the political establishment in almost equal measure.

Three weeks into his third Cabinet comeback, the man once known as the Prince of Darkness has certainly not lost his lethal touch.