Jumping Jacqui

Chris Blore

Surely Darling wouldn't be given another ministerial role? Let's not forget that he is not just a useless Chancellor but also an expenses cheat and should actually be standing down as an MP with immediate effect rather than limping on until the General Election taking all the public money he can get his grubby mitts on!

Carol-Ann

Vaz for once is right. That's something I never thought I would write. The majority of the Home Office business covers England and Wales and therefore it's next occupant should be somone accountable in an English or Welsh constituency. I want to hear the Tories getting this message across.

Verity

Well, "Lord" Ahmad won't have a spineless Home Secretary to threaten with his army of 10,000 angry Muslims any more.

Has the deranged ban on the entry of a democratically elected Dutch MP, Geert Wilders been lifted yet?

Has the ban, on the far edge of lunacy, on a person who has not expressed the slightest interest in travelling to Britain, American talk radio host Michael Savage, been lifted yet?

So once she loses her seat and she no longer needs a home in her constituency, will the whole family be moving into her her primary residence, her sister's boxroom?

Will she be paying all the money back, by the way? A class action is always an option to get it off her.

oldtimer

I must admit to a state of confusion.

Should the HoC now be called the House of Crooks (after those that deserve to be prosecuted), the House of Clowns (after those that failed to sort the expenses fiasco years ago) or the House of Cock-ups (to mark the endeavours of the so-called ruling party)? I seek guidance.

Liz Brown

does the oily Vaz have any say in the matter? Sure he has been praising Stasi to the skies but it was the "sisters", stasi and harmthenation, who out him in charge of the Home Affairs Select Committee over the wishes of its members, so he would praise her wouldn't he
Hopefully he will be the next to go............

Liz Brown

does the oily Vaz have any say in the matter? Sure he has been praising Stasi to the skies but it was the "sisters", stasi and harmthenation, who out him in charge of the Home Affairs Select Committee over the wishes of its members, so he would praise her wouldn't he
Hopefully he will be the next to go............

Tiberius

James; the shape of the reshuffle will certainly be less rotund ;)

Alexandra

Keith Vaz! All these exits appear to have been precipitated by a crisis in morality and Keith Vaz presents himself as a moral arbiter over who should be Home Secretary. You couldn't make it up.

Talking of which, Richard Littlejohn gives a full account of Mr Vaz's moral purity in this article 'These three spivs have brought us the morality of the souk':

"All you need to know about politicians is that Keith Vaz is described as 'The Right Honourable'. That he is also chairman of the House of Commons home affairs select committee is a disgrace."

Vaz is disgusting.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1059963/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-These-spivs-brought-morality-souk.html

cityboozer

Does Vaz want the job for himself?

George Laird

Dear All

"Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, has already made it clear he wouldn’t be happy with a Scottish MP as Home Secretary".

So regardles of ability a Scottish person isn't good enough?

Is that racism?

Does Keith Vaz employ any Scottish people?

Does Keith Vaz have a website exposing his views on race?

Is this clearly English jobs for English workers?

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Nicholas

How is it these days that racism - ergo prejudice about race - has been conflated with xenophobia - ergo a dislike of foreigners?

AFAIK the Scots and English are still members of the same race (although I realise New Labour are ever adjusting the meaning of words).

DSR

George - in your own inimitable fashion, you have completely missed the point.

The Home Secretary in our new Labour-inspired fragmented democracy has virtually no control over most of the brief in Scotland. A Scottish Home Secretary would therefore be unaccountable to the vast majority of those who are most affected by his actions.

Nothing to do with racism, dear George. (Or Human Rights at Glasgow University, lol)

salieri

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University - don't they care about human rights anywhere else? - has got it right, this time. The necessary qualifications for Home Secretary in a Labour Government are stupidity, bigotry, pachydermous arrogance, ineptitude and political correctness. It is true that many English MPs amplify satisfy these criteria, but the proposed exclusion of the Scots hardly exemplifies the 'inclusive' values of which our multi-cutural society affects to be so proud.

And it is doubly ironic, despite his elocution lessons, coming from the odiously oleaginous K. Vazeline.

Phil

Nicholas the legal definition of racism encompasses less favourable treatment on grounds of nationality or national origins.

Ben Elford

There's a lesson for David Cameron here.

Don't put incompetent (not to say antilibertarian) people in office just because they're female. It's bound to end in tears.

mac

Tin-eared Brown will do what he wants. If he's criticised he'll cite the precedent of the MP for Airdrie and Shotts - remember him, that awfully nice fella, Doctor John, who departed several cabinet jobs before their roofs fell in. Or he might just use the educated Balls riposte: 'so what?'

And please, please can the Gods somehow deliver the come-uppance that the nauseating Vaz deserves ('cos his tame electorate assuredly won't . . . )

John Page

Doubtless she expected Brown to trash her when she went in the reshuffle and decided to get her story out first.

She's still a crook. It's not the films, it's claiming for any second home at all when she was entitled to a grace and favour pad, let alone the dearest one.

wight tory

With Woolas outstanding handling of the Gurkhas, he's got to be top of the the pile...

Craig Strachan

Keith Vaz is obviously just jealous that the Scots are the most competent, fascinating and best-looking people in Britain today.

Verity

Nicholas - "How is it these days that racism - ergo prejudice about race - has been conflated with xenophobia - ergo a dislike of foreigners?"

You know the answer to that yourself. It was a lie deliberately manufactured by Blair and his student Trot/Marxist/Gramcis in the roiling stench known as the Labour cabinet.

Phil - When, precisely, did that become "the legal definition of racism"? and in what country? Because it makes no sense whatsoever. A location is not a race.

TGF UKIP

Ben Elford, your lesson for Dave: "Don't put incompetent people in office just because they're female."

Sorry Ben, but that ship has sailed. Daft Dave declared some while ago that at least half of his Cabinet would be female. Talk about creating problems for yourself - but that is something Dave does manage to do quite brilliantly.

All you've got to do is imagine some of the dunces in dames' clothing that might produce in the Tory frontline, and it could provide some of us with endless amusement in the years ahead. Perhaps it might even make Spelman look good.

logdon

Craig Strachan
June 2nd, 2009 7:28pm

Try that one over at Guido. Go on, just for a laugh.

Kipperbreath

This is terrible, terrible. Ms Smith has done her utmost to serve the nation up, in extremely trying circumspections. She deserves better and I mean this from the heart of my bottom.

Derek

Verity: a citizens arrest as a first step, perhaps? It seems theft is an arrestable offence in that context and the evidence adduced so far would seem to offer reasonable grounds that an arrestable offence had been committed. Of course,while not wishing to be less than gallant, I might say that most might consider the possibility of having to wrestle Ms. Smith to the ground unappetising, but sometimes the call of duty is louder than the cry of taste. oldtimer: the House of Conspiracies?

mac

Craig,

I'm sure that chap whom Evan Davis interviewed yesterday, the one who said that he "gets up every morning and . . . pause . . ", squints in the mirror, promenades his jaw weirdly, and picks his nose before re-inventing his presbyterian conscience, tells himself he's an exemplar of all three qualities (as he takes his medication).

Verity

Derek, I think you have been watching too much Hollywood. I don't believe we have "citizen's arrest" in Britain ... I agree with you, though, that wrestling Jacqui Smith to the ground is not a pleasing prospect ... plus, she might win. She is not a lightweight.

salieri

Derek & Verity: a small correction, if I may. Yes, a citizen's arrest is expressly permitted under English law - but only if an indictable offence has been or is being committed. Reasonable suspicion will do for Plod but not for the rest of us.