What Milburn's departure means

oldrightie

Do watch, though, to see who picks up his safe seat.

------------------

May well be a Tory!

Francis

I don't think Milburn is going to be missed all that much. Infrared Camera

Occasional Ostrich

"unkind", James? Nope; you're spot on.

Verity

I am appalled by all this envy-driven campaigning against second jobs when actually, they should be a requirement. MPs should be out of the Westminster cocoon earning money in the real world and mixing with taxpayers.

It should be an iron-clad requirement, but it should be encouraged.

Steve.W

Safe seats - Oh dear, not back to those awful young relatives of Tony Benn and Philip Gould!

David Ossitt

"Do watch, though, to see who picks up his safe seat"

With a majority of only 10,404 it is not so very safe.

Ken Abbott

Thank christ, another tosser heading for the "boony's.All be it with a pocket full of taxpayer's
hard earned cash.

TGF UKIP

"Do watch, though, to see who picks up his safe seat" Now how interesting that you should describe it thus James.

As it is I visit Darlo most Fridays so know it reasonably well. But first let me give you the results there in the recent Euro election:

Non-Tory Greens 1,446
BNP 1,779
LibDems 3,480
UKIP 3,783
Labour 4,739
Tory Greens 6,675

Now Darlo is an interesting political place which a Conservative Party should be expecting to win if it were going to have a chance of forming a government with any sort of decent majority. It is almost exclusively a native white Britsh town, notwihstanding that close by Teesside is heavily Asian, and it was Tory until very recently (97 I think but possibly 92) and its MP was if I recall correctly a younger Michael Fallon.

So will Dave win there? It's a question I frequently ask myself on my visits there and back invariably comes the answer - not a cat in hell's chance, notwithstanding the Euro result above.

Darlo is predominantly a working class town and while it may once have been able to identify with the former Tory Party's provincial conservative instincts, Dave and his metropolitan clique seem like creatures from another planet up here.

And there lies your Tory problem - Dave & Co have strong brand resistance up here and UKIP are, I'm delighted to say, going to pinch more than enough votes to make the 28 seats they stopped the Tories winning in last time make Dave's gang positively wistful.

A hung parliament, with Clegg doing a deal with Labour for Gordon's exit and PR and goodbye to Dave and all his media cheerleaders.

AJC

Milburn talented? What guff.

AJC

eeyore

Being an MP IS a second job, except in this madhouse swilling with taxpayers' money that we inhabit nowadays.

dearieme

All ministers treat being an MP as a second job - why shouldn't backbenchers and members of the opposition?

Mark C

Nonsense - he's just worked out that he has no chance of taking over from Brown. Wholly over-rated, not least by himself.

Verity

eeyore - Quite.

Pete - Francis, above, seems to have placed an ad for an infra red camera.

Jeremy

I'm not sure about this business of "second jobs" for MPs. I mean, if an MP is being paid money by a commercial/charitable or other organisation, then doesn't that constitute corruption? I mean, is it not the case that the only reason such an organisation would pay money to an MP is in return for influence exercised on its behalf? And doesn't that make a nonsense of the principle of representative democracy? I mean, isn't an MP elected to represent the interests of his constituents - as opposed to the interest of whichever organisation happens to be paying him the largest wad of money?

TGF UKIP

As it is Darlington is a town I know well and visit most weeks, so I did have something to say.

Unfortunately, my post made about 7.30 pm is yet another which has got "lost."

Are other Coffee Housers enduring similar experiences and, if so, is it even currently worth our bother of posting comments on this site when the management of the Speccie is so patently unwilling to pay for its proper maintenance.

JohnAnt

Does this decision 'not to stand' at the next election give MPs carte blanche to swan off and do FA for the next year? Presumably it does. Even if they don't vote, there'll be no sanctions that'd matter.

Biggestaspidistra

perhaps it's Francis' second job, Verity. In which case why one rule for them and another here?

Chris

>a new generation of Blairites—albeit a less talented one.

How is this possible?

The Laughing Cavalier

Telented? Haze of Dope Milburn? Surely the principal reason he is stepping down is that there is no future for him in politics. Labour will lose the next election and he will be beyond retirement age by the time there is even a smidgeon of a chance of attaining office. He has seen the writing on the wall. But what use, one might ask, is an ex Minister of a discredited government to any of the myriad firms looking to ponce off the NHS? He is damaged goods. A Conservative government would and should not want to do business with him.

Simon Stephenson

Jeremy : 27/6 : 11.09pm

"I'm not sure about this business of "second jobs" for MPs. I mean, if an MP is being paid money by a commercial/charitable or other organisation, then doesn't that constitute corruption?"

Well, no, unless it is the case that the MP is over-representing the interests of the organisation for no reason other than that he is being paid by them. Everyone has to deal with conflicts of interest - just because they exist doesn't make them corrupt.

"I mean, is it not the case that the only reason such an organisation would pay money to an MP is in return for influence exercised on its behalf?"

Well not the only reason, no. There are businesses who like to have MP's on their letterhead only for the prestige this supposedly brings. Also there are MP's who are renowned experts who are employed for their expertise. There are some who are employed solely as a conduit to other power-brokers.

Of course, some MPs' employments will be seen from one or the other, or both, sides as a contract of cash for influence. And I agree that it would be very good if this could be eliminated. But:-

1. This won't happen by banning second jobs. All it will do is drive it further underground.

2. The negative consequences of banning second jobs will be far worse than any positives that will result.

3. If the real aim is to minimise corruption, then taking tangential, high-profile action actually makes it more difficult to take action that really will be effective.

"And doesn't that make a nonsense of the principle of representative democracy? I mean, isn't an MP elected to represent the interests of his constituents - as opposed to the interest of whichever organisation happens to be paying him the largest wad of money?"

You're pre-supposing that being paid for a second job is conditional on representing those interests in parliament - this doesn't have to be the case, as I've explained above.

Moreover, it doesn't have to be the case that the interests of the employer and the constituents are contradictory. What if the MP is a non-executive director of a large employer in his constituency. Isn't ensuring that parliament is kept fully aware of the existence of this company in the intersts of both the company and the constituents?

Also, how is the MP supposed to adjudicate between the differing interests of people within his constituency? Does the pushiness of the coffee-morning contingent constitute corruption, because the MP is more likely to act in their favour than those of the more apathetic?

The solution to all this is to go in precisely the opposite direction to the one that is being taken. The House of Commons must be self-regulating. Far from it being too much like a gentleman's club, it is actually far too little like one. The problem with seeking to run things by rule and regulation is that those subjected to this regime will increasingly operate to the letter of the rule, and less and less to the purpose of what it is attempting to achieve.

It's surely far better to have a House where anything broadly considered to be corrupt behaviour risks banishment by the people you work with, than to have a detailed set of rules that make only black things black, and, no matter how dark the shade of grey, where everything else has to be treated as white.

David Bouvier

Jeremy - only if the MP is useless cannon fodder and the jobs are soft 'advice' / lobbying jobs. Consider the following cases:

Director of a business you set up prior to entering politics (perhaps a family firm)

Professional practice as a doctor, dentist, lawyer, etc where you have to maintain practice or lose the status

Senior business figure working as a director of a major firm for their experience and wisdom (not some ex minister working for a firm he used to award contracts to). This is the difference between Letwin and Blunkett.

A shopkeeper, market stall holder, or any sole trader who needs to keep their hand in or have nothing left if they decide to leave

etc etc

Many community figures will have commitments that just cant be dropped for 5 or 10 years then picked up again - it is an illusion of civil servants, polytechnic lectures and mid-tier corporate flunkeys that you can.

Lefts keep parliament open to those who are entrepreneurial, successful, etc.

mitch

He is leaving before nulab get wiped out.
After this election lab and the limps will only have enough MPs for a 5 a side team.

Tiberius

Milburn would have been the next best threat to Cameron after Blair. But the Labour party is so stuffed with humourless dullards like Miliband, Harman and (of course) Brown, that the proverbial elephant is missed.

I agree with Verity. Outside jobs are an asset to an MP, although ministers should have to give them up.

Simon Stephenson

Further to my previous post, the idea that a rules-based House of Commons is useless extends way beyond the stopping of corruption.

In a proper gentleman's club type atmosphere, the sort of answers that Brown and his ministers give to questions would be seen to be irreconcilable with parliament's function of acting as a check to the activities of the executive. Non-answers would just not be allowed.

Equally, however, non-questions would not be allowed, either. Phrasing questions in such a way that a minister cannot give a frank and candid answer without looking a complete fool would not be tolerated.

The ethos would be that it is necessary to score your own points, with what you say, and that if instead you set bear-traps, then you can't complain if the bears are no longer willing to participate. An impasse like this is a pointless state of affairs.

The argument about questions applies also, of course, to relationships between the politician and the media. If the media insist on interrogation by planting traps, the politicians won't play. To the frustration of everyone, and more generally to the pursuit of knowledge.

Travis Bickle

I see yet more policy pre-announcements on the BBC this morning.

Wake up call for Bercow? - nah Labour's favourite little quisling will just turn a blind eye.

biggestaspidistra

Why not expect professionalism from MP's? No-one can do two jobs properly. The second job becomes a hobby and, from everything written above, appears to be a form of lobbying. Like expenses, shine a light and they run for cover. They flourished in secret. Why?

TGF UKIP

I see my rant at 12.30 am caused my 7.16 pm post to be "found" overnight and inserted at its appropriate time.

I would urge all other Coffee Housers to complain too at the number of posts being "lost", a number which seems to have increased alarmingly over the past few weeks.

Unless we all do complain and complain loudly, the tight-arses in Speccie management won't spend the money to fund the website so it can work properly.

What a desperately sad comparison it makes to Guido's site.

JohnAnt

Should we not distinguish between (a) jobs that an MP does because he/she is professionally capable of doing them, and (b)consultancies or retainers that are obviously connected with the MP's or ex-minister's saleable knowledge of government inside info and/or readiness to lobby for changes in the law?
The former is meritorious, the latter pernicious.
Hague's after-dinner stuff comes into category (a), I guess.

Simon Stephenson

biggestaspidistra : 11.39am

They worked in secret because the expectation of the public is unattainable. It's cloud-cuckoo-land. And yet at the same time they've got to run the country, because as things have been set up, if they don't, everything will grind to a halt.

What the public wants, it cannot, and will not get. The harder it pushes, the further away from what it wants will be what it will get. This is not bloody-mindedness on the part of MPs. It's a pragmatic way of keeping the engine going no matter what ridiculous fuels and lubricants an almost totally ignorant public force it to use.

And the reason for the public's being in the land of make-believe? Well, that's the direction we've been going since it was decided that impression was more important than reality, that conforming was more important than individuality, and that emotion was more important than reason. About 50 years ago all this started, and we've been sliding downhill ever since.

It's not really the fault of today's politicians - they're no different from everyone else, with a few exceptions. Look for the similarities between the shortcomings of the House of Commons and those of society in general - it'll frighten you.

redeye

Darlington was represented by Michael Fallon in the period 1983-1992.

Jeremy

To Simon Stephenson:

Clearly, then, what is required is transparency. The individual voter needs to be able to see a list of all of those organisations who are paying his MP money, how much he is being paid and what that payment is for.

Tiberius

TGF: I, as I'm sure many other regular posters do, suffer from "lost" contributions. The CH server is dodgy, but sometimes Pete has to exercise judgement over taste, I believe. Personally, I don't think it's worth getting worked up about.

My post about you buying the NOTW didn't appear, which is a shame, because I'm sure it would have had you roaring with laughter (not!)

Michael Booth

biggestaspidistra

perhaps because being an MP is not a career, nor is it a job. It is public service pure and simple and as such was once thought to be a reward in itself. Just a thought.

JONNY

In the real world TGF,
I'm sure the Tories never had the slightest suspicion they might carry Darlington.
Quel Pie dans Le Sky.

TGF UKIP

Tiberius, I note your implication regarding my posts and "taste." Good job I'm not, as you may have surmised, over-sensitive.

Just shows what a bunch of spoilsports the Speccie gang are, though, when they have "lost" your post about me and your teenage alter ego's jounalistic spiritual home.

biggestaspidistra

simonstephenson@11:39
I agree with much of what you say but its fairly clear the game as you describe it is unsustainable in the modern world. Politicians have subjected voters lives to a barrage of state intrusion and observation without understanding this light (and the voters anger) would shine on them. So has the BBC and it will also topple, the good parts and the bad. Both institutions could have been less arrogant and survived intact.

MichaelBooth@5:09
if it were unpaid public service and a second job was necessary to make ends meet I'd still not understand why the need for secrecy.

I think its reasonable to want to know that when an mp asks a question that might benefit a private institution, he isn't on their payroll.

Tiberius

TGF: you have my word that "taste" was a general observation, and not limited to your good self.

Simon Stephenson

biggestaspidistra : 1.54am

Sorry, I disagree. Parliament and the BBC are just microcosms of how UK society actually is. They haven't mutated differently from the rest of the body.

Adding rules to custom doesn't enhance anything. All it does is demolish custom. Instead of the principle of individual behaviour being the spirit of third-party expectation, we now live where anything that's not specifically illegal must, perforce, be regarded as spotlessly clean.

How not to organise society, in one easy lesson.

biggestaspidistra

SimonStephenson@12:43

I'm suggesting adding transparency to custom, not rules.

Both the BBC and the government have chosen secrecy above transparency, something that is unsustainable in contemporary society. Both institutions have responded with new rules. Both institutions in their present form will crumble. New technology changed the game.

What comes may not be better. Openness will impose a sameness. Our institutions have not kept up and furthermore they have seemed spiteful, arrogant and punative, which is why pitchforks are at hand.