The expenses scandal has delighted the Tories — it keeps Brown in power

7 November 2009

James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics

To step into the House of Commons nowadays is like gatecrashing a wake. In happier days, its corridors were full of MPs quietly plotting. Now, the scene is members being offered a supportive squeeze of the shoulder by a colleague. The ones being consoled are those who have been ‘Legged’ — to use a phrase — ordered to repay substantial sums of money by Sir Thomas Legg. There is no gloating over the fate of these unfortunates; too many MPs know it could have been them.

For scores of MPs, such concerns have supplanted normal politics. One shadow cabinet minister told me recently that he had spent ages on the phone trying to get companies to produce receipts for work that he had done five years ago, before coming to the realisation that there were better uses for his time and just refunded the money. But if Legg’s final repayment demands and the Kelly review finally begin to allow parliament to move on from the expenses scandal then politics could start moving again — and at pace. The unresolved battle over the Labour leadership could be restarted soon.

The first step out of the expenses morass is the Kelly review. Even before its publication, MPs had braced themselves for the new order: second homes are rented, not owned, those within ‘reasonable’ commuting distance of Westminster having only one home, and no one is allowed to hire their spouse. All these proposals have public support — as does anything that makes life difficult for the hated political class. So they will likely be passed, even if the effect is to deter anyone but the rich and most determined political obsessive from entering parliament. No party wants to stand between the mob and its anger. Some MPs even talk of going beyond Kelly’s recommendations to prevent the papers singling them out. It would be a brave commuter-belt MP who continued to claim for a second home.

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