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Saturday 4 July 2009

If Gordon wins next time, the Derek Conway case will be one of the reasons

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The polite phrase used by the Standards and Privileges Committee was ‘diversion of public funds’. At a stroke, this gave Gordon Brown the words he needed for a narrative he has been trying to construct — to portray the controversies about Labour donations, which led to Mr Hain’s resignation, as a problem afflicting all parties. Meanwhile, the public simply conclude that all politicians are villains — and not just those with a red rosette.

Yet David Cameron’s judgment in the matter was not instantaneous, as it was when he sacked Patrick Mercer for making ill-judged remarks about racial abuse in the military. The news about Mr Conway broke while Mr Cameron was at a one-day conference discussing the party’s intellectual direction (a rather uplifting event, where the wheat-to-chaff ratio was much improved on a similar event last year). The tree logo was still there, but this time coloured not green but sky blue.

Suddenly into this sky rolled the thundercloud of Mr Conway. A while ago, the scandal would have caused an ugly shadow cabinet split — and an unwanted test of Mr Cameron’s parliamentary authority. Though a speck on the national stage, Mr Conway is a large figure in Westminster and so well-liked in the Commons (on all benches) that he was considered frontrunner to become the next Speaker. Added to that, he is close to David Davis. During that Monday evening, rumours flew around that Mr Davis had thrown a fraternal arm around his friend and demanded that he be protected.

Indeed, all manner of theories were flying around during these limbo hours. That Mr Cameron lacked the authority to remove as popular a figure as Mr Conway — and that, with the Old Bexley and Sidcup MP cut off and on the loose, Mr Davis might cause mischief again. I have heard reports about Mr Davis becoming disheartened recently, wondering what the point of a Tory Home Secretary is if he cannot control prisons (now in the control of the Justice Department) nor (under Tory proposals for locally elected police chiefs) the nation’s constabularies.

My information is that Mr Davis is indeed grumpy — but that the root cause is his boredom in waiting for the Terrorism Bill, which may now not have its second reading until April. But one searches in vain for any shadow cabinet split over Mr Conway. Mr Davis absented himself from any discussion about his friend’s future, and is not grumbling about the result. Even Mr Conway’s friends cannot deny that the sheer audacity of his offence made his dismissal inevitable. The only question is why this was not decided instantaneously.

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