If yesterday’s appearance of Keith Vaz in the Commons was a show of defiance, today will be a taste of reality for the Labour MP. The steely silence when he asked questions in Parliament spoke volumes; MPs are not happy with Vaz’s attempts to carry on as normal in the wake of allegations surrounding a meeting with two male prostitutes at his flat. Yet as far as Vaz was concerned, it was business as usual. That will change this afternoon as he’ll finally have to confront reality. When the Home Affairs Committee meets shortly after 3pm, he’ll find out whether that Sunday Mirror expose is enough to end his chairmanship of the committee. And with bombshell timing, the Mirror have today released recordings which the paper claims show Vaz was not set up. Many of the other front pages this morning also go on the attack. The signs are not good for Vaz. What happens now?
Failing the unlikely prospect of Vaz stepping down, a vote of no confidence looms for the MP for Leicester East, who has chaired the committee since being elected last June. The process of how this happens is laid out in a Parliamentary debate from 2010, which caters for such a vote. There are three options here: either the entire committee must back the vote of no confidence. Given the telling silence of his fellow members of the committee, this doesn’t seem like an unlikely prospect. But even if the whole committee doesn’t back the vote of no confidence, ousting Vaz can also be achieved through a simple majority vote, so long as the majority of the committee ‘including at least two members from the largest party represented on the committee and at least one member from another party, vote in favour of the resolution’. Allies of Keith Vaz have told the Telegraph that ‘not one’ of the six Tories, three Labour MPs and SNP MP sitting on the committee want him to go. On the basis of what his fellow Labour MP Chuka Umunna said yesterday, it seems he does have some support (even if this takes the form of a refusal to condemn rather than actually being backed). This afternoon, we’ll find out whether Vaz has somehow convinced his fellow committee members that he should indeed cling on.
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