Looking back over the past week’s news cycle, I reckon it’s the first one for some time that Labour have come out on top over the Conservatives. That’s partly down to Jacqui Smith’s rallying cry to the 42-day detention rebels, which – as the papers have it – could well have averted a disaster for Gordon Brown. But it’s mostly due to that old problem: politicians and their expenses.
The bad news for the Tories started with the finding that the Conservative MEP Giles Chichester had disgracefully pumped £thousands of EU money into a family company. Of course, Chichester stepped down swiftly enough, and many Tories must have hoped that, with that, the story could be swept under the carpet.
But now it’s emerged that Caroline Spelman paid a nanny through her parliamentary allowance. When I first heard the news, I didn’t think too much of it. After all, employing a nanny has a sugar-coated, Mary Poppins-esque ring to it. It hardly ranks up there with Derek Conway’s dubious actions. But it’s Spelman’s claim that the nanny was paid for “secretarial work” that – rightly or wrongly – makes this case enter the murky realm of the potential fiddle. I suspect the response of many voters will – again, rightly of wrongly – be “Secretarial work? Yeah, right…”
Which spells trouble for Team Cameron. Much like Barack Obama in the States, the Tory leader has projected lofty standards. That’s a good thing. But it does mean that whenever those standards appear not to have been met, the public backlash could be all the greater than it would otherwise have been. It also means that Labour press releases are particularly easy to write (cf. Labour MP Kevan Jones’ response: “Clearly, old habits die hard in the Tory party, despite what their leader says”).
In the short-term, Cameron will be hoping the 42-day detention vote comes out against Gordon Brown. Then the the headlines will return to the “Labour in crisis” theme. But, in the longer term, there’s the release of all MPs’ expense claims in October. He’ll have his fingers crossed that there won’t be similar revelations then. Or that – if there are – they’re spread across all the parties. As Sir Alex Ferguson would put it, it’s squeaky bum time…
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