James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The Tories have had a bad night. First a poll put them below the 40 percent mark and now the Telegraph’s revelations have caused serious embarrassment to the party without providing David Cameron with a case where he can expel an MP from the party without suffering the call to remove several others on the
Polly Toynbee, once a great Brown cheerleader, pulls no punches in her column calling for Labour to get rid of the Prime Minister. Here’s the nub of her argument: “It’s all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say
I would never have predicted this but a Politics Home poll says the public is more interested in the Gurkhas than the expenses issue: “Joanna Lumley’s meeting with Gordon Brown to discuss a Gurkha settlement and her heated public exchange with immigration minister Phil Woolas was the story that the public were most interested in
The question of the timing of Brown’s apology is one of those rare moments when I find myself disagreeing with Pete. The obvious political thing to do would have been for Brown to say sorry on Thursday night, framing the way that the rest of the media would follow up on the Telegraph’s mega-scoop. But
Paul Waugh reports that Michael Gove and Andrew Lansley will be doing interviews with the BBC about their expenses later on. This suggests a confidence on their part and that of Andy Coulson that their cases are explicable. Both seem to have genuinely changed which one was their first home for real life reasons rather
Here is a quick take on some of the questions being discussed in Westminster right now: Are the Telegraph done when it comes to Labour and Tory frontbenchers? The Tories seem confident that there is no more to come out about their top team. The situation on the Labour side is less clear. How will
There is a danger with these expenses stories that we get inured to them, that nothing shocks us any more. For this reason the shadow Cabinet is benefiting from being featured fourth not first in the Telegraph’s series. The revelations are bad. The actions of Francis Maude and Chris Grayling strike me as most serious.
I know defending MPs is a hard sell right now, but Michael Gove seems to be getting an unfair rap in the coverage. He is under fire for having flipped his second home designation but he did so because he moved homes. In other words, the property that was his second home genuinely changed. Gove
The Telegraph has posted a preview of its coverage of the shadow cabinet’s claims, which will feature in tomorrow’s paper. Here are the key points: “Tomorrow the Telegraph will disclose instances where Conservative MPs have gone to great lengths to ensure their country properties are maintained at taxpayers’ cost. One shadow minister has had piping
The expenses scandal is becoming more depressing all the time. There are no apologies forthcoming and too many politicians want to circle the wagons against any kind of scrutiny. As Jonathan Isaby notes, Theresa May is refusing to say any MP has behaved immorally and is instead “blaming the culture that has grown up in
Unsurprisingly, expenses stories dominate the Sunday papers. But an interview with Peter Watt, the Labour Secretary General during the Blair-Brown handover who had to resign over the Abrahams affair, caught my eye. Watt’s main point is that he was left hanging in the wind by Brown but his comment about the election that never was
Anthony Wells has news of a snap ICM poll for the News of the World on expenses. It does seem that Gordon Brown has been hurt by Friday’s headlines as much as we thought he would be; 68 percent say their opinion of him has been damaged. (I’m not sure if the poll contains this
Do read Alasdair Palmer’s provocative and tightly argued case for a DNA database. The nub of his argument is that there’s no the difference between the state having a photo of your face courtesy of your passport and one of your DNA. He writes: “Most people react to the state’s photo database with a shrug:
Interesting post from Alastair Campbell on this scandal: “A few weeks ago, when the expenses row was simmering not boiling, David Cameron suggested to Gordon Brown that he and Nick Clegg (the leader of the Liberal Democrats) get together and try to work out a new system. Of course there may have been politics in
It has been pushed down the news agenda by the economic crisis and by the focus on ‘AfPak’ but I still think Iran is going to be the biggest test of Obama’s presidential leadership. There are no good options when it comes to how to deal with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. But letting Iran go nuclear
The Guardian’s superb scoop revealing the Bank of England’s worries about a coming third wave of the financial crisis would normally be big news but in the current circumstances it is gaining little traction. No other political news story is going to have cut through until all the expenses stories are out there. The Westminster rumour-mill is buzzing
One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry reading the Telegraph’s latest piece on MPs’ expenses. The paper reports that: “Phil Woolas, the Home Office Minister, claimed for items of women’s clothing, tampons and nappies. The parliamentary rules only allow expenses which are “exclusively” for MPs’ own use so it is not clear these items
You know a Prime Minister’s authority is shot when at an event a Cabinet Minister is speaking at, all the jokes from the platform are at the Prime Minister’s expense. James Purnell smiled wryly as they were cracked, but there was uproarious—not nervous—laughter. There was none of the frisson that would have accompanied such a
The word doing the round amongst us hacks is that the Telegraph series on expenses will cover the shadow Cabinet on Monday. This, though, is subject to change. Apparently, the Telegraph’s own journalists aren’t even sure what is running when. There is, apparently, some really bad stuff in there about certain members of the shadow
The following MPs who are Cabinet ministers aren’t mentioned at all in the Telegraph’s coverage today: John Hutton Harriet Harman Ed Balls James Purnell John Denham Yvette Cooper Jim Murphy This means one of two things. Either their claims are so clean as to be not newsworthy or they are so juicy that the Telegraph