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GORDON BROWN suggested yesterday that he had more important issues than MPs' expenses to deal with, such as the G20 and saving the globe, and in one way he is right.
However vital Geoff Hoon and Margaret Beckett's taxpayer-subsidised third homes and Jacqui Smith's state-financed leopard-skin accessories (all right, garden patio heater) clearly are to the ministers concerned, their cost to the Exchequer is trivial and their impact on our prosperity is nil.
But in most ways that matter, it is the MPs' expenses that are the real issue and the G20 that is of no importance. It was painful, last week, to see the media herd expertly corralled into the pen marked “$1 trillion to bail out world.”
$1 trillion — for the International Monetary Fund — does not represent anything like the true amount to be spent, or even promised, by the G20. $250 billion of it has already been in the IMF's coffers for years and a further $100 billion was pledged, by Japan, more than six weeks before the summit. Last week, the world leaders promised to lend the IMF another $150 billion.
If this money comes through, it will be available to the Fund to lend it in turn to economies in desperate trouble. But it will have to be paid back. It is not the same as a fiscal stimulus, something conspicuously not agreed at the Excel centre.
There was also $250 billion in trade credits — but mostly from existing export guarantee programmes. This is not spending but a form of insurance for suppliers against the risk of not being paid. The chances of even most of the guarantee being needed or used are zero. The only really “new” money was the $250 billion which the IMF will be allowed effectively to print for itself.
It is true that journalists are getting bored with writing about the recession. We worry that we're depressing our readers. We're looking for a change of story. Some tentative shoots of recovery are helping us here; I mentioned a couple myself a few weeks ago. But the Budget in two weeks is likely to contain some truly frightening figures for economic contraction.
And even if the growth numbers were less scary, and the G20 numbers less dodgy, politics is more about feelings than it is about numbers. The expenses scandal excites our visceras, and stands for something more politically salient than any overhyped gathering of world leaders: the way in which the political class generally, and the government in particular, has lost touch with the feelings of the rest of us.
Any government that was not in the last throes of exhaustion and self-destruction would have realised the pure toxicity of the scandal and made their top priority to shut it down. It confirms everything people think they know about politicians (even though most are not, in fact, as greedy and cynical as Hoon.) And it can be no coincidence that whoever is providing this information has targeted ministers.
Soon the storm will grow, when every MP's spending is released. It could get very ugly indeed. The need for some sort of action to pre-empt public anger is now far more urgent than Gordon's grandstanding. For our political system, this moment could be what August 2008 was for the financial system: the last opportunity to forestall a disastrous collapse in confidence.
Until Brown sees that, any prospect of being able to continue his superhero act after next year's general election must be even more remote.
Boat made my heart sink
THE REAL divisions in England have nothing to do with race, religion or class. When the late Mary Whitehouse once said that she didn't know a single person who used the F-word, I realised that after many years in journalism I barely knew a single person who did not use the F-word.
A similar schism exists over Richard Curtis. As he produces his latest horror, The Boat That Rocked, the nation is at war between those who venerate the Father Of Feelgood and those like me who find that watching his films makes us feel ill. Curtis was once a great comedy writer; his and Ben Elton's Blackadder Goes Forth was one of the funniest, truest and most poignant things ever seen on British TV. What a tragedy to see his descent to this lame schmaltz.
Reader views (6)
What sort of person in receipt of a Ministerial salary and with access to a subsidised restaurant claim a patio heater, doormat, toothbrush-holder, four hundred quids worth of tv (twice) and 99p sink plug on expenses paid for from tax revenue? Did Jacqui Smith think that that was clever? Why did her husband, somehow managing on the household's second income of around 40K/year, feel that he would be doing himself down if he didn't claim his pay-per-view porn against Parliamentary expenses?
Let us flush out the whole pigsty and instigate new rules that do not presume MPs have any integrity. The few remaining honest MPs living in the real world must be kicking themselves for not getting their snouts in the trough too.
- Rachel Mawhood, London, UK
Can we see some details of Gordon's expense claims? Mind you he doesn't spend much time on the day job these days, does he? Remember Gordon, your the Prime Misister....
I suggest that, for the moment, every MP should receive a monthly payment representing one twelfth of the amount claimed by the lowest claiming MP. This payment would be on account against the sum it was ultimately decided was their entitlement under the new rules.
This would get the public and the press off their backs,I cannot see an argument against it in the current circumstances.
It would ensure that they themselves pushed for the earliest solution.
It would focus their minds on the subject for the future.
If they don't like the ultimate solution, they can always resign and (try to) find a better rewarded job elsewhere, can't they?.
- John Emsley, Meillac France
Being an MP and a minister is one of the few jobs that require no qualifications or experience How it shows!! I agree the second home financed by the tax payer should be sold and the money returned when they are no longer MPs. Where else can you find a job that pays for a second home presumably tax free?
- Simon Wells, BRENTWOOD ENGLAND
If Brown thinks these MPs have done nothing wrong would he encourage all M.Ps to do the same?
- Ted, London
With the tatty remnants of this ZaNuLabour Government's credibility now finally shot through, Mr Gilligan, how can you, or indeed any serious political commentator, possibly still even be considering President Brown's eligiblity to stand as Our Great Leader ever again?
The best comment I read from a public 'commentator', in response to a columnist's analysis of this habitual Treasury raiding, by predominantly McLabour Ministers and MPs this week, was from a Mr Donk from Angus.
He thought that this alleged 'embezzling' is nothing to do with the 'interpretation of rules', it's actually nothing less than brazen 'theft by finding'!
Meanwhile, the many McLabour MPs who [the electorate] will [shortly force to] be leaving soon to [very comfortably] retire from The Commons, they're free to very deliberately 'carry on' 'troughing it' as usual for at least another year!
- Dave, Cumbria
Mr Gilligan is clearly in tune with the mood of the nation, unfortunately our PM is not. Tax payers are very, very angry at these latest scandals. We have been asked to fund everything - from pornographic films to kitchen sinks. Having bought and furnished second homes for MPs then these properties are owned by the tax payers and MPs are merely tenants. When they are kicked out of office - as they certainly will be - then they must be made vacate the tax payer's property, the houses sold and the money returned to the public purse. They will not be homeless as they have their "second homes" (also paid for by tax payers) to return to.
- R.F., Yorks, UK
