Post-expenses polling

The Times has the first solid poll that has given the public the chance to digest the expenses scandal. The numbers and analysis are lifted from the UK Polling Report:

Topline voting intentions for a general election, with changes from Populus poll for ITV a week ago, are CON 41%(+2), LAB 21%(-6), LDEM 15%(-2) (note that the Times have taken their changes from the last Populus poll conducted for the Times, a week and a half earlier).

Previously there had been something of a divide between the pollsters, with YouGov and ComRes showing Labour down near 20%, while Populus and ICM showed them up in the high 20s. The lastest Populus poll suggests a further slump in Labour support and brings the pollsters broadly in line, suggesting it is Labour who have most suffered from the expenses scandal. Asked directly who had suffered most from the expenses row 35% said Labour, with only 7% saying Conservative - though 50% said all parties had suffered equally. Asked which of the party leaders was most damaged the contrast was even starker - 62% said Brown, only 5% Cameron, and only 25% said the leaders had suffered equally.

So, while the expenses scandal has been bad for all of the established parties, it is massively clear that Labour has taken the most damage. This is quite right too. Labour 'reformed' the whole fees operation when they came to power in 1997 and they have been running the show for 12 years. They are responsible for creating a situation where MPs could make the wrong choices. That having been said individual MPs cannot escape responsibility for making the wrong choices, especially as they are supposed to be in parliament because of their ability to make the right choices for all of us. In political terms though this scandal is pretty much the last nail in the coffin for Labour, reinforced by Gordon Brown's useless response to it. Someone really should explain to him that running away and hiding is not usually an option to those in a leadership position.

Speaking of people who need things explaining to him brings us neatly onto Simon Heffer. His take on the expenses scandal in his latest column is:

I am puzzled that there should be a supposition among many people – not least Labour supporters who fear a general election – that the Tories have done well out of the expenses scandal. I am hard put to agree. None of the main parties comes out of this well, and the only ones that can make a pretence of doing so are the Lib Dems.

Let us return to the poll evidence: Conservatives up 2, Labour down 6 and Liberal Democrats down 2. Conservatives with a clear 20 point lead. I must say that the source of Simon's puzzlement is not immediately apparent, except perhaps for his detachment from the real world.

The rest of the column is predicated on David Cameron having mishandled the scandal, this when the Populus poll had which leader had been most damaged by the matter at 62% for Brown and 5% for Cameron. You have to hand it to Heffer he is pretty consistent in being wrong. He also does seem determined to stand at the next election, as a part-time MP you understand as he wouldn't want to lose those fat cheques from the Telegraph for writing this nonsense. Personally I welcome this. A man who was electoral experience appears to consist of being disbarred from a student election 30 years ago but who persists in writing rubbish about elections needs a wakeup call. Simon has much less name recognition than he thinks and no discernible political ability. In the hurley-burley of a general election he will be nothing more than an amusing footnote.

If he does stand though I undertake to provide the Conservative candidate a comprehensive analysis of Heffer's political positioning for, say the last five years. You know, all of his support for Labour and Gordon Brown, the industries he would nationalise, the countries we would be at war with, the long list of people he regards with contempt, basically the sorts of things he would need to be reminded of at any public debate. Maybe a few thousand leaflets with some of the choicer gems would help, though that might run the risk of giving him more publicity than he deserves, so I will think on that.

Simon finishes his column by giving David Cameron advice on how to handle the expenses scandal, this from a man pledging to stand against the Conservatives at the next election and who is going to vote UKIP on Thursday, so it is not likely that David Cameron will take his words as well meant. Actually that is a serious point. Simon appears to be cutting himself adrift as a Conservative commentator in terms of being a critical friend. Instead he is a carping enemy. For a columnist that is a career-changing move. I wonder if he has thought it through.

Power to the people

A very important speech from David Cameron on the state of our country in terms of the erosion of ordinary freedoms and the lack of accountability of those in power. He links the fury of ordinary people at the abuses of MPs expenses to the wider sense of powerlessness that many feel in the face of public institutions. Most importantly, he says that this is wrong. Power should rest with ordinary people and local communities wherever possible. Where this cannot happen than institutions must be truly open and accountable. This includes Parliament, where the legislation that governs our lives must be arrived at by an open, democratic process, not sofa government allied to the machinations of whips an pliable Labour backbenchers. So, David Cameron wants wholesale reform, from parliamentary process, our relationship with the EU, to an end to the fiasco of Regional government, with power devolved back to local Councils where it belongs. Local power means local accountability, including for the police, where many forces have worked an agenda almost designed to alienate them from local people instead of keeping the the old tradition of policing by consent. To be fair, Essex Police have by an large been an exception to this, but would the police forces who have devoted disproportionate resources to motoring offences instead of things like, say, beat patrols or combating burglary, really have done that if their leadership had faced a popular vote? Not in a million years.

Most telling was the government's answer. The BBC put up Jack Straw and he could only 'welcome David Cameron's contribution to the debate'. Here was a speech that picked apart the basic thesis of Labour central control and the target-stetting culture and a senior government minister had no answer.

This was a grown-up speech that treats the electorate as adults instead of the class-war soundbites of New Labour. All we need now is an election.

Councillor's expenses

One thing of especial interest did come up at full Council on 21st May. With all the furore about MP's expenses, one of my colleagues posed a question to the Leader about Councillor's expenses. Specifically, Cllr. Carole Morris asked if Councillor's expense claims could be published monthly on Basildon Council's website. Since I am the Councillor with the responsibility for IT, this has been delegated to me and I propose to get it done as soon as possible. I don't think that we have got a problem with expenses at Basildon, but this is public money and the public deserve transparency on how it is spent.

I cannot imagine that there will be much argument over that.

Basildon District Council's new Cabinet

These is the new Cabinet for Basildon District Council:


Councillor Gordon is leader of the Labour Group and Councillor Williams in the nominee from the Liberal Democrats as we run a mixed Cabinet. There is some discussion about the other parties giving up their Cabinet positions in return for Chairmanship of the various scrutiny functions, but this has to be considered in light of yet more government legislation on the operation of local government. We want to see how this affects the Council decision-making processes before we make any changes.

Brown - no election cos' I'd lose

Prime Minister's Questions were extraordinary today. David Cameron asked for an election and Brown said no because it would cause 'chaos'. When pressed he clarified that to mean that a Conservative victory would cause chaos. So there you have it. We won't have the election that the country is demanding because Gordon Brown would lose. Politically, this is a bit of a clanger as Gordon Brown will now be accused of 'bottling', again. It also runs counter to press editorials and campaigns for an immediate election in the aftermath of the expenses scandal and the papers won't like that at all. There were numerous better ways to handle David Cameron's question, but Brown unerringly found the worst response. He will rue that in the days to come.

Even Nick Robinson twigged what a mess Brown had made of things.

Conservative Election Broadcast, on expenses instead

In case you missed it, this is why the Conservatives are doing better in political terms than Labour over the expenses scandal.



It's called leadership Gordon.

Mail on Sunday has Labour on 20%

The expenses scandal has hit support for the major parties, but it is now clear which has been hit the hardest. The Mail on Sunday will have a poll today, I am writing this very early on Sunday morning, that puts Labour support on 20%, with the Conservatives on 42%. It is clear that the contrast between David Cameron's decisive leadership and Gordon Brown's vanishing act has not been lost on the electorate.

Brown has form on this. Again and again when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, Brown would go and hide away when the political going got tough. That might have been all right when Blair was there to handle the difficult stuff, but he is gone now, Brown saw to that. Now that Brown has the top job he has to lead because that is actually the what the top job is. Instead he has hidden himself away and so Labour are plumbing new historic lows in terms of support. At 20% pledging to vote Labour, the lowest since modern polling began in 1943, we are in uncharted political territory. Certainly if that was carried over into a general election Labour would probably cease to exist in its current form. At the very least the June 4th elections look like being a total disaster for Labour.

Meanwhile, the search for Gordon Brown continues.

There is nothing British about the BNP

Formed from foreign ideology, rejecting historic British values of the basic equality of all people, engagement with the world, and political change through evolution, not revolution, the BNP is about as anti-British as you can get.

If they were British then why do they keep banging on about the Holocaust? The reason is simple, if your ideology is based on far-right philosophers from the continent then you have to attack the greatest single argument against them. So the BNP feed the Holocaust denial industry, because intellectually they have to. If your beliefs lead to extermination camps then they must be wrong. So, try and pretend the extermination camps never happened and that the Allies were just as bad. Imagine that, a political party with 'British' in its title that believes in moral equivalence among the participants of World War 2.

But this is why the BNP are fundamentally anti-British:



More here.

Cameron shows leadership on expenses

David Cameron looks like a Prime Minister, while the Prime Minister dithers. That is the contrast in the two party leaders' responses to the expenses revelations in the press. From David Cameron: unjustifiable expense claims to be repaid, all expenses to be published immediately and a rapid review of past expenses. Agree or forget being a Tory MP. From Brown, wait for a committee to report in a couple of months, due process must be followed, blah, dither, blah. Cameron gets it in a way that Brown just doesn't. In the same way as he has misread the public mood on every other major issue facing the country, Brown seems to think that the old trick of punting the matter into the long grass will do the trick. Not this time. People are simply furious at such blatant robbery of the public purse from some of our elected representatives. Brown and Labour will become yet more unpopular, if such a thing is possible.

As for Hazel Blears, Andrew MacKay, Elliot Morley and their ilk, they are finished in British politics, and probably for anything else as well. Both politics and business are built on trust. No one is going to vote for or employ anyone they cannot even trust to fill out an expense form honestly.

Brown says sorry

With truly inexplicable timing, Gordon Brown has finally said sorry for the MPs expenses fiasco. He apologised on behalf of 'all MPs' and 'all Parties', dropping his remarks into a speech to the Royal College of Nursing. Apparently, this was not pre-planned, with the PM deciding on the insert on the way to the event. Now, an apology is long overdue from Gordon Brown. While this mess afflicts all parties, most MPs are Labour and we have had a Labour government for the last 12 years, so the culpability lies mainly with them. More importantly, some contrition earlier, much earlier, might have given Gordon Brown or Parliament or both some chance of getting in front of this issue. Instead we have had stalling, denial and a refusal to take accountability which has only finally ended with the leaking of expense claims to the press. Now we have had an apology on the day that the Tories were getting a going over, which makes little sense in hard political terms. It is also far too late to draw a line under the issue, which will bubble on until every last grisly detail is in the public domain.

So, where now? Well, I agree with Sir Christopher Kelly, whose Committee on Standards in Public Life is carrying out a review of MPs' allowances, that the new openness means that most of the abuses that we have seen will probably never happen again anyway. All that is now required is for a code to be formalised that allows MPs office expenses and a second home in the vicinity of the Palace of Westminster if they need it. Hardly rocket science. Oh, and it would also be nice if HMRC went after those MPs who evaded capital gains tax as part of their taxpayer-funded property development activities. If I have to pay a hefty tax bill then so should they.