Alexander Avoided Capital Gains Tax

Next!

You really couldn't make it up if you tried. Now Danny Alexander, bad (very bad) choice of replacement for trougher David Laws at the Treasury, has been caught avoiding Capital Gains Tax - you know, the tax he'll be responsible for ramping up as part of his new job. Sorry, but Cameron has set a precedent, has a principle he must (and I think will) follow, and so has to fire Alexander too. There'll be fewer tears over his loss I imagine than there were for 'rising star' and 'genius', David Laws.

Some will be asking why this is happening. It's very simple really and it has nothing to do with homophobic witch-hunts, Labour sting operations (lol) or right wing, anti-coaltion smear conspiracies. That's loony stuff. The reason is that while they were the no-hoper, hotchpotch third party that generally behaved like weasels in a sack behind the scenes (still do), during the expenses scandal they were basically ignored by the Telegraph in what was a target rich environment. There were only so many pages in the paper each day, and the editors rightly preferred to focus on the major players and the yellows got away with it, even to point where Clegg actually thought he could boast about it in the Commons! This is the hubris. Now that senior Lib Dems, to their huge surprise and thanks to a rare general election outcome, have found themselves doing real government jobs, they are subject to that delayed scrutiny. Moreover, it is all the more intense because they are being picked off one by one instead of en masse, as the Tories and Labour MPs and ministers were. So much the better.

It goes without saying - for me at least - that the Lib Dems fully deserve everything they get, and so the sight of senior MPs and some well known mainstream political bloggers defending one of them, often on the most ridiculous of grounds, is damn well nauseating. One good thing will come out of this new wave of expenses revelations, however: pretty soon, the Conservative government will run out of Lib Dems to put in the vital Treasury Chief Sec. role (they'll be on the Sarah Teather human mouse pretty soon).

Then maybe the country will get the person it really needs in that job - John Redwood - and, I predict, with the coalition still more or less in tact.

Every "cloud" as they say...

Who Will Fire David Laws?

Shaping up as a half-decent, expensively-educated, millionaire Chief Treasury Secretary though he might have been, I'm awfully sorry, but David Laws' political arse is grass. He can't argue the case for public spending cuts when he, apparently, has been pretty happy to sponge off the state on behalf of his partner for the longest time.

So the only question to me is: who will fire him? His party leader, Clegg, or his boss, the Prime Minister?

My view? Cameron must pull the trigger immediately because what Laws did particularly is just the sort of troughing, fiddling, pocket-lining, venal rule-bending Cameron has been condemning in principle and often for over a year. He fought the election on that platform, for heaven's sake!

Frankly, Laws fired himself the moment he chose not to reveal any of this as being a potential problem to his boss before he was appointed (I do not for one moment believe he didn't realise or didn't understand the rules - in fact it's surely hard to believe that of a double first Cambridge economist - and it won't wash regardless, even if he sticks to that lame line).

But who to replace him? Well, how about John Redwood? I think it's high time Cameron picked someone like him for the cabinet anyway. Besides, he's much smarter and more experienced even than Laws in many ways, and genuinely believes and can explain the Friedmanite solution to Labour's debt crisis that we now so desperately need. He'd also be a handy bulwark against the economic mixed brew that is Saint Vince and his presence would vastly help to shore up the Tory back benches. A win-win scenario potentially, then, both for the party and, in my humble, for the country.

Oh, and sucks to the bloody Lib Dums. They can either suck it up and stay in government, or they can destroy this blessed coalition in a fit of indefensible pique.

I just can't wait to see how Deputy Nick decides to handle this one.

Troughers To The Bitter End

In tomorrow's Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times, two stories reveal just how venal former Labour ministers are. It simply beggars belief that these four, Geoff Hoon, Patricia Hewitt, Margaret Moron (sic) and Stephen Byers will almost certainly escape at the very least some form of criminal investigation for corruption.

One other thing is certain, unless the Tories get tough on this issue and threaten to seek prosecutions for what amounts to the worst sleaze probably in modern British history, we, the long-suffering public, will simply never know to what extent we have been comprehensively fleeced by the most corrupt and disastrous regime we've ever experienced in Britain.

Cameron, if and when he wins, had better be genuinely 'whiter than white' or I guarantee that this time around there will be bloody hell to pay. He needs to be concentrating on making sure any government he leads is unimpeachable by reviving the principles of collective and ministerial responsibility which have withered and died under Blair/Brown; that any future parliament is beyond reproach by making sure any pocket-lining MPs forfeit their office; and that the sins of the past, especially by these Labour criminals, are not simply forgotten, by resisting any pressure for an amnesty. I'm sure Gordon Brown would be pleased to return the favour given half the chance - but that's not the point.

This should be one of the major focuses of a new Cameron government, and definitely not woolly headed, watermelon carbon taxes that will severely damage the economy, justified on the basis of a now pretty thoroughly discredited scientific theory, itself a trojan horse for a socialist agenda.

Nothing less will do.

How Do You Suspend A Suspended MP?

David Blackburn has just put an excellent question in his Speccy blog, concerning the case of Elliot Morley, one of three Labourist MPs (so far) now charged with stealing from the British taxpayer.

Sky’s Jon Craig’s asks one of those questions you wished you had posed: wasn’t Elliot Morley suspended already? Yes, he was, on the 14 May 2009 and with immediate effect.

As Blackburn reminds us, Morley was suspended from his party on 14th May 2009 "with immediate effect". It looks like he was reinstated on the sly, however - hence the necessity to "re-suspend" him. Never mind the sneakiness of this - and contempt for public opinion that it shows - asks Blackburn: in the Labour party, what on earth do you have to do to get expelled!

There are three main points to make about this total, Brown-inspired fiasco, and Blackburn implies the first two. First, this Brown U-turn represents an unequivocal triumph for David Cameron, who has been steadfast in his leadership all through the expenses scandal and has gauged the mood of the British public quite deftly. He's acted decisively throughout, and bravely run the risk of severe unpopularity among his own MPs as a consequence by forcing the worst Tory offenders to give up their seats, despite their not having broken any law per se. I still think he could have gone further and forced Brown into a general election last year. A still-bolder leader would and could have, but I guess that's all water under Westminster bridge now.

Second, it further demonstrates just how useless, witless, rudderless and basically clueless Brown is when it comes to offering any kind of leadership on this serious issue (or any other, for that matter - but that's just me, I suppose). That he's been forced to climb down so humiliatingly and bow to Cameron's pressure is very telling, coming so soon as it has after last week's drubbing at the hands of Cameron at PMQs.

Third, there are these explosive Independent revelations by Andrew Grice three days ago, emerging from his coverage of a new book by another Labourist insider. The article's title, in the context of today's Morley mayhem, "Brown 'didn't care about expenses - only himself"" more or less says it all: all, that is, in the sense of what we need to know about why the Labour Party has been in such a God-awful, tail-chasing, directionless, perfidious mess from the start of the whole, sorry affair. The blame lies squarely at Gordon Dithering & Self-Obsessed Brown's door. If you haven't read it already, then I would suggest that you do. A taste:

Mr Price paints a picture of despair within the Brown inner circle at his failure to recognise the seriousness of the expenses scandal. He accuses Mr Brown of creating a climate of distrust within Downing Street and being cut off from the concerns of voters.

I simply cannot believe that Brown or Labour can possibly recover from this. It is the one issue that cannot be brushed under the carpet, or masked with the pathetically desperate fig leaf of a twelfth hour (and utterly wrong-headed, dishonestly motivated) referendum on the Alternative Vote system.

As Cameron said in what looks like an increasingly prescient PMQs last week, "It's back to the bunker with that one..."

It also means, however, that Brown will now drag out this Parliament to the bitterest of bitter ends. Fair enough. It'll just make victory in finally turfing out the worst prime minister this country has ever had inflicted upon all the more sweet for the waiting.

The collective sigh of relief exhaled by people up and down Britain the day after we are rid of him will be audible in France.

I Agree With Guido

I agree with Guido insofar as, if I understand him right, parliamentarians should be forced to make a choice upon their election: you're either an MP (and therefore a public servent) or a corporate type on a promise (and therefore something else) - and never the twain shall meet. You must not, in other words, be connected to any private company in any way whatsoever for the duration of your office. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

As for secret slush funds and Brown denials, while I feel sorry for Tim Yeo - I think he really believes he did nothing wrong, at least in the sense of breaking any parliamentary interest declaration rules (and we all know how wonderfully immune to MPs' fiddling parliamentary rules are, especially after the expenses scandal) - I certainly don't for Brown, who, as always, with this secret and illegal slush fund, was only ever serving his own interests, which always take absolute precidence over those of his political comrades, parliament's and everyone else in the entire country's. And always have. Yeo might be reprimanded, though that should be up to the electorate. But Brown should be jailed!

Anyway, for those of you who might not know how to use YouTube yet, and will therefore have to wait until Monday for this feast of televisual Guidoese political gunpowder, I've performed the complex and onerous task of cutting and pasting the embed code to my blog, just for your viewing pleasure:


Seriously, though, I think this Guy News thing gets better every week.

Bercow Would Be No Great Loss

After the revelation that little Johnny Bercow's beanpole wife (relatively speaking) is standing in local council elections for the Labourists in Westminster, today the Telegraph reports that he has spent a small fortune redecorating the Speaker's grace and favour apartments. Cost to you and me? A cool £45,000. So the story goes, it was wifey Sally Bercow (you know, the prospective Labour local councillor) and not little Johnny who was the brains behind this latest bit of troughing. How predictable. The Telegraph then goes on to explain why this should be a major embarrassment to the wee man:

Emails reveal that Mrs Bercow compiled a lengthy “shopping list” of items that she wished to have changed in the Speaker’s historic official residence within days of her husband’s election.

The new documents, released under Freedom of Information laws, also disclose that Mr Bercow has spent almost £13,000 on entertaining and hospitality - including a three-night trip to Rome costing almost £4,000 - in just three months.

Mr Bercow had faced criticism over his use of expenses when he was a backbench Conservative MP, claiming the maximum amount permissible to fund another Westminster flat.

The new disclosures about Mr Bercow's spending are likely to prove embarrassing for the new Speaker who was elected on a promise to restore trust in Parliament in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal.

During his campaign to become speaker, he said: “It is high time the House (of Commons) was run by professionals on a transparent basis, ensuring that we are accountable to the people who put us here.”

Michael Martin, his predecessor as speaker, had been criticised for his use of taxpayers’ money, including extensive renovations of the speaker’s official residence which ran to more than £700,000.

After succeeding him, Mr Bercow vowed to modernise Parliament and make it “accountable to the people” and transparent in its operation.

He pledged to surrender the MP's second homes allowance worth more than £24,000. However, the new documents disclose, he has already ordered renovations on his new Westminster appartment worth more.

In August, the Speaker admitted that he spent just over £20,000 on refurbishing his official apartment before moving in with his wife and children.

However, documents have now revealed how the true cost was actually £45,581, as Commons officials agreed to account for extensive redecoration and other work as 'routine maintenance' which Mr Bercow did not declare publicly.

Mr Bercow is expected to be under pressure to release a breakdown of the work conducted as 'routine maintenance'.

Should we be furious? Yes. Should he be punished? Yes. But how? Well, I would think the obvious measure would be first, when the Tories win the next election, he is removed as Speaker. He was, after all, placed in the role by a Labour government hell bent on hurting the Tories, not 'reforming' parliament and the expenses system - even though some might be moved to think that this strategy has backfired (Bercow, let's be fair, has not been quite the full-on patsy I imagine Labour expected him to be). The fact that they thought he, a Tory MP (of sorts), was the man for that job speaks volumes about the man.

And it brings me to the second part of his punishment. He is no longer a Tory MP, sure, but he should be left in no doubt that he will never be allowed to be a Tory MP, or even a member of the Conservative party, again. That should just about do it. Yes, I think so.

Just in case you're not convinced yet or you think that I'm being somehow 'mean' to the irritating, money-grubbing little scrote, read the rest of the report:

Emails show how Mrs Bercow, who last week declared her desire to become a Labour councillor in Westminster, communicated with Parliamentary officials over the refurbishment requirements.

“The existing wall paper is very office/board-roomy,” she wrote on June 30th.. “So, if at all possible, can the walls be redecorated.

“Can the TV be replaced with a larger one and moved into a more central location (like it or not, it will be a focal point for the kids!!!),” she continued. “I assume it will have SKY and we’ll need a DVD player too if possible.”

The work – initially estimated to have cost £23,400 by July 8th - had almost doubled in price by the end of the same month.

The emails show that Commons officials were becoming concerned about the spiralling cost of the work. However, they agreed to allow the Bercows to continue with the renovations.

One official wrote on July 1st: “My concern is that the list is getting longer, which isn’t technically a problem, but I know that you are very mindful of the costs and only wish to do what is considered as ‘reasonable’.

“The latest version [of the renovations spreadsheet] has everything included and I think that the best way to view it, is as a shopping/wish list. If any costs come out as excessive…we can always review the options and make the necessary decisions.”

An email discloses that the £45,000 cost of the work was split into two spreadsheets before the lower £20,000 figure was released in August.

Any redecorating which had not been done for at least five years was described as the 'routine maintenance' and excluded.

However, it can also be revealed how the costs of this routine maintenance doubled between an estimate in early July of £11,500 and the final cost of £24,922 just three weeks later.

A source close to the Speaker said that most of the extra work was to parts of the official residence which are not used as the family’s private living quarters.

He said that the £20,000 figure which had been released originally represented the additional cost to the taxpayer of the Speaker being someone with children.

“We tried to isolate the costs to the taxpayer of Mr Bercow and his family moving in,” he said. “A lot of the other work is beyond the control of the Speaker and is determined by English Heritage and other bodies.

“Mr Bercow has no plans to do anything, this is a one off.”

The new Speaker has also spent £12,812 on entertaining and official functions during his first three months. This is far higher than the amounts spent by Lord Martin of Springburn during his final three years in office.

Mr Bercow’s entertainment costs include £3,599 on a three night trip to Rome to attend a G8 Speaker’s conference. He was accompanied by three other people whose identities are not disclosed in the released documents but are thought to be officials.

He is the second youngest Speaker in history and the first in living memory to have three young children – Oliver, Freddie and Jemima, who are all under six.

The official speaker's residence is underneath Big Ben in the Palace of Westminster. It was designed by Charles Barry and contains a state dining room and a canopied bed to be slept in by the monarch on the night before a coronation.

Mr Bercow has previously said that much of the renovation work was necessary to make the apartment child-friendly. For example, locks had to be fitted to the windows for the safety of his young children.

He previously lived in another flat in Westminster which was also funded by the taxpayer. He repaid almost £8,000 earlier this year after The Daily Telegraph raised questions about his lawful avoidance of capital-gains tax on the sale of two properties.

However, Mr Bercow is thought to have refused to surrender his gold-plated pension – which guarantees to pay half his income when he retires regardless of how long he remains in the job. As he is only currently aged 46, this is a very valuable perk.

In an interview to be broadcast on Sunday, Mr Bercow will defend his wife’s right to stand as a Labour candidate in next year’s council elections.

But he acknowledged that he could expect the mother of his three children to be portrayed as “a cross between Jerry Hall, Lady Macbeth and Eva Peron” because of her decision to get involved in electoral politics.

“My wife isn't my chattel, she's my wife,” he will say on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

“She is a private citizen who has her own views and is an independent person. And it has long been known that my wife is a supporter of the Labour Party, so I don't think there's anything odd, embarrassing and certainly there's nothing underhand about it.”

Grrr.

Bercow was no great loss to the Tory party. He will be no great loss as Speaker. Besides, then he'll be free to do what all the signs seem to point to him wanting to do for so long: join the Labour party. At least that will put him in the Missus' good books. She clearly wears the trousers, after all.

PS:
I know I was a bit slow off the mark with this one - been doing stuff. For a more immediate - and rather more violent - reaction, therefore, try Tangled Web. Great!

MPs Need To Earn Our Money

A new take on the expenses scandal by Andrew Alexander in the Daily Mail this morning certainly interested me. Briefly, from what he says, the majority of MPs are basically under-worked idlers leading cushy daily lives at the taxpayers' expense - and that's before their profiting from the long-abused old system of extra remuneration, particularly in the area of mortgage interest relief and house flipping, is taken into account. Even their passing, as, Alexander points out, various overpaid knights of the realm are hired ostensibly to get tough on abuses, will not impact on the soft furnishings and long holidays that is an MP's current happy lot. The article itself has much more to say on these subjects than this, of course, and is rather more complex and nuanced than I've given it credit for in this little summary, so it is definitely worth reading it fairly closely.

The row over MPs' expenses has gone from scandals to shambles in a few months.

Perhaps Gordon Brown and David Cameron really believed they could exorcise the abuses by calling in outside grandees.

But recruiting three knights from the ranks of the Great and the Good has led only to dispute and confusion.

Sir Thomas Legg's examination of past expenses may have usefully highlighted some gross and even criminal irregularities.

But he has also formulated some odd, retrospective rules of his own, which almost make you feel sympathy for MPs.

We also have proposed new rules about expenses from Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life - some ideas sensible and some naive.

Our next knight, lawyer Sir Ian Kennedy, heads the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, charged with implementing the Kelly plan.

But he says that he has ideas of his own and will consult widely, even using Facebook - which is like looking for advice in a saloon bar.

Could the confusion get worse? Yes, it could.

A fourth knight has charged into the melee. Sir John Baker, formerly head of the Senior Salaries Review Board, thinks that matters could be sorted by increasing MPs' basic pay from £65,000 to £100,000.

Do not fall for this, the most dangerous idea of all based on the scarcely sane notion that full-time politicians would improve our lives. Sadly, this belief has considerable public appeal.

Having observed MPs closely for 40 years, let me underline the basic difficulty about salaries and expenses. It lies in backbenchers effectively having two part-time jobs.

The first is as local representatives, which requires them to live in their area or have a second home there.

The second part-time job is as a legislator at Westminster. This need not be onerous, but does require MPs making themselves available on a difficult timetable.

A second home is thus a reasonable expense in a job that in any case is always at the whim of voters. Unfortunately, the system has been discredited by abuses.

Properly policed and, above all, transparent this need not be so. We do not need Kelly's complicated plan for hotel costs or variations thereof.

Transparency is the key to containing expenses, not complex new rules. MPs know that abuses will lose them votes if publicised - as they now can be.

But once one has conceded the two homes difficulty, we should appreciate that the minimum requirements of MPs' two part-time jobs still do not add up to one full-time job.

Those who believe that Members are overworked as legislators need only tune in to the parliamentary TV channel to observe acres of unoccupied green leather.

Tackle MPs on this and they insist that they are busy at other things, not least dealing with their postbags.

But this can be conscientiously dispatched in two hours a day. Moreover, MPs these days have an office and personal staff that can deal routinely with many problems raised by constituents.

We might also remember when MPs plead overwork that Parliament sits for only two-thirds of the year and that the working week there can be brief.

They are obliged to turn up on Monday, though often not until late in the day. They may well be away before too late on Thursday.

Helpful whips and the use of pairing arrangements make the week anything but onerous.

Yet many MPs claim to lead exhaustingly busy lives.

Some zealots do. But Parkinson's law, about work expanding to fill the time allotted, applies in Parliament as elsewhere.

Put any group of politicians together and they can always busy themselves arguing, chatting and scheming - nothing wrong with that, but not something for which the taxpayer should be generous.

The notion that an ordinary backbencher's job is other than part-time is quite a recent invention.

Cynics will note that the rising call for full-time pay has precisely matched the devolution of legislation from Westminster to Brussels - less work, more pay!

Outside work is not just possible but also desirable if Members are not to get even further out of contact with the real world.

There are many activities in which MPs can earn extra income, for example, journalism, law, business, accountancy and authorship.

If an MP tells you he can't find work in any outside capacity, you have to wonder why he is fitted to be a legislator.

Unfortunately, there is a growing hostility to such work from Brown and Cameron - from Brown because the Tories get more of it and from Cameron because he thinks the public dislikes it.

However, both of them also have easier party management in mind. MPs with no trade or employment to fall back on if they lose their seats are simpler to control.

This unhealthy dependence is backed by Kelly, who proposes that Members should do outside work only within 'reasonable limits' and tell their voters about it at election time.

A more woolly-minded formula is impossible to imagine. It makes you wonder if we are really making any progress at all.

Fascinating stuff, but I disagree with at least one point. While it is certainly plausible for Brown's Labour shower, given, for instance, his political vulnerability to critics from within his own party, I'm not totally convinced that the 'easier party management' argument entirely explains David Cameron's acquiescence to the ban on MPs' contract work for a couple of reasons. First, most Tory MPs had already agreed to stop contract activities long before Legg published his extraordinary report and seem if not comfortable then certainly resigned to Cameron's new order; indeed, many fully accepted it appreciating that given the public outcry it needed to be done. The smart ones needed little convincing so the 'easier party management' outcome was incidental, at least for the Tories (not so for Labour, of course).

Second, it is highly unlikely that Cameron had an ulterior motive for bringing forward new rules for his party to obey. He was genuinely eager to clean up his party's act and so he took the lead early on in the scandal and did just that, unlike Brown who has characteristically dithered all the way through and now looks the feeble, rudderless, dishonest and discredited "leader" many of us have known him to be for some considerable time. However, it is certainly the case that, as Alexander intimates, thanks to that dithering and because he is just too damn tribal and arrogant to listen to the leader of the Opposition, the resulting reforms to the way MPs must conduct themselves in public life - and the amount of work they are burdened with (or not, as the case may be) - the subsequent parliamentary reforms have Brown and his useless ministerial clan's mucky fingerprints all over them. They are already starting to look like a typical, awful Brown fudge. If past experience is anything to go by, pretty soon they certainly will be a shambles as Alexander says - and a total, disastrous, Labour shambles to boot.

But this will simply be one more mess for the Tories to clear up after Brown's trainwreck government is finally booted out. When Cameron comes to tackling it, however, he needs to make absolutely sure that his reform package includes one, key sentence: "MPs must earn, and be seen to be earning, taxpayers' money". The impression that while the rest of us work as hard as we can in our struggle to make it through Brown's bust, our elected representatives remain pampered and lazy will not be removed by abolishing second homes for London MPs and the tearing up the John Lewis list. I also believe they should do what they have been elected to do, namely, serve as a Member of Parliament representing the constituency that elected them and not 'advising' private companies under any circumstances. The fact that we actually need these new rules to force them to do their jobs strikes me as a very convincing reason for why we desperately need a large influx of new and willing blood in parliament, too!

The main point for me, however, is that I believe Cameron does understand these arguments and frustrations. It's one of the reasons why intend to lend him my vote at the General Election - and you should too. If he gets it wrong, we can always send him the way of Brown, after all. That's what's so good about democracy.

Expenses Reform Backtracking: The Cambell Connection

Just been listening to Radio 4's news on the way back from a little trip and was surprised (or, perhaps, wasn't surprised one little bit) to hear that Sir Ian Kennedy, friend of Alastair "David Kelly's Death Made Me Depressed" Campbell, no less, and appointed head of the flash, new independent committee charged with monitoring MPs' behaviour and finances in future (but is laughably answerable to - you guessed it - a committee of MPs) has begun to backtrack on the other Kelly's reforms. That was a long sentence, I know, but I do tend not to brake for the corners when I'm miffed. And I am miffed. This is looking like an all-too familiar New Labour balls up, with the wrong man placed in charge of the wrong solution to a problem that has one cause: people with no integrity - who need to be replaced en masse with people that do.

Anyway, the Torygraph's Benedict Brogan blogged something on the suspicious link between Kennedy and the still-lying, cretinous Campbell earlier on. It's quite interesting if only for the fact that liar Campbell, reduced now, or so we are led to believe, to the role of pisspoor, poisonous Labourist blogger, has anything to do with this scandal in the first place.

Alastair Campbell has produced a typically robust response on his blog to the Telegraph’s coverage of his friendship with Sir Ian Kennedy, the new expenses supremo. That the big-brained head of IPSA, the body charged with sorting out the expenses mess, thought the French were capable of producing Skylab must remain one of the great bafflements of the age.

What is more worrying, and should be studied closely by anyone with an interest in the way Parliament is addressing the challenge of cleaning up the expenses system, is the overnight revelation that Sir Ian has decided to challenge the Kelly recommendations. Sir Christopher Kelly’s committee reported on Wednesday with a list of recommendations for making the system more transparent and credible. The party leaders endorsed the report and asked for it to be implemented in full. The public appeared to react positively to it, and even if some MPs griped anonymously about its reommendations, most wisely accepted that it was a good piece of work that would help draw a line under this sorry affair.

Except Sir Ian has other plans and I gather has briefed some of my colleagues on what he envisages. You can read carefully worded accounts of what he has to say in the Telegraph, Guardian and Mail. It’s supposed to be hush hush apparently, but unless I’ve missed something I can’t see we should revert to the lack of transparency that allowed this scandal to develop in the first place. Specifically, Sir Ian believes he has a statutory right to conduct his own review of MPs’ pay and allowances, and intends to do so. He will have his proposals in place for the next Parliament. Apparently he doubts whether MPs can be made to hand over any capital gains or dismiss family members from the payroll. IPSA needs to be rigorously independent, but I imagine the party leaderships will be disappointed to discover that what they thought had been settled by Kelly is being reopened again.

Old New Labour habits of corruption and cronyism apparently die very hard. Utterly pathetic.

Hat tip: Prodicus

Harman Causes Fresh Expenses Stink

The front page of this morning's Telegraph will be worth a once over. In an extraordinary outburst Harriet Harman has threatened to block the new Kelly rules on expenses - or, in her slippery terms, has "warned" that "MPs" will block them. Whatever she hopes she means, she has already been slapped down by the troglodyte bunker dwellers of Number 10. They at least, in their dank darkness, appear to be dimly aware of the further damage her remarks will do to a parliament, and a Labour party, already and rightly regarded with total contempt by the general public. There are one or two other things to unpick from her dimwitted comments, however, but I invite you to examine the article first.

Ms Harman, the Leader of the Commons, said it would not be fair for MPs to be forced to sack their spouses or other family members working in their offices.

She also indicated that plans to stop MPs living in the London commuter belt from having taxpayer-funded second homes may prove unacceptable.

For months, the Government has led the public to believe that recommendations drawn up by Sir Christopher Kelly would be introduced quickly without MPs becoming involved.

Mr Brown has said it would be supported as long as it was “affordable”, while Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said all parties would accept the proposals “unless they are in the realm of complete irrationality”.

However, the Commons Leader said that an outside body would now decide whether to implement recommendations from the Kelly review.

This new “independent” body will work under the auspices of a small group of senior MPs – many of whom have faced questions about their own expenses – sparking fears over its impartiality.

The MPs will be responsible for approving the appointment of executives running the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA).

Sir Christopher was appointed to draw up a radical overhaul of the expenses system in the wake of The Daily Telegraph’s disclosures.

However, his work has been fiercely opposed by some MPs who are threatening to rebel against the Prime Minister if the proposals are introduced. David Cameron is thought to back the introduction of Sir Christopher’s recommendations in full.

Asked whether IPSA could reject Sir Christopher's proposals, Ms Harman said: “It's entirely a matter for them. But they will, I'm sure, want to draw on his important work.

“But it's a matter for them to decide, not for Sir Christopher Kelly and not for us either as MPs.”

Gordon Brown will meet Sir Christopher on Monday and is expected to warn that the reforms must not turn politics into the preserve of the rich, according to Downing Street aides.

However, it is not clear why Mr Brown is issuing such a warning to the official watchdog – or why his feelings are being made public – as Sir Christopher’s report and recommendations have already been sent to the printers.

The comments may therefore be designed to placate Labour MPs.

Sir Christopher, the chairman of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, will set out his recommendations on Wednesday.

He is expected to recommend that MPs are only allowed to rent a second home and that the taxpayer will not pay mortgage interest in future.

MPs will also be banned from employing family members under his proposals. Those living within an hour’s commute of Westminster will also be unable to claim for the cost of a second home.

When details of the proposed package emerged last week, they were attacked by many MPs who described them as “nonsense” and “ludicrous”.

Ms Harman appeared to yesterday back opposition to the ban on family members.

She said: “If Sir Christopher Kelly recommends that MPs shouldn't be able to employ any family members for the future and if that's what the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority decides I think two things: firstly there shouldn't be any shadow cast over the existing spouses who are working very hard.

“I think it would be wrong to judge them all as not doing a good job, I don't believe that to be the case.

“Secondly, I do think it would be fair not to sack existing spouses who are working for MPs. I think if they are going to suggest something it should be for the future, they can't simply say 'you have all got to be made redundant'.”

The comments from the leader of the House are likely to lead to intense lobbying of IPSA from MPs. More than 100 MPs currently employ members of their families.

On Sunday it emerged that Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP, has employed another of her daughters to work in her office after she failed to find work after graduating.

There are also growing fears that MPs may seek to influence the composition of the new IPSA board.

The chairman and other senior members of the authority have yet to be appointed – and their appointments have to be sanctioned by the Speaker and a secretive committee of MPs.

Several of the MPs on the committee have spoken out against Sir Christopher’s recommendations sparking fears that they may not wish to appoint a strong, impartial head to run IPSA.

For example, Sir Stuart Bell who sits on the new committee, said that Parliament may wish to “amend” Sir Christopher’s recommendations.

“The House would want to look at these recommendations very carefully, they will want to debate them and have the opportunity, should they so wish, to amend them,” he said.

Other members of the committee include Don Touhig, a Labour MP who led a backbench revolt against previous plans to tighten up the rules on MPs expenses, and Sir George Young, the shadow leader of the House, who previously chaired the Committee which punished MPs who broke Parliamentary rules.

The Committee has been criticised for failing to clamp down on abuse of the expenses system.

The composition of the new committee which will oversee IPSA was quietly announced in an evening session of Parliament last Wednesday. Several MPs complained that no younger or more progressive politicians were selected for the committee.

IPSA will also have to consult the new committee on the final revised package for MPs’ expenses.

Downing Street sources sought to play down Ms Harman’s remarks. They said she was expressing a “personal view” in relation to MPs’ employment of their relatives or spouses.

A well-placed source added that IPSA’s role was to introduce the Kelly recommendations and that any changes would be “small practical issues” not “big show stoppers”.

The endless spin in which Harman indulges must be making her giddy. It's not Conservative MPs who will block these measures, it is Labour MPs and she knows it. Cameron has made it clear from the start that it's either his way or the highway for Tory members. Rock the boat and you're out on your ear, he's told them. And they believe it - he's got form. Not so with Brown, whose total lack of authority over his party has been revealed in all its inglorious truth by this scandal. The shameful and ongoing attempt, by Harman in particular but also by her enfeebled boss and some of his more slithering operators like Jack Straw, to muddy the waters about just where the hardening opposition to parliamentary reform is emanating from and is the most vocal and the most politically dangerous, only serves further to isolate Labour from an outraged public. The damage this issue alone is doing to Brown and Labour is clearly reflected in the polls. He can't get a grip on his own troughing, fiddling MPs, many of whom are or were cabinet members. He is hopelessly compromised as a consequence. It wouldn't matter if the economy rebounded by 30% next month and the deficit miraculously vanished, people would still not back him, thanks mainly to stories like this one. The apparently endless, mendacious, slippery manoeuverings of Harman, a woman so stupid that she simply does not know when to shut up, have caused more damage than Brown's own litany of well-documented shortcomings have even caused him. All it clearly highlights is that whatever Cameron might or might not be, at least he's got a grip on his own party.

People will know that if anyone blocks the Kelly reforms (which are hardly revolutionary in any case) it won't be MPs generally that block it, it will be Labour MPs. Conservatives are under orders, as the article sort of makes clear, and they are expected to obey. Labour MPs are feeling bloody-minded, self-righteous and indignant in their ridiculous sense of depthless entitlement. They will not lie down quietly like the Tories after the whip has cracked. And they will certainly not "reform" willingly, if at all.

You can therefore guarantee from whence the complaints of "several MPs", referred to in the article, about the make-up of the oversight committee (made up of MPs) for the laughably titled "Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority" (which is somehow meant independently to review MPs' behaviour and finances, while being reviewed itself by, er, MPs) emanate. The complaints are coming from Labour MPs wanting what already looks like a bit of a stitch-up to be complete stitch-up, rather than the partial one the current proposals represent.

Out of all this it's become pretty clear to me that there are really gold, silver and bronze medals of Olympian rottenness in Westminster today. The bronze medal goes to the current crop of MPs in general, whose almost total absence of common sense, decency and/or integrity (take your pick) in their venality and stupidity, and the ease with which they felt justified in fleecing the nation they were meant to serve, has besmurched the reputation of the mother of parliaments for years to come. The silver medal goes to Labour MPs, many of whose behaviour crossed the line into full-blown criminality long ago, and yet who, even now, like some sort of recalcitrant, slightly sociopathic recidivists, remain entirely convinced of their own moral superiority and determined to keep that golden goose laying.

But the gold medal - ah yes, the coveted Big Prize for All-Round Decay - that must go to Brown and Blair's Labour government, in the form of two of the most corrupt prime ministers of all time, one of whom was never even elected, and a long, oh-so-long procession of totally inadequate, usually incompetent and quite frequently lawbreaking ministers, in or out of cabinet, finishing up with the likes of Straw, Mandelson and, of course, Harman. They have lined their pockets relentlessly and will never, ever admit they have done anything wrong. Ever. More, they will go on to rig the system, regardless of the public's fury, like some second rate, corrupt politbureau jobsworths, so that it will always find in their favour, just so they get to keep the dacha and the Zil - and to hell with us proles.

The ethical rot was there among MPs on all sides, oh yes, but it flowed (and is still flowing, actually) from Labour for the past 12 years like an eighteenth century, open Parisian sewer. It took an awful lot of political reform and building work to rid Paris of an inundation of effluence and disease. The only way to begin to muck out this early 21st century British pigsty parliament is not with the Kelly destraction, it's with a General Election. But hey, everybody knows that, right?

We can at least then rid ourselves of the main source of the stench: the rancid corpse that is this Labour government.

Two hundred and thirteen long days to go before the clean-up can finally begin and we can try again with the Tories.

Cameron Shows Brown How To Lead

To the Daily Telegraph's credit, it has once again forced the broadcast media into doing its job and report on the biggest political scandal in this country probably ever. To David Cameron's credit, he has demonstrated the kind of leadership that the country is demanding, and shown Gordon Brown up for what he really is: a weak-willed ditherer whose authority has ebbed away in inverse proportion to his increasingly foul moods.

In firing David Wilshire, Cameron has been brave: Wilshire technically broke no rules and could have refused to go. Cameron was having none of it: Wilshire clearly failed the test of honour, that the old expenses system presupposed, by syphoning off public money into his bank account through his own company. (He failed a hell of a lot more "tests" than that! The test of morality and the law, for instance - but that's another matter.) His being forced out - and into making the announcement himself - reveals Cameron's authority in all its rude health. It also shows that Cameron has a very clear idea about what he expects from his MPs, now and in future. Everyone in the parliamentary Conservative party knows precisely where he stands, in spite of what Ann Widdecombe or sections of the media would have us believe. He might not benefit from his principled, iron stand in short-term polls, but come the election he will be bullet proof.

By contrast, Labour is shot-through with discontent, riddled with rebels and utterly rudderless. Brown's lack of authority, caused chiefly by his utter inability to lead (just how much more proof do people need!), is becoming clearer even to Labour supporters every day, regardless of the impression given, by the BBC in particular, to the contrary. On bank bonuses Brown blusters about global regulation, but nothing is done (and nothing should be); on expenses his own MPs petulantly challenge his high-pitched, unconvincing calls for them to pay the piper, and all he can do is give weird, vague interviews about "consigning the auld system to the pages of history."

Many millions of people, and many now of his own backbenchers, share precisely the same feeling about him.

"We've been scoring a lot of goals," says one Labour MP, "but putting the ball in the back of our own net!"

Well, you know why, Labour MP: Brown is weak, weak, weak!

Meanwhile, Cameron just gets stronger the longer Brown limps on.

Expenses Blackout "A Collective Act of Denial Beyond Pathetic"

It's pretty extraordinary to me that there is what seems to be a virtual television news blackout on the latest, extraordinary twist in the expenses scandal. After a PMQs where no mention of the subject was made by MPs and their leaders, in what looks for all the world like a cowardly cross-party consensus, the main TV news outlets, the Beeb and SKY (ITN has no rolling news service so it's difficult to include it these days), appear to have dutifully forgotten all about it.

Preferring to concentrate on the lame 500-troop extra deployment (re)announcement from Brown - the poor bloody Royal Anglians are off to Helmand again - star of the show on both channels was
the new CGS Sir Jock Stirrup in a bizarre interview during which he appeared to call his predecessor, Richard Dannatt, a liar over the request during the summer for 2000 extra troops. "It's a myth," he said. Oh, really?

It's obviously one of those weird 'protect Brown' days in the broadcast media that crops up from time to time. While there have been some, small references to Clegg's pretty mendacious call for an extention to the Legg review that includes house flipping (mendacious because he knows a deal's already been struck to exclude this), there has been nothing about the rebellion Brown faces or more on David Cameron's uniquely hardline stance. Well, whatever the motive and the agenda of the 'village', as James Kirkup has said in his DT blog, they can do what they like but the expenses debacle is not going to go away. I would add that it won't go away until this parliament goes away, complete with the majority of its corrupt, whingeing, not-fit-for-purpose MPs. For good.

PMQs: pathetic MPs won't mention their expenses

Afghanistan. Europe. General Sir Richard Dannatt. Girl Guides. Mortgages. Royal Mail. Emergency services. Freedom of the Press. Scotland. Poverty.

All important subjects, all worthy of parliamentary debate and all rightly discussed at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Yet there was not a single mention of MPs’ expenses, Sir Thomas Legg, public money or public trust. Not one MP, backbencher or party leader, dared to mention the issue that has fixated them for days and made them the objects of public scorn.

It’s not as if politicians aren’t talking about this. MPs are happy enough to talk about their expenses in the tearooms and corridors at length. But they won’t do it in the House of Commons, which is at least supposed to be the proper forum for national debate. As a collective act of denial, this is beyond pathetic. As a public spectacle, it verges on the surreal.

"A collective act of denial beyond pathetic." I like that a lot. But I would extend it to include the pathetic broadcast media, if not the entire, pathetic MSM (minus, perhaps, in this case at least, the Telegraph).

Bloggers of the net, unite! You have nothing to lose but your piggy MPs.

Slippery Harman

On Sky News just now Harriet Harman has just been doing a creditable impression of an eel so slippery, it's got a PhD from the University of Eels in Slippery Studies. Cameron has stated categorically that his MPs must pay back their trough money or they aren't MPs any more. Harperson has just said that it's "not a party political matter...blah....blah....Cameron is just trying to look tough...blah". See? Slippery.

And, no. Cameron's leading his party and doing the right thing (although I do not think even he's going far enough). What's Harriet doing? Well, she clearly doesn't know because when asked by the anchor for the umpteenth time whether Labour MPs, a number of whom are actually challenging the findings of the Legg review, (unbelievably and suicidally), face the same sanction, slippery Harmon was finally caught.

"But what happens to Labour MPs if they don't pay the money back?" posed the newsreader.

"Er, well, they will...," blustered Harman.

No, Harriet, they won't. That's the bloody point. One of them was actually saying it on another channel as she was speaking!

Watch the polls, folks. Just when you thought Labour might have a chance of recovering a little bit (a horrible thought), along comes dithering Gordon, who couldn't lead the proverbial piss up in a brewery (I could ;) and sinks them.

Suits me.

++Update++
I've just heard on the six o'clock bulletin that Brown has followed Cameron's lead and threatened to fire truculant troughers, or so the reporter said. But listening to his interview from this morning, I'm not so sure that's what he said. It was equivocal to say the least.

Business as usual for Brown, then.

Brown Reduces The Deficit

No, not with the ridiculous panic measure that is the £16Bn (plus or minus £13Bn) fire sale of a few assets, but by being forced to pay back 13 large of taxpayer readies that he, the Prime Minister no less, has troughed.

Meanwhile, as the pound begins to plummet, the penny begins to drop.

A Big Day after all, then!

PS: I have one response to Brown's expenses misfortune as the police move in on his fellow Labourist fraudsters, currently whining away and trying to wriggle out of repaying their ill-gotten gains. It goes like this...



*sides splitting* Oh dear, Brown. Do stop. By resigning.

We're all laughing policemen now. One more time!

Big Day Tomorrow?

Could be. The expenses scandal, after yesterday's revelations, is about to rear its ugly head again. This report from Peter Spencer of Sky News earlier seems to be suggesting so. Creepy Pete does well here, striking the right balance (unlike the biased BBC's reporting), given that evidence so far shows that it's far more likely the government generally and Brown in particular will be blamed for most of the corruption that's been going on - and rightly so since most of the worst abuses have come from Labour MPs and even ministers, including Gordon Brown himself!



Donal Blaney even suggested this morning that it's the expenses issue, not his eyesight, that will provide Brown with the excuse to get out of office with some degree of dignity. I'm not so sure after watching this report, but who knows? My feeling is that the Labourists are so punch drunk now, trotting out the horrible Yvette Cooper-Balls - herself a serial trougher along with her equally horrible husband - to try to limit the damage from the surge in the Conservative Party's popularity, that they might have just given up. It's a chilling thought, but it seems to me that they could be resigned to their fate and so will keep drawing the comfortable salary, treading political water and sinking the country ever deeper into debt right up until the very bitter end. A large proportion of these invertibrates seem to want to leave Brown in place, with Alan "Postie" Johnson well-positioned to take over, simply so that the former carries the can for what now looks like inevitable electoral annihilation. They will squeeze as much time out of their term simply to line their own pockets prior to unemployment. No Labour MP's seat is safe now - and they all know it.

So it is a big day tomorrow, but mainly for Labour, who are stuck firmly between the proverbial rock and hard place, right where they deserve to be. Whatever the outcome of all this, the best they can expect is, as Spencer puts it, "zilch". For them that would be a real result. That's how bad things are for them - and that's how little they care about the needs of the country. They'd sooner go on like this, paralysed and unwanted, than trigger a genuine challenge to their own, bankrupt and moribund leadership.

I still think Brown will be gone by early November (or sooner), mind you, but it will have a lot more to do with the Czech president's actions than expensesgate and his failing eyesight. The plucky little Czechs I reckon are about to cave in and ratify Lisbon, given that the Germans in particular are putting gigantic amounts of pressure on them to do so, including vicious personal attacks on their head of state.

I buy the theory now that once that weasel Mandelson has got what he wants and locked us into Lisbon, with the future President Blair waiting in the wings, Brown will be dropped like a radioactive turd.

If you think not even the New Labour hierarchy could be cynical enough to try to pull this coup d'état off, think again. Mandelson, Campbell, Blair: the most infamous, treacherous and crooked three men ever to wield power in the history of British politics. Even Brown, the awkward, perfidious incompetent, pails before them.

Remember their names!

Expensesgate 2: Meet The Troughers

Gordon Brown's best friend, Lord Pal of Marrowbone

The Times is reporting that a multi-millionaire Labourist peer of the realm and running dog of Brown is being investigated for trousering 38 large of our money, for an Oxfordshire kennel belonging to an employee and in which he has never even slept. Lord Pal of Marrowbone, or whatever his name is, more or less has been caught red-handed by the Times. He appears simply to have rolled over and whined a bit upon hearing the news that his little caper's been rumbled with some of the most feeble excuses you will ever have heard. Bad boy. Here are the juiciest bits:

Lord Paul, one of Labour’s biggest donors and a friend of the prime minister, has admitted he never even slept in the flat, despite stating it was his main residence.

The one-bedroom flat was occupied by a manager from one of Paul’s hotels who confirmed last week that the peer had never lived there while claiming the expenses.

Paul, who has a family fortune of £500m, was actually based in London, where he has lived for more than 40 years.

By saying his main home was his manager’s flat in Oxfordshire, he was able to claim cash allowances which are available only to peers who live outside the capital.

Last week Paul argued that he had been entitled to claim the flat was his home as it was “available” for his use. He said he could have moved the manager out for the night if he stayed there, but he never did so. “I don’t say that I stayed the night — I said that it was available to me,” he said.

Yesterday Angus Robertson, the Scottish National leader in Westminster, said he would write to the police and the Lords authorities requesting an investigation. “It is outrageous to claim somewhere is your main home if you have never slept there,” he said

Paul, 78, a deputy speaker of the Lords, is a friend of Brown and his wife Sarah. He contributed £45,000 to Brown’s leadership campaign and is reported to have given more than £400,000 to Labour.

The questionable expenses claims were made between 2004 and 2006 when Paul was living in a London apartment block where he and his family own property worth £14m. But he told the Lords his main home was a flat at the three-star Bignell Park hotel, Oxfordshire, owned by his company. This enabled him to claim more than £20,000 a year.

He said: “The manager lives there and I always had the opportunity to tell him to go and sleep in the hotel — if I wanted to sleep. Or I slept in the hotel. But I didn’t spend that many nights there.”

When pressed on whether he actually spent a night in his main home, he replied “no”. He added: “It didn’t happen. But I never told you I slept there."

Er, yes you did, Pal - in your previous sentence. They're millionaires and they steal from us. And then they lie to our faces about it, contradicting their own tall tales in the same breath.

We've come to expect this from the arch hypocrites that are Labourists; their time will come. The bit I think I'm most interested in, therefore, is that this minted clown is a personal friend of the Prime Minister.

You can tell an awful lot about a man by the company he keeps. What this tells me is that Brown isn't just totally incompetent, arrogant and unpleasant, but that he's a crook, too.

The Challenge for Cameron

This is what I call top-class political journalism. Clear, cogent, cohesive and devastating. Another journalist seems to have finally understood the true scale of the damage set to be inflicted upon Brown and Labour by a country that has, quite simply, had a bellyful of them. It's worth the read...

They have no idea what is in store for them. Not really. When Labour convenes in Manchester for its annual gathering next September, its members will look back on this week's conference in Brighton as another era, another country, another world. Gordon Brown will be gone, David Cameron will be in No 10, and a new Opposition leader will be telling his or her flock not to despair – or, more accurately, to stop despairing. Factionalism, introspection, recrimination: these will be the hallmarks of the wrecked movement that once carried all before it as New Labour.

But that moment lies ahead. For now, the governing party is too busy ensuring that it will lose the general election to think of what life will actually be like once defeat is in the bag. Charles Clarke pops up to perform his constitutional role as the man who urges Gordon to go, for health reasons or something similar. Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, is fined £5,000 for employing a Tongan housekeeper illegally – with the magnificent twist that she is in breach of a law she herself steered through Parliament. Baroness Vadera, one of Gordon's closest advisers, quits as a minister. Gordon himself, apparently shunned repeatedly by the President, is initially reduced to meeting Barack Obama in a New York kitchen, thus bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "kitchen cabinet". The polls strike hammer blow after hammer blow to Labour's morale. David Cameron may not have "sealed the deal" with the public, but Gordon Brown most certainly has.

The entirely predictable corollary of these pre-conference fiascos is epically unsubtle positioning by the principal leadership contenders. Alan Johnson, whose false modesty is now starting to grate, admits that he's "not willing to rule myself out for all eventualities in the future". I'll bet he isn't. In a Guardian profile yesterday, Ed Balls was reported to have mumbled to a seven-year-old who asked "if he wants to be prime minister… that he would, if asked, adding that someone has to do the job". Again: you don't say, Ed.

Meanwhile, in New York, the other Ed (Miliband) told Mary Riddell in The Daily Telegraph yesterday that "I just think for me to start speculating about [the leadership] is a distraction and a bit presumptuous." Another big fat "yes"! Pressed on rumours that the PM might stand down before the election, the best Miliband could muster was: "I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think it would be right. Honestly." Not exactly a passionate oath of loyalty, is it? If I were Gordon reading that, I would mutter "Et tu, Ed?" into my porridge. Or perhaps just hurl the porridge against the wall, as seems to be the Prime Minister's preferred method of expressing mild irritation these days.

Mr Miliband's pre-conference mantra is that "there's no future for Labour in not being a party of the middle classes". This is true – indeed, it is obvious to the point of banality – but it is odd to hear Mr Miliband of all people say it, given that, for the past decade, he has been one of the most outspoken advocates of what he calls "fair taxes". And what Mr Miliband calls "fair taxes" is what the rest of us call "being fleeced" and "having less of our income left to us by the rapacious state to spend on our families". In his interview with The Sunday Telegraph today, Mr Brown claims that Middle Britain is top of his list: "These are the people who I identify with." Again, could have fooled us, Gordon. If the Brownites think that they will win over the electorate by reinventing the Blairite wheel at this late stage, they are in for a shock.

As, indeed, is the whole Labour movement. The shock of defeat lies not only in the loss of power, terrible as that undoubtedly is. A party driven from office must expect a whole array of traumas, great and small. For a start, the political landscape on the morning after the election is utterly transformed, and makes all pre-electoral prophecies instantly redundant.

The sheer scale of Labour's victory in 1997, the consequent tininess of the Conservative parliamentary party, and the absence of Michael Portillo from the Tory leadership race: none of this could have been foreseen at John Major's final conference as leader in Bournemouth in 1996. Most Conservatives knew they were heading for defeat. But it was 22 years since the Tory party had lost an election. It had forgotten the rank smell of failure, the ashen taste in the mouth, the sudden experience of irrelevance.

Irrelevance is at the heart of it all, and it is this that should most frighten Labour as it gathers by the sea. A party in power, no matter how divided, no matter how exhausted, no matter how useless, is still interesting: its exhaustion, its infirmity, its lack of trajectory are important because they affect all of us as citizens. If John Prescott is rude about Harriet Harman, it is a story. If Tony Blair is reported by Adam Boulton to think that Gordon Brown is a "quitter", that's a story, too.

Labour has grown used to the limelight, and has forgotten that nobody has a right to the public's attention. It is a paradox that the longer a Government lasts, even as it suffers cellular damage and approaches invalidity, the more convinced it becomes that its beliefs are obvious, that its arguments are plain common sense, that it does not have to win the battle daily. Philip Gould, Blair's chief pollster, used to quote approvingly the belief of the US strategist Dick Morris that, in modern politics, a government needs a "daily mandate". Plainly, Mr Brown believes no such thing. He exudes only contempt for his opponents and their policies, even though the polls suggest that Mr Cameron's personality and proposals have achieved considerable traction with the public.

The election of a Government does not represent a collective swoon before an ideological blueprint, but something much messier and more numinous: boredom with or suspicion of the other lot, intuitive enthusiasm for what the victorious party represents. That enthusiasm is provisional, probationary, and must be renewed constantly. Labour has completely forgotten this. It believes that Britain is a Labour country suffering a temporary bout of false consciousness. In fact, the opposite is true: after three general election victories, the scales have fallen from the public's eyes.

It will all look so different in Manchester a year hence. But let me predict this much about the week ahead at Brighton: Brown will give a decent speech, better than expected, which will include at least one killer punch (remember "no time for a novice" last year?). He will face down his internal assassins once more. The Labour Party will feel a little buoyed by its leader's determination. Then, it will disperse, go back to its constituencies – and prepare for Opposition.

All I would add is that contained within this piece is an implicit and powerful warning - for Cameron in particular and the Conservative party at large. If you unpack that warning, it might go something like this:
1. Do not take the power you will be lent for granted (again).
2. Do not lie to the people who gave you the job. Respect them by being straight with them.
3. Treat the offices of state which you will once more occupy - and the mother of parliaments - with respectful humility.
4. Seek that "daily mandate" and put it at the centre of your political philosophy.

Democracy is a continuum. Elections are merely the legal and essential expression of the need for a healthy democracy to change direction from time to time. The coming General Election, and the democratic change of direction we all so desperately crave that it will bring, is long overdue.

If Cameron follows these principles honestly and not as some sort of publicity gimmick or disingenuous 'triangulation' (stifling a debate by lying about your intentions, thus elbowing out any genuine antithesis), then there might be room for a glimmer of hope to emerge that British parliamentary democracy can become healthy once more, after the severe damage that has been done to it by years and years of Labour misgovernance and dishonesty and the daily abuses by MPs of every stripe of a system of remuneration that relied on their personal integrity to function.

If Cameron does this, he will have my vote until the day one of us dies. If he doesn't, he'll have one term and then, well, we'll need another "change of direction". We'll kick him out and continue our long, long search for a decent prime minister. (We might even give Boris a try!)

That's the challenge for Cameron. I think he's up to it. I hope I'm right.