I really do not want to add anything at all to the already febrile debate about MPs expenses, but I was struck by something I heard Michael Portillo say (too early) this morning about the prime minister’s cleaning contract.
Accepting that there seemed to be nothing untoward in the arrangement, but trying to wring some sort of political advantage, he said that, since most Labour voters were not the sort to employ a cleaner, it just added to the impression that the government was out of touch with their real concerns
Portillo seems to have a thing about the place of the cleaner in politics:
“Those are the voters who will be most put off by Cameron’s mentioning immigration. They think it grubby Tory politics. They may be middle class and other-worldly types who can afford to be liberal because they never encounter an immigrant other than their cleaner or plumber, but they have the votes that Cameron needs”
I do not know how many Labour voters employ a cleaner for their own home – more, perhaps than you might think.
But I do know that, at least until the early 1990s (I have not checked more recent figures) cleaner was, by some margin, the largest single occupational grouping for women in this country. So they may find reassuring the fact that he employs one himself, evidence that he has some insight into their position.
Providing of course that he pays a decent wage
After all, someone has to keep the glass ceiling clean enough for others to see through
