“The sense of decline and depression all over Westminster has been around for a year or two already, intensified by the expenses scandal” wrote Baroness Deech on Lords of the Blog the other day.
I am uneasy about the latest two additions to the scandalous state of affairs; set ups by journalists, such as that of the invitations to pitch for jobs with a false lobbying company, always have that effect on me. The three Labour ex-ministers who were caught did indeed cut very sorry figures – did they really think their influence would be worth anything in the market after the election or was this just a hope for very short term gain?
And anyway, wasn’t it under Thatcherism that we were all taught that the primary duty is to sell yourself & your talents, no use just being a backroom boy or brilliant but scared of bigging yourself up when talking to strangers?
I have not had time to look at the details of the alleged non-declaration of interests, but then neither have most commentators; that hasn’t stopped a lot of knee jerk reaction of the they’re all as bad as one another variety
I heard the long serving Liberal Democrat MP for Portsmouth South, Mike Hancock explain his ‘mistake’ to Victoria Derbyshire this morning. It occurred to me that one way for MPs to get their own back would be just to mark with an R (for registered interest) every Written PQ they tabled. That would get the journalist/investigators scratching their heads & give them some work to do.
It has also been very interesting to hear some of this being explained to the Irish audience of RTE1.
