It seems the Titanic is not the only sinking ship which will go down in history. As more and more MPs are discovered fudging their expenses, I ask, how bad can it get? Well apparently, much worse! What a difference 24 hours makes.
Jacqui Smith, David Chaytor, Patricia Hewitt, Beverly Hughes and now Hazel Blears have resigned. Ian Gibson, Tom Watson and Carol Flint…are expected to go soon. Alastair Darling is…well..,still here…just. As the house of cards come tumbling down, it seems the golden rule of Parliament is as they say in the X Files, “trust no one”.
An email by Former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, urging Mr Brown to resign, has now been leaked to the media. Claiming he has the backing of a further 70 MPs supporting this call (http://tinyurl.com/p6m5vj), you have to wonder is the curtain finally falling down on this show, and if so, who will the new cast be?
Well, based on the media reports so far, Mr Brown isn’t planning on giving up just yet and opinion elsewhere on this subject is very much split. Yesterday’s editorial in the Guardian commented that as everyone is jumping ship, the Labour Party should “cut him loose”. They went on to say Gordon Brown has: “no vision, no plan, no argument for the future and no support. Labour has a year left before an election; its current leader would waste it. It is time to cut him loose.”
Despite being backed by Leader of the Commons, Harriet Harman, and Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward who described Gordon Brown as the “man wants to get Britain through these difficult times.” Liberal Democrat, Nick Clegg believes Brown has no control, and that the government has become exhausted, claiming the general consensus does appear to be that Brown should go. The question then is, is this a case of a quick re-shuffle and change of leader, or is it a whole bag of crock and should the Captain go down with the ship?
And if Labour does go out, who will go in? As much as I disagree with how they’ve run things in the recession and key blunders they’ve continued to make, statistics of what will come after the storm, may be just as worrying.
A ComsRes report highlighted in this week’s Independent a dramatic drop in support for the Conservatives as the public have turned their backs on all three main parties. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cameron-pays-the-price-of-expenses-scandal-1694507.html
If a General Election was held now, Labour would win 22 per cent of the votes and the Liberal Democrats 18 per cent, the poll found. That would leave Mr Cameron 46 seats short of an overall majority. Despite initially coming off well in the expenses scandal, later revelations of Tory spending has now also taken their toll on the trust and popularity they had previously gained. The new poll also puts the Greens on 8 per cent, Ukip on 7 per cent, the BNP 3 per cent, the Scottish National Party 2 per cent, Plaid Cymru 1 per cent and other smaller parties or independents 9 per cent.
With so much disappointment, frustration and anger towards the behavior of MPs and their mis-used management of our money,
