Across the pond

Today’s Daily Telegraph revelations add yet another irony to trial by media. Eleanor Laing, the Conservative shadown justice minister, is exposed for not paying capital gains tax on the profit of over a million on the sale of her second home, which she refurbished with the help of more than £80,000 of our money, claimed on expenses. Jack Straw, the present justice secretary, was exposed in the first blast from the stolen computer disc, for cheating on his council tax.

Now, we know that the David Cameron’s woman, as befit’s the party of the capitalists, used the system to make far more money than the man from the people’s party.

But for those of who are becoming a little bored with these drip, drip revelations, now is the time for gettting MP’s expenses in perspective. The effect of the media frenzy can be seen in the Populus poll, reported exclusively in The Times today.

Labour is down to 21 per cent, it’s lowest rating since polling began. Quite right too, because Labour has been in government while this MP’s expenses mess has accumulated. The New Labour of Blair, elected by an over-whelming popular vote, and Brown, his loyal side-kick, who has yet not yet asked the electorate whether they want him to be their PM.

But, and this is a very big but, indeed, the Populus poll shows the Liberal Democrat vote has fallen from 20 per cent to 12 per cent. Despite the fact, that the Daily Telegraph revelations, broadcast to the whole world by all the other newspapers and radio, television and the internet, demonstrate that the LibDems are squeaky clean.

This fact has been lost in the last two weeks. The majority who answered the Populus poll were not reading the Daily Telegraph, or any of the heavy newspapers. They were taking their news mostly from the television, which has focussed on the ‘headlines’, namely the ‘crimes’ of Labour MP’s and Conservative MPs, who comprise the only likely next government.

But in the media frenzy of the last two weeks the public distrusts the LibDems as well.

This is not justified by any of the facts. Indeed, the opposite is true. But Chris Huhne, who was a candidate for LibDem leader, has been attacked for claiming a trouser press on his expenses.o

Most of the outraged electorate, who are in serious trouble because of the recession, have never owned a trouser press, nor felt the need for it. But many of them do like their MP’s to have creases in their trousers.

So let’s get this in perspective.

MP’s have abused the expenses system. Bad. And should be stopped.

But in this, they are like all the media, which has been exposing them.

Journalists, for all my lifetime, have been cooking their expenses. Innocents like me, who came into journalism for idealistic reasons, have been repeatedly told by news editors, that my expenses are too low. You must charge everything possible up, otherwise you are harming the rest of us.

In the Blairite/Brownite years, policians were encouraged to act like journalists, or like the businessmen, Blair and Brown made friends with. Demanding salaries of many millions of pounds, and pensions as well, even if they bankrupted their companies.

Unlike them, many MPs, while insisting, quite accurately, that they have not breached the law, have voluntarily paid back money.

Paid back peanuts, compared with the million pound pensions, which chaps like Fred the Shed are still clininging to.

Chaps like Fred the Shed have no conscience. They got their millions by doing nothing illegal. And they they see no reason to listen the rest of us.

MPs, by contrast, are paying back money. They now see that they were caught in the atmosphere of Thatcherite un-regulated capitalism, and Blair, ‘making Labour electable by being buddy-buddy with the capitalists’.

Thanks to the media frenzy of the last two weeks, the electorate, according to the Populus poll, is putting UKIP above Labour and the LibDems.

No UKIP members are on the hit-list on the Daily Telegraph disc. Not because they are incorruptible, but because they don’t have any MPs. Because, however much Brits hate Brussels, they don’t want a little England ruled by out-of-date zealots.