Across the pond

Today’s Drippygate revelations in the Daily Telegraph bring the hilarious news that the taxpayer has paid for two teddy bears for the former Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy. But the paper also has a second go at Alastair Darling, who along with other members of the Labour cabinet was front-paged and photographed on Day One of the saga for the serial flipping of his second home. Today, the Telegraph reveals that Darling was claiming for expenses on his second home at the same time that that he was charging up the expenses of the grace and favour home he moved into on becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer.

As I wrote after Day One it would be a shame if a decent Chancellor, doing a good job in dealing with the financial crisis, had to resign over such a trivial matter. Both Darling and his boss, Gordon Brown, are saying he has done nothing wrong. although, like Jack Straw before him, he is paying back a few hundred pounds. But what they did is exactly the same kind of thing for which back-benchers of both parties have been hounded out for.

We should expect a higher, not a lower level of behaviour, from our ministers. And Darling, with his financial expertise, must have known exactly what he was doing over the flipping. Using to system to maximise his own financial gain.

It is now clear to everyone except the cabinet, that the electorate has lost trust in Gordon Brown and several of his cabinet. In my view, Gordon Brown has made the situation worse, by taking prime television time in the Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning and the BBC Radio Four Today Programme this morning, to ask the nation to trust him to bring in the far-reaching political reforms he now thinks are necessary.

It’s not only the opinion polls that are telling Brown he has lost the confidence of the electorate. It is his own 10 Downing street website. The leading e-petititon on that site is the one calling for Brown’s resignation. That now has 64,088 signatures, twice as many as the next most popular petition, which is about the speed limit.

(While I was editing this post, Gordon Brown was talking to the people yet again, this time on Channel Four. Reportedly he is now saying that Darling has to be investigated by the new Labour process. The way things are going it looks as if Brown will have to pull in the Liberal Democrats if he is going to find enough squeaky clean ministers for his promised cabinet re-shuffle.

How about two-teddy-bears Charles Kennedy for Children’s minister? )