Westminster

Boss Man d'Ancona asks us to consider what we would think and what we would do were we Labour MPs. A scary thought, I know but that's the point of the exercise. For myself, I like to think I'd agree with Tom Harris. That is, if I were a Labour backbencher I'd be very concerned about my employment prospects and would welcome pretty much Anyone But Gordon as leader. How much worse could any alternative leader be? But if I were a member of the cabinet and someone who had leadership ambitions myself, I might see matters rather differently and conclude that while Labour would certainly be well-served by a change in leadership the times are sufficiently inauspicious to justify sitting still and keeping very, very quiet for a little longer yet.

Now that the Tories have reopened their candidate selection process, there are going to be plenty of candidates wondering how best to take advantage of their opponents' extravagant expense claims. The intricacies of capital gains tax and "flipping" second homes are all very entertaining, but liable to become bogged down in legalese. Not so, by comparison, the hefty £400 MPs could claim for food each month.

Nadine Dorries is at the end of her tether: Does the DT [Daily Telegraph] have an agenda other than the desire to perform a public service? Why would they expose this fiasco at the start of an election campaign if the priority was not to destabilise the main political parties and to drive votes towards the minority parties? Really, this presumes that newspapers are vastly more cunning than tends to be the case. The Telegraph is motivated by something rather quaintly old-fashioned: a story. Like anything else in the paper this is designed to serve two ideas: make money and b) inform the public. Just occasionally (oh, happy day!), it's possible for a story to do both.

Amidst the public riot over parliamentarians' expenses, the story of Hazel Blears remains oddly fascinating. And story is the operative word, given that she appears to be the sole cabinet minister singled out for opprobrium despite the fact that several of her colleagues have enjoyed equally shady and profitable dealings with the Fees Office. Since she's had the gall to criticise the Prime Minister you can see why Downing Street is Chipmunk Hunting, making it clear that her actions were "unacceptable" and all the rest of it. But if Blears is guilty - or guilty enough to be forced out of the cabinet - then surely Alastair Darling and Geoff Hoon shoul also be for the chop?

Danny Finkelstein's column in the Times today is very interesting if, perhaps, also a little too neat. On the other hand, I kinda hope he's right. Large centralised political parties were created because of the existence of the mass media. To make any political impact, an idea or an individual had to find a spot in the limited shelf space provided by the big media giants. This prompted individuals to organise themselves into tight, uniform groupings with a professional staff shaping their message for media outlets. As the mass media became stronger, so did whipping. From this relationship between the media and politicians arose our current form of closed politics. And not all of its features are undesirable, by any means.

Like Bagehot I think this one of most entertaining - and revealing - reactions to the revelations of the Great Expenses Swindle of 2009: The latest batch of expenses details revealed by the Telegraph included the fact that Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson had made a claim of £304.10 for the upkeep of a swimming pool. In response he said: "The pool came with the house and I needed to know how to run it. Once I was shown that one time, there were no more claims. I take care of the pool myself. I believe this represents 'value for money' for the taxpayer." Priceless, if you know what I mean.

Like any sensible person I've been thoroughly amused and appalled by the scandal of MPs expenses. Appalled because the extent of MPs' avarice is sufficient to shock even an iron-souled cynic; amused because watching MPs try to justify their gluttonous appetite for taxpayer-funded freebies affords a certain pleasure that one might consider vindictive if only it weren't so entirely merited. This isn't a tragedy, it's a stinking farce. The dreary pretense - duly repeated by every sticky-fingered parliamentarian - that it is all ok because "no rules were broken" could hardly be more priceless. Nor could it do more to underline the essential fact that these people are fools who in turn treat the public as though they are fools themselves.

The shocking thing about the government's defeat this afternoon is that it can be described as a shock at all. And parliamentarians wonder why they are viewed with, to put it mildly, disdain? Anyone with an ounce of commonsense can see that it is grotesque to tell the Gurkhas that they may fight in the British army but they cannot live in Britain. And yet 246 MPs duly blundered through the government lobby solely so they could be good little soldiers themselves and try and spare their masters some much-deserved embarrassment. Then again, it's a testament to the reduced expectations people have of parliament that it actually is a surprise that enough Labour MPs found sufficient reserves of conscience to vote against the government to produce the right result.

Tim Montgomerie suggests David Cameron needs to do a little more to produce a proper, comprehensive policy on MPs expenses. That's probably true. As we all know, any talk of reform at Westminster unnerves parliamentarians from all parties since, as we all know, no-one has clean hands in this affair. They've all been fiddling the system - legally! - for years, unaware that as far as the public's concerned the legality of the system is pretty much irrelevant. MPs at Westminster might often envy their cousins across the pond - members of the House of Representatives enjoy a "Representational Allowance" of up to $1.6m for staff, office and franking costs - but in the matter of housing at least, it's the Britons who have the last laugh.

A lot of us have been wondering what Westminster might be like under the Tories. What, for instance, would the parliamentary press lobby look like under a Cameron government? A return to deference, perhaps. Would the gentlemen and the ladies of the press take their information dutifully from the PM's spokesman or woman (who would presumably be called a spokesman) and put it straight in the paper? We now have an indication from the behaviour at Eric Pickles's bash (quite literally) last night that we may see a different kind of throwback to the days of boozing and brawling that seemed a distant memory.

Exhibit A: From the Daily Mail, November 8th 2008. Man caught in £30,000 benefit fraud: After the case, employment and welfare reform minister Tony McNulty said: "Lying to the DWP to get money you aren't entitled to is a crime. Expecting to get away with it is criminally stupid. This man thought he could live a life of Riley at the taxpayers' expense. He was wrong. Our investigators caught up with him and now he'll face the penalty for his crimes.

A couple of revealing entries from Chris Mullin's diaries that reveal the Prime Minister to be some ungodly (and unhealthy) combination of Uriah Heep and Lyndon Baines Johnson: Wednesday July 4th, 2001: Later, sitting on the terrace, I was joined by a member of the Blair inner circle*. Conversation soon turned to Gordon. I mentioned that following my departure from government, I had received a handwritten letter saying how much he had enjoyed working with me. It seems that every ex-Minister has received an identical letter. All the new Members have received letters too. He must have been up half the night writing them. No stone is left unturned. Gordon's machine churns night and day. My friend was scathing. "He's mad, quite mad.

Tom Harris doesn't much care for the Liberal Democrats: Having seen the damage done to the Labour Party through its association with the Liberals in the Scottish Parliament in previous years, there is, if anything, more hostility among MPs to the idea of power sharing than ever. On the other hand, if the Liberal Party want to sign up to the implementation of Labour’s manifesto in the aftermath of the election, fine. So long as they don’t expect either Labour or Tory MPs to agree to a change in the electoral system so that every possible outcome in future would result in the Liberals being in government.