Tuesday Musings

With the current debate on expenses, one discussion point appears to have escaped the agenda and that is what happens to their candidates if political parties do not 'discipline' those MPs who have been found wanting in 'the court of public opinion'.

For example, a constituency association may well consider their MP 'blameless' and decide no re-selection process is necessary, ignoring the fact it is not they who will elect the next MP, but the voters en-masse.

In any constituency, regardless of who the sitting MP is, will there be a 'protest vote' for one of the other parties, thereby probably producing a 'surprise' result, or will there be mass abstentions yet again, also resulting possibly in a similar surprise result?

In any event it would seem that the party most likely to gain from either of the two scenarios above are the Liberal Democrats. Therefore, logically, all parties must now hold re-selection meetings, open to all voters, if a party wishes to ensure their party holds that particular seat in the Commons.

On a lighter note, questions have been raised about what MPs would do to earn an income were they to be voted out, on the basis most of them are 'unemployable'. Two suggestions in today's Telegraph letters page struck me as possible solutions.

The first suggested that all deposed MPs could form an orchestra/band as they all had plenty of brass and expertise as fiddlers. The second suggested that maybe, to avoid the expenses and allowances dilemma, MPs should be given five minutes, with a supermarket trolley, at the end of the production line of £50 notes at the Bank of England printing presses.

Yet a further comment on an unrelated matter, ID cards, came from a reader who posed the question for Jacqui Smith - who had championed one of the reasons for ID cards as preventing fraud - is how would ID cards have prevented MP's 'largesse'?