1. David Cameron acted decisively while the PM continues to vascillate
2. ConservativeHome may have claimed its first scalp
3. The party reaction said: up with sleaze we will not put
4. Conway might have survived in a less febrile atmosphere
5. Enough is enough with the sleaze tit for tat
Jolly decisive, sleeping on it before consulting his Whips, and then realising that Conway had apologised for using MP expenses to supplement both sons' and friends meagre student loan. Not.
ReplyDelete1. Untrue. When the Standards and Privileges Committee report was published on Monday, the Conservative Party announced authoritatively that Conway would not lose the Conservative whip. On Tuesday lunchtime after seeing the hostile press reaction, this decision was reversed. It was then said that he would not get the whip back "for a very long time" - which acknowledges that he would get the whip back, and implicitly that his Parliamentary career might continue. On Wednesday this was reversed and Conway obliged to announce that he would not seek re-election. That shows indecisiveness.
ReplyDelete2) Very probably true; the press reaction often cited the comments of Conservative activists on ConservativeHome as evidence of internal opposition.
3) 'Sleaze', now there's a word we haven't heard for a long time. As John Major and then Tony Blair discovered, popular opinion has a way of regarding previously acceptable behaviour as unacceptably sleazy. The issue is not whether sleaze is acceptable - because it obviously isn't - but what is and is not sleazy. It seems unlikely that MPs will be banned from employing all relatives (and indeed it would be wrong to do so).
4) Almost certainly true. Other MPs have been suspended for lengthy periods of time without much comment and their offences being much graver. The fact that there have been a succession of financing scandals focusses attention more brutally on the next one.
5) Very easy to say, very difficult to do. If John Mann were the next to be under fire, I wouldn't give much for this resolution holding (not to imply that there's any reason he should be).
you really are holding up a red flag to the trolls. Claiming Conway was a victim of circumstances rather than his own greed. I can hear them grinding their gnashers now.
ReplyDeleteCan someone explain to me something. In his piece on Thatcher in the Telegraph today, presumably lifted from his speech presenting the award, Cameron says:
ReplyDeleteBut today's circumstances are different. We still have major economic challenges ahead, largely conditioned by a decade of debt, and the failure by Gordon Brown to keep the roof in repair while the sun shone.
But the most fundamental long-term challenge we face is not the broken economy inherited by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, but our broken society, the consequence of years of failed state planning and the denial of social responsibility. Britain has falling school standards, the worst rate of family breakdown in Europe and an endemic crime problem in our inner cities.
--
Is this not an outright attack on Lady Thatcher? The broken society line, I mean?
Genuine question
With 70 Tory MPs employing family I have feeling Conway will be found not to be alone, I expect Cameron will be a sweaty little toff about now as he makes furtive enquiries .(About 30 Labour MP s as well I gather ).
ReplyDeleteConway was not a stupid man and the fact he did not bother to cover his tracks shows how widespread the practice must be. I am far far better a fiddling expense myself.
David Boothroyd is as usual missing the wood for the trees . The great act of financial dishonesty in our recent political past was the cash for peerages scam, operated for vast sums by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, as well as the ,cash for taxes, scam with Private Equity.
They had to do this as the Labour Party has lost its mass membership their reliance on the unions is the ongoing fall out of the same systemic problem. Conservative sources of funding have not altered as radically as the Party has not been obliged to admit that what it spent most of the 20th century saying was utterly wrong .
It is the long shadow of this that has lead to hysteria about as little as £900 and even Hain was too stupid for real dishonesty as Brown admitted. Chris Paul has pointed out with superficial justification that this Tory sleaze story takes you back to cash for questions and Archer . This he would suggest is what a Tory scandal looks like ,not political but for personal gain . I see the point but is it so clear cut ?
Tony Blair has made as much as £10 million in the few months . His £4 million mortgage was 25 times his salary while in office . I think it is fair to say he had ‘expectations’. Its an extreme example but shows that political power and money are not so different ,. In essence , he stole money to grab power with which he parlayed a personal fortune .
Conway’s problem was not that he was a crook , which he was , but that he was a small time crook. His other problem was his stupid son and his contempt for ordinary people when his own father was a middle manager on the make . I shall not be inviting him to my “F---- Off I work for a living “ Party. This coverage has done great harm.
The issue is not only negative - about about who we don't want in the Party hierarchy, and what kind of behaviour we won't tolerate.
ReplyDeleteIt's also the positive - about what kind of folk we do want as Conservative MPs, Shadow Cabinet and eventually Ministers.
If Conway's on the list of not required, then who comes on to the list that is required? The opposite of corrupt, possessing superior attitude to others and lacking common sense would be as follows -
dead honest, identifying with all people and not just high society, and having common sense...being capable of making good decisions, not bloody stupid ones and then being good at bluffing your way out of it when challenged.
There are plenty of good MPs, candidates and people around who would fit the positive specification.
David Cameron does, for example and many in his inner team.
What about people like John Hayes in the Cornerstone? Shouldn't this be the moment to move in a lot more like him - of the kind who are dead honest, public-spirited and capable, though possibly not ideal material for Hello magazine.
The Conway story is all about looking backwards to the Blair era, when getting on the make was what it was all about.
That's why getting rid of Conway is good. It gives Cameron a strong indication as to which way to go, what kind of people he should be promoting to appeal to the electorate.
We've had the bad side and all the attendant publicity from Conway. Now how can we turn the situation to advantage? That's what matters now.
We need less emphasis on media celebrity appeal as would impress Iain Dale for example, and a reversion to more boring, simple common sense and management ability.
Hanging Conway was a proxy for hanging the whole Blair era of falsehood and grabbing for oneself. People are angry about how low politics has sunk, and they are ready to move on.
The Conway episode gives the clue as to where.
First - Who designed your new masthead? Your 12-year old nephew? Not only is it weak, but it's so trite it chills the blood. Mastheads of British papers. Westminster Palace. The door to No 10. How did you manage to leave out a Horseguard?
ReplyDeleteAs to Conway, in a "less febrile" atmosphere, he would not have survived, Iain. What he did was so outrageous, it beggars description.
Tea Trolley - he was also paying his wife around £60,000 a year as his "secretary". Many secretaries would vie for that kind of salary to answer correspondence and keep an appointment diary. Nice work if you can get it. And if you're married to Derek Conway, you can.
Every penny has to be paid back to the British taxpayer.
Agree with every word Newmania writes except the bit about being better at fiddling expenses than Conway, as I don't know how skillful he actually is or is just showing off.
Enough with the sleaze tit for tat
ReplyDeleteHow else should MPs keep each other honest? Or should we assume that they are all of impeccable probity and ignpore the substantial evidence to the contrary?
I'm not suggesting that anyone is better than anyone else, me included. I'm just trying to be realistic. Acts need to be cleaned up.
Although I have met neither you, nor (so far as I am aware) any of your regular contributors, it is hard not to build up a picture of the various personalities, and in some curious way (with odd exceptions) view them with some degree of affection. I believe that you underestimate the regard with which the readers of this blog Iain hold you.
ReplyDeleteAlthough you have never been slow in exploiting opportunities to advance your career nobody (with the obvious exception of a well known contributor who seems to be deranged by jealousy of your success) begrudges you your achievements, indeed the vast majority applaud your enterprise, and are very grateful to you for creating a space in which it is possible to discuss politics without being censored by the usual State funded Guardian reading thought police.
However, you do not seem to appreciate how much your defence of a corrupt MP has damaged, almost overnight, the high regard in which you are held.
The “he is my friend so I will defend him” line does not come over as the actions of an honourable man, it comes over as the actions of somebody setting aside considerations of right and wrong in order to boost his reputation as being an insider who can be trusted, a stance fatal to an independent blogger I would have thought.
It is because you are an honourable man that the reaction against you (by what I am tempted to call your real friends) has been so savage.
No doubt your pride is such that you will refuse to admit that you made any error of judgement, but until such time as you confront this issue, and at the very least justify yourself with an argument stronger than Conway is a chum so I am going to defend him (during your debate with Heffer) or refuse to publicly criticise him (your stance in your blog) even though you have (rightly) sought to draw attention to the damage to our political system that has occurred as a result of the actions of various Labour Members of Parliament.
In short you stand accused of rank hypocrisy, and partisan special pleading, effectively killing your reputation for fairness stone dead. My – unasked for advice – is lance the boil and confront the issue of whether your decision to defend Conway was indeed the morally correct thing to do. Your enemies needless to add are hoping you will attempt to carry on as if nothing had happened.
In your article, you say others will judge whether Conway was guilty. Well, Cameron has withdrawn the whip and Conway himself has apologised, so the judgement is in. He also intends to stand down at the next election, which you describe as a heavy price. Except that he and his wife continue to draw a good salary, whereas in any other job they would have been dismissed instantly.
ReplyDeleteSo why are you so reluctant to admit that Conway did wrong?
The answer comes at the end of the piece. You imply that what Conway did, many others also do. Friend Conway has been singled out unfairly. But it is not employing family, it is paying them far too much or not expecting any work (at all!) in return that matters . Syphoning public funds into the family purse makes people very angry because it is unethical.
Your defence of this tells us clearly how you intend to behave in Westminster. But now you have declared your intentions, you will never get there, especially if Decisive Dave (who decisively waited until it was clear Conway had to go) has anything to do with it.
What about people like John Hayes in the Cornerstone?
ReplyDeleteOh yes Tapestry,I have met him and her was a tremendously engaging and thoughtful chap. I believe Mr. Dale is rather down on Cornerstone but if John Hayes is typical then I am at a loss to see why.
I have met him and he was a tremendously engaging and thoughtful chap
ReplyDeleteoops typing in mittens again. John Hayes is definitely not a 'him and her'
I mean, Conway didn't just siphon off around a million taxpayer pounds into his family's bank accounts - only one of whom, his wife, appears to have done even a stroke of - highly overpaid - work, but also his son's boyfriend at university. Neither of the two sons nor the boyfriend did anything that could even be construed as a pretence of work. The contempt for the taxpayer is chilling.
ReplyDeleteRepulsive as I find the entire Conway family, I still maintain, though, that it is Iain's right not to condemn his friend in a public forum.
Ah, son's boyfriend as well is it? I think Iain and certain other Tories attempts to pretend that say Wendy Alexander or Alan Johnson's situations are in any way equivalent to this Conway raid on the public purse MUST STOP. Ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteHow do we stop the Conways getting the settlement and pension they would be due if they didn't appear to be as crooked as hell.
I personally have no problems with an MP employing members of their own family in their ofices.
ReplyDeleteBut from what we know about Mr Conways employment of his two sons they appear to have been given payments without doing any work.
That is what,imho, makes it unethical if not illegal, and why he had to go.