It’s bonfire night, and once again poor old Guido gets it.
Up and down the country he will be burned in effigy for the dastardly crime of trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament over 400 years ago.
But wait — after all the moats, duck houses and house-flipping of the past 12 months, should it not now be conceded that he might have had a point, even if his methods were a little extreme?
With Westminster held in little more than contempt by many people who have been appalled at the greed and sharp practice of some of our MPs, surely Guy Fawkes should — maybe for just one year — be regarded as more of a hero than a villain. A sort of sabbatical from the day job.
That of course would leave a vacancy on top of all the woodpiles stacked waiting and ready for tonight.
Fury, resentment and a general feeling of being hard done-by is reported to be the prevailing mood amongst MPs as they reconvene after the Summer break to find brown envelopes of an unwelcome sort waiting for them.
These are the already infamous “Legg letters,” the latest symbol along with duck houses, moats and mole-catchers of the expenses scandal which did so much damage to all parties earlier this year.
Written as a result of the inquiry headed by former civil servant Sir Thomas Legg, they assess the expenses claimed by each MP between 2004 and 2008 and, where anomalies have been found, they either demand repayment or clarification.
Gordon Brown is to pay back 12,415 pounds, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg 910 pounds and SNP leader Alex Salmond 700 pounds. David Cameron has been asked to provide more details about his mortgage repayments.
But three things have particularly annoyed backbenchers.
The first is that Legg has imposed retrospective limits on various categories of expenses that the MPs themselves obviously cannot have known about at the time. He has said the maximum allowable for cleaning for example is 2,000 pounds and that for gardening 1,000 pounds, according to newspaper reports.
The second is the perception at Westminster that those MPs who made the really big claims, the ones on mortgage payments, are getting away with it. Saying “sorry” seems to be enough, as in the case of former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
And the third is that some MPs feel they have been unfairly singled out for reprisal by party leaders eager to be seen to be taking action.
Do you think they have a point? Is it time to stop harassing MPs and get on with government?
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised to clean up politics, get tough on crime in his keynote speech to the annual Labour Party conference in Brighton. He also pledged to address the bonus culture that many blame for the financial crisis.
The ‘Word Cloud’ below (click the image for a larger view), produced by Wordle, shows the words he used most frequently.
The speech was an attempt to rouse his beleaguered party and win back the middle-class voters who flocked to Labour under Tony Blair. The latest opinion poll from Ipsos Mori put Labour down in third place for the first time since 1982.
Reuters Chief Correspondent Keith Weir, who is live blogging the Labour conference, said the key themes that struck him were Brown’s focus on families, health, crime and middle or mainstream issues.
What did you think of Gordon Brown’s speech? Have your views on him changed? Do you think he can still win a general election next year?
There haven’t been many highlights from the podium at this year’s Labour party conference so far, but business minister Peter Mandelson pulled the cat out of the bag.
A rip-snorting rouser of a speech on Monday — full of gags and inspirational lines — has energised the party faithful and left commentators drooling.
It was just what Labour needed given all the negativity around the party at the moment.
Way behind in the polls, scrambling for policies that will capture the public mood and seemingly doomed to defeat at the next election to the opposition Conservatives, a week-long conference in sunny Brighton could easily turn into a painfully long few days.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown takes to the stage on Tuesday and must follow Mandelson’s lead if he is to convince the doubters in his own party and beyond that he has what it takes to reverse Labour’s fortunes.
Brown is not known for his imaginative speeches but he needs to find one now.
He did it last year — when plotters in his party wanted him out.
Can he do it again?
For many observers it’s the key question for the Liberal Democrats — who they would support in a hung parliament — Brown’s Labour or Cameron’s Tories?
But ask the people at the top of the party at their conference in Bournemouth (and I have) — Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Chris Huhne, David Laws, even new party chief executive Chris Fox — and they all deny they are considering the issue, let alone discussing it.
“We are concentrating on maximising our vote,” is the common mantra. Why waste time speculating now on possible election scenarios, they say.
Well, even if they were, would they tell ever us? History suggests the party will be making some plans for a possible coalition at some stage before the election, expected in May, even if they aren’t right now.
Former leader Paddy Ashdown has written about “the project”, his secret and abortive talks with Tony Blair ahead of the 1997 election on a centre-left alliance between the LibDems and Labour.
David Laws spoke earlier this week about his role in preparations for coalition talks in the Scottish parliamentary election of 1999.
And this week in Bournemouth another former LibDem leader, Menzies “Ming” Campbell (pictured), revealed his own pre-election coalition planning — for the 2007 election that Gordon Brown never called.
Campbell said that during his short tenure as leader between March 2006 and October 2007 he had taken his shadow team away frequently to discuss what they would do if the expected election left them holding the balance of power.
“We used to go away quite a lot and discuss this,” Campbell said at a fringe meeting hosted by the Independent newspaper.
“I used to put two questions to my colleagues. If after a general election no one party has an overall majority, would we be right to support a Labour party and a Labour government which had failed to obtain a majority in the country, and therefore lost a vote of confidence in the country?
“Or would it be right to support a Conservative party which is wholly opposed to electoral reform and viscerally anti-European?”
But if ever asked by a journalist what the party’s plans were, he would repeat the formula: “Maximum votes, maximum seats, maximum power.” Of course, Brown never called that poll and Menzies stood down without ever fighting an election as LibDem leader.
Campbell gives more details in this short clip I recorded with him after the event.
The Prime Minister is on the move — and I will be following close behind.
I’m Sumeet Desai, Senior Reuters economics correspondent and over the next couple of weeks I will be with Gordon Brown as he travels to New York to the United Nations general assembly and then on to Pittsburgh for the eagerly anticipated G20 summit.
Then it is back to Britain — we will be at the seaside in Brighton for the Labour Party’s annual conference.
I will be live blogging throughout my journey, sending regular news and thoughts via my Twitter feed, which will appear in the box below, and will also post video updates from my travels with Gordon.
A senior Liberal Democrat has lifted a lid on the murky world of coalition politics - a touchy subject for the party which last tasted national power in Britain in the brief Lib-Lab pact of the late 1970s.
Leader Nick Clegg says he is not wasting a “millisecond” speculating on the outcome of the coming general election, expected next May.
But his Education Spokesman David Laws (pictured) has revealed that, at least until 1999, the party had a standard coalition document ready for use just in case it held the balance of power in a hung parliament.
“I understand it had been going around since 1970,” Laws told a fringe meeting at the party’s autumn conference in Bournemouth.
“It was dusted off feverishly for every general election — the party leaders got extremely excited that they were going to be sweeping into power — and then it was dusted away into the bottom drawer afterwards.
“Although it was dated 1999 I suspect it was redated on a fairly frequent basis.”
Brandishing the thin document, Laws told the Liberal Democrat History Group how he had been given it 1999 when Paddy Ashdown sent him, not yet an MP, up to Edinburgh ahead of the May election that year for the new Scottish parliament to help possible coalition talks.
In the vote Labour under leader Donald Dewar became the largest party with 56 seats, but needed the support of the LibDems’ 17 members for a majority in the new 126 seat chamber at Holyrood.
“There was huge pressure and scrutiny as the Scottish election came to an end, expectations that (coalition) decisions would be taken quickly,” he said.
“The people involved in the campaign were absolutely exhausted. I think one of the challenges for us is to make sure, if future occasions arise, that we move as quickly as possible.”
It took a week of fraught negotiations to seal the coalition deal, which in the end was not based in the old LibDem document, but on the text of a more substantial coalition agreement signed by the parties sharing government on the other side of the world in New Zealand.
Does today’s Liberal Democrat party have a similar pre-prepared coalition agreement ready to hand?
In the video clip below you can hear Laws deny that any such document exists today - but is there the trace of a smile when he says that? You decide.
Cameron said a pint of Fosters in bars sells for only 2.10 pounds in Westminster, little over half of what you would pay outside the confines of parliament.
That may go down well with voters but is unlikely to win Cameron many new friends among MPs, officials and, dare I say it, journalists working at Westminster.
Ministers’ salaries will also be cut by five percent and then frozen and the number of MPs cut from 650 to 585 if the Tories get their way.
Cameron himself conceded that the measures he plans are trifling when compared with the size of the government defict of 175 billion pounds. But he reckons it is vital for government to set the tone for the new era of austerity we face.
The whole debate on public spending has an air of phoney war about it. We all know there will be spending cuts — but neither Labour nor the Conservatives are really nailing their colours to the mast.
So are the Conservatives setting the right tone with their planned assault on Westminster’s pay and perks, or is just cheap populism masking the failure to tackle the real issues?
The Pirate Party, which originated in Sweden, is now a registered political party in Britain and set to run candidates in the next general election. Its aim is to reform copyright law, abolish the patent system and ensure privacy rights for all citizens.
The party, with branches in more than 25 countries, argues that file-sharing and peer-to-peer networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized, based on the idea that “the Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.”
Combatting levels of surveillance and control put in place by governments in response to the 9/11 attacks in New York are also top of the agenda.
The party wants to introduce an alternative to pharmaceutical patents throughout Europe that it says will save on drug costs to governments.
Would you vote for the Pirate Party in a general election?
It’s bonfire night, and once again poor old Guido gets it.
