One Law for Laws?
Sympathy for David Laws’ personal position – and the widespread perception of him as a potentially excellent Chief Secretary- should not blind us to the fact that what he did was dishonest and his excuse unconvincing.
Claiming £950 a month in rent for his partner was not necessary to maintain his privacy, as Laws claimed. Not is it the mark of a man of the “highest integrity”, as Paddy Ashdown and other Lib Dems lined up to claim in the lead up to his resignation.
There is also the question of whether a heterosexual minister caught making comparable false claims would have been so gently treated by the commentariat.
Then there’s the widespread assumption by fellow politicians and journalists that a quick resignation will allow Laws to return as a senior minister after a decent interval.
Disgraced Tory ministers in the early ’90s were always accused of hanging on until their fingers were levered one by one from the heights of power by the media. Maybe. Once gone, though, they did not return.
That fashion begun under Blair when ministers both hung on and then were allowed to come back into high high office – Blunkett and Mandy spring to mind.
If someone is proved unfit for office, that should be that. Instead, having given the Tories a good kicking for not bundling offending minister out quickly enough, Blair allowed his to be reborn.
That’s not automatically a good thing. Or if it is reasonable for a very capable minister to return (I don’t include Blunkett and Mandy in this category) for the good of the country, where’s the logic in them going in the first place. Is it just that a few months on the backbenches assuages the rage of the press and public?
All seems a bit woolly to me.
