BB FANS

Russian death squads ‘pulverise’ Chechens
Elite commandos have broken their silence to reveal how they torture, execute and then blow captives to atoms to obliterate the grisly evidence

Mark Franchetti in Moscow
timesonline

The true patrons of this greed are an over-mighty press
Media that increasingly prioritise personality over serious debate have no real interest in restoring trust in politics

In David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia, there is a celebrated scene in which Lawrence and his Bedouin army come upon a Turkish army column in the desert. To the chilling cry of "No prisoners!" the Arab forces bear down upon the Turks and massacre them all. As watchers, we understand why the Bedouins are carried away by the desire to slaughter; the wretched Turks have just come from destroying an entire Arab village. But we know too that Lawrence and his men have been found out morally, and that harm will come of this bloodletting.

Happily – some may disagree – there is no blood in the corridors of Westminster yet. Not even the angriest voter or the most indignant media commentator wants the parliamentary expenses cheats butchered. The worst penalty suffered so far is Andrew MacKay's resignation from the opposition frontbench yesterday (ironically MacKay is married to a former Daily Telegraph political journalist turned Tory MP) and a growing list of mostly well-deserved individual humiliations, headed yesterday but Labour's suspension of Eliot Morley – a rather good green minister in his time. Yet there is a "no prisoners" mood in the air. The pitiless hounding of the travellers on the Westminster gravy train may play well with the public. But it is out of balance; there have been far worse misuses of public money for private gain – even the fraud lawyers think there may not be a runable prosecution in any of the cases reported so far – and much general harm may come from it.

Yes, there has been toe-curling abuse of the system and some insupportable individual examples of both gross and petty greed. Yes, the MPs' expenses system is indefensible both in principle and in comparison with what most people would expect in their own lives. The Westminster expenses system is wrong, looks terrible from the outside and must be replaced as part of a wider reform of parliament and the financing of politics. But don't try to tell me that MPs' greed is a sufficient explanation for the current disaster, because it's not. We are where we are for more complex and serious reasons than Westminster venality alone.

One basic reason why politics has reached this point is that members of parliament were historically poorly paid for the amount of work that modern MPs expect to do. In 1983, when Gordon Brown first went to the Commons, an MP earned just over £15,000. It was an absurdly low figure even then. So what did those who could have changed the system do? They did nothing. Margaret Thatcher refused to give MPs the increase they needed or the framework for future salary review that would have put parliamentary financing on a defensible basis. And John Major, Tony Blair and Brown all followed her lead. Today's £65,000 parliamentary salary is better in real terms than 1983, and it is certainly a good income, but it is not high when compared with legislators in many other countries, or with the professions with whom MPs might sensibly be compared.

Why did Thatcher and the rest hold off? Not because MPs didn't need the money or wouldn't vote for it. They held off because they were afraid of the newspapers, particularly the Sun. They were not prepared to risk the wrath of Rupert. It was the press who stood between MPs and a sensible income. So the true patron of the expenses system against which the press rages today is the press itself.

But the over-mighty press is no more the sole cause of the current Westminster agony than is the greed of MPs. Our fundamental problem is the failure to reform our politics. Party politics remains deeply tribal in very old fashioned ways. Without understanding this tribalism it is impossible to understand the dynamics of the expenses row or the fact that Michael Martin ever became Speaker at all – or even the reluctance of a party stuffed with wannabe peers to reform the House of Lords. Perhaps if we had more modern parties that reflected the divides of the 21st century then we might have a more practical approach to parliamentary finance.

Even so, the job of an MP today is quite unlike the job of an MP a generation ago. Jack Straw made an important point when he defended his expenses on his Blackburn constituency home the other day. He observed that his Blackburn predecessor, Barbara Castle – nowadays practically beatified in parts of the Labour culture as the sort of politician we wish we still had today – never had a home in Blackburn in all the 34 years that she represented the town. Mrs Castle lived, if memory serves, in London and in the Chilterns, where at weekends she tended her garden. Her distant relationship with her constituency was typical of her era.

But that is all history now. MPs today expect – and are expected – to shuttle between Westminster and their constituency. This is partly because of the rise of the professional politician, making work for themselves. It is partly because of the cult of the grassroots that, in Labour's case, dates from the Bennite era. But it also reflects the centralisation of politics and the state. The cases that MPs take up today used to be dealt with by local councillors. If we want to spend less on MPs we should restore effective local government. Unless we do that, the current vogue for having fewer MPs is mere angry populism.

Which is, of course, one reason why so much of the press supports it. The truth, though, is that the press would attack 546 MPs with the same vigour that it attacks the present 646. The press has a collective self-interest in the maintenance of the current system. Just as the press prefers bad news stories to good ones, so it is happier with bad political news than good. It is inherently oppositional both to particular governments and to government in general. No other profession instinctively believes it should be above the law. No other, therefore, has a stronger interest in belittling the makers of law. This takes the form of a very British mix of middle-class condescension towards politics in some cases and plebeian scorn in others. "Not in my name" crossed with "A plague on all their houses".

In the end, one has to confront the following serious question. What aspect of the restoration of trust in politics would be in the media's interest? The answer is no part of it at all. A media that have become progressively less engaged with serious political argument and progressively more focused on personal frailty, foible and failure is one of the shapers of the nation's political problem, not the deliverer from it.

martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk
guardian

MP couple to stand down

Conservative MPs Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton are to stand down as MPs at the coming general election, they have announced.

The husband-and-wife Tory backbenchers were recently named in the Daily Telegraph as having claimed £80,000 in parliamentary allowances for a flat owned by a trust controlled by their children, but party sources said it was not known whether the expenses furore played a part in their decision to retire.

In a letter to party leader David Cameron, Sir Nicholas and Lady Winterton said that they could no longer "maintain the hectic pace" of political life and wanted to step down in order to spend more time with their family.

Sir Nicholas, 71, has been MP for Macclesfield in Cheshire for 37 years, while his 68-year-old wife has represented neighbouring Congleton for almost 26 years.

ITN

Expenses row forces MEPs to prove claims are legitimate

The scandal over MPs' expenses has forced politicians fighting for votes in next week's European Parliament elections to be seen as "cleaner than clean".

They were scrambling yesterday to prove their expenses were legitimate and those who hadn't yet published them were pledging to make them more transparent and open to public scrutiny.

The Herald

Let's see if Britain's got political talent
Only those who know about the contestants vote in reality shows. Make it the same in elections
Frank Skinner timesonline

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Independent

An election dominated by just one issue: expenses
Forget local government, disregard the future of Europe: voting today will be all about punishing greed, says Andrew Grice

Even normally loyal grassroots activists in all three main parties have been so angry about the MPs' expenses scandal that they have refused to campaign for today's local authority and European Parliament elections.

If people like that are furious with the behaviour of MPs, then it's an understatement to say ordinary voters are even more angry. "It's been 'expenses, expenses, expenses' on the doorstep – often with an expletive attached," one Tory party canvasser admitted yesterday. A Labour source confirmed: "It's been a single issue campaign. We have tried to raise local services, but to no avail. Europe is the dog that didn't bark, even though it is a Euro election."

The earthquake that has shaken Westminster has, unusually, also reached every corner of the land. The expenses story, highlighting the gulf between politicians and the people, is so dangerous because the people understand it. "It's not so much the moats and the servants," one Labour MP said. "What I keep hearing on the doorstep is 'why the hell can't you buy your own food like the rest of us?'" Until the controversy forced a belated shake-up of the expenses system, MPs were allowed to claim £400 a month for food under their "second homes" allowance, without receipts and even when the Commons is not sitting.

Today the voters will get the chance to pass their judgement on such behaviour when elections take place in 34 local authorities in England, mainly in the county councils, and the UK-wide contest for 72 seats in the European Parliament. Some people will vote with their feet and stay away from the polling stations in disgust. Only one in three may bother to turn out. Indeed, some angry voters have told canvassers they will boycott the elections because of the expenses saga. They don't normally bother to explain why.

Officials in the three main parties believe privately that Labour, as the governing party, will take the biggest hit. But the Tories also expect to suffer damage, after the constant stream of revelations in The Daily Telegraph about how they used their allowances to maintain their country estates.

One intriguing question exercising the minds of all three parties is whether the Liberal Democrats are tarred with the same brush as the two bigger parties. Nick Clegg has had a "good war" on the expenses row and was the only main party leader to call publicly for the Commons Speaker Michael Martin to resign. But some Liberal Democrats fear the party may be seen by some voters as part of the problem rather than the solution.

If the third party gains between 30 and 50 council seats and makes a surprise gain in Bristol where Labour appears to be in trouble, it will be a sign that the Liberal Democrats are less contaminated than the big two parties. But a worse result than that for the Liberal Democrats will suggest the voters are saying "a plague on all your houses".

The Liberal Democrats are defending 370 seats in total, and will be challenged by the Tories for their only two councils of Somerset and Devon, in a dry run for a crucial general election battle in the South West.

Labour is defending 445 council seats. It fears losing its remaining four county councils – Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire. If it denies the Tories outright victory in Derbyshire – a tall order for David Cameron's party – Labour will present it as a triumph.

The Tories expect to capture at least 100 Labour seats and will be privately hoping for 200 gains. They will be looking to secure at least 40 per cent of the projected share of the national vote – the hurdle needed to show David Cameron is on course for Downing Street. The Tories are defending 1,048 of the 2,318 council seats up for grabs.

Who will benefit most among the smaller parties? UKIP has looked shambolic since being the surprise package at the last Euro elections in 2004 and does not have an unblemished record on expenses. Despite that, it has been given a new lease of life by the crisis at Westminster. Although the EU has had a low profile as an issue in the campaign (to the relief of some Tories), the fact that it is a Euro election should help UKIP. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has said he will resign if it wins fewer than 10 seats.

Last night Lord Kalms, a former Conservative Party Treasurer, and major Tory donor has said he would "lend" his vote to another party at tomorrow's European elections – almost certainly Ukip.

The Greens, who had their high water mark in Britain at the 1989 Euro election, have a spring in their step again and have moved up in the polls. Caroline Lucas, the Green Party leader, said last night: "A Green vote is much more than a protest against the big three. Let's remember they've been discredited not just by the expenses scandal, but by their lack of commitment to putting social and environmental justice at top of political agenda."

The Greens hope to deny the BNP its first seat in a nationwide election. But some party workers fear there may be a "spiral of silence" in which people tell pollsters they will support other parties (such as UKIP) but back the BNP in the privacy of the polling booth.
Independent

John Curtice: There is a silver lining for Labour: the Tories are suffering as well

Today's elections were never going to be easy for Labour. It started the campaign with an average opinion poll rating of only 27 per cent. At that level of popularity, all four of the county councils it is defending looked highly vulnerable. And with smaller parties always likely to attract votes on a scale unimaginable in a Westminster election, it seemed the best it could hope for in the European elections was to repeat the disastrous performance of 23 per cent it recorded last time.

But after the expenses scandal the party's poll rating has almost been in freefall. On average just 21 per cent now say they would vote Labour in a general election. Even if some of that is a temporary loss occasioned by the unusual prominence of smaller parties during a European election, it is certainly in at least as much electoral difficulty now as it was in the wake of the 10p tax row this time last year.

So not only do the local elections now threaten Labour with an unprecedented whitewash, but the outcome of the European elections could destabilise the party too. The last four polls of Euro voting intentions put Labour on an average of just 18 per cent, with both the Liberal Democrats (16 per cent) and Ukip (15 per cent) apparently breathing down its neck for second place.

Falling below 20 per cent could just be the tipping point that persuades Labour MPs that Mr Brown needs to go. Certainly Mr Brown's personal poll ratings give MPs every reason to believe that public perceptions of their leader are contributing to their electoral difficulties.

If there is a silver lining for Labour it is that the past four weeks have been torrid for Mr Cameron and the Conservatives too. The Opposition leader has been rowing rapidly to ensure his party's electoral boat is not swept away by its involvement in the expenses row. Meanwhile, he has discovered that his Eurosceptic tone has been insufficient to stem a considerable loss of support in the European elections to Ukip.

There now seems to be little prospect that the Conservatives will register in the European elections the kind of performance that would demonstrate the party is set for victory when the next general election does eventually happen. At 28 per cent, the Tories' average European poll rating is only a little higher than the 27 per cent it won five years ago. It is well short of the 36 per cent William Hague managed in 1999. But perhaps an even bigger worry for Mr Cameron is that his party's performance could now fall short of expectations in the local elections. Over the past month his party's support has fallen by at least three points in polls of Westminster voting intentions – and by even more according to the most recent ComRes poll for this paper. With Ukip contesting nearly one in four of the 2,300 local seats at stake, the Conservatives will fear some of its support could seep away to Nigel Farage's party in the local elections too.

As a result, the Conservative performance could fall well short of the 44 per cent it secured last year, when the local votes are projected into a nationwide vote. Mr Cameron will not want the impression formed at this stage of the electoral cycle that his party's support has begun to recede.

While both Labour and the Conservatives have suffered from the events of recent weeks, the Liberal Democrats have largely emerged unscathed. Their Westminster support has held steady at around 18 per cent, while Mr Clegg's personal ratings have improved dramatically, thanks not least to his involvement in the Gurkhas campaign. However, this still means the party is less popular than it was on general election day in 2005, which is when the county council seats at stake today were last contested.

The Liberal Democrats' relatively Europhile stance and vulnerability to any surge of support for the Greens means they have often struggled in European elections. The party will feel queasy that, with the Greens running at 11 per cent in the polls, up five points on 2004, it could yet suffer the same fate again. Perhaps all the parties at Westminster will all end up hoping we forget today's elections as soon as possible.

John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University
Independent

Robert Fisk: Words that could heal wounds of centuries
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Indepentend