All Change: Half of MPs to Leave?

[Sheilbh]

325 MPs to be swept away at next election
Andrew MacKay


Andrew MacKay announced he would step down as a Tory MP yesterday after an ultimatum from David Cameron
Jonathan Oliver and Isabel Oakeshott

AT least half of the House of Commons' 646 MPs will be swept away at the general election, as voters take revenge on the political classes for the expenses scandal.

The departure of 325 members of parliament as a result of forced resignations, retirement and defeat at the polls would represent the biggest clear-out of parliament since 1945.

As many as 30 will be forced to resign directly because of the expenses scandal, while whips expect more than 200 to quit because they are unable to cope with continued public anger. Up to 90 MPs will be voted out in the election.

Research conducted by The Sunday Times and Professor Colin Rallings, director of the elections centre at Plymouth University, suggests that about 170 Labour MPs will not defend their seats while 55 Conservatives are also expected to retire.

Dozens more MPs from all parties are likely to lose their seats as voters kick out incumbents, accused of profiting from their allowances.

Rallings said: "If, as the current polls suggest, the Conservatives were to win the general election with an overall majority of 80 seats, it is likely that fully half of MPs in the new House of Commons will be new, a product both of incumbents being defeated and MPs retiring. It would be without parallel since 1945."

The disclosure comes as Gordon Brown, desperate to retake the political initiative, examines radical constitutional reforms including the introduction of four-year, fixed-term parliaments.

Supporters of the plan say that removing the power of a future prime minister to determine the date of the general election would create a fairer system. However, it would tie the hands of the Conservatives, should they win the election.

Brown is facing growing pressure from senior Labour figures to resolve uncertainty about the date of the general election. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has called for an autumn election.

Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, said: "It would be best now for Gordon Brown to set the election day as the first Thursday in May 2010 and stick to that date."

Andrew MacKay, Cameron's former chief political adviser, yesterday became the biggest casualty of the expenses scandal when he announced he would step down at the next election, following an ultimatum from the Conservative leader. He said: "I believe I could be a distraction at a time when he is working to get elected as prime minister."

The brother of his wife, the MP Julie Kirkbride, sometimes lived rent-free in their taxpayer-funded Bromsgrove home.

Ian McCartney, the former Labour party chairman, also announced his retirement in the wake of the scandal. McCartney, the MP for Makerfield, has paid back £15,000 of expenses after buying at the taxpayers' expense an 18-piece dinner set, champagne flutes and wine glasses, a £700 dining table and chairs and sofas worth £1,328. McCartney, who has had heart surgery, said he was going because of health problems.

MacKay's departure means six MPs have already been directly forced out by the expenses scandal. More resignations are likely this week as the Labour and Conservative "star chambers" meet to discuss the most serious abuses.

McCartney's retirement brings to 38 the total number of Labour MPs who have announced their decision to go, for a range of reasons.

Senior whips believe the number could rise to 170 - half the parliamentary party. "We think that one out of every two MPs will ultimately decide to go," said a whip. "Those likely to leave are split evenly between marginals and safe seats: 170 sounds like a huge figure and it is, but that reflects the level of despair in the party."

Whips believe that there will be a flurry of resignations after the Whitsun recess, when MPs consult their frustrated families and angry constituents.

A total of 20 safe Tory seats will definitely become vacant at the next election, including those of grandees who have resigned after being accused of expenses abuses. Party whips estimate that a further 35 MPs, mainly over the age of 60, will shortly announce their retirement.

The Liberal Democrats expect about five departures and a similar number of MPs from minor parties will retire.

Rallings estimates that on current polling trends a further 60 MPs will leave parliament as a result of being defeated at the polls. He also estimates that a further 30 MPs will go as a result of "churn" - seats changing hands between the Lib Dems, nationalists and main parties. This takes the total number of MPs leaving the Commons to 325. That figure would rise further if Cameron's majority proves to be larger than 80 or if independent antisleaze candidates such as Esther Rantzen, the television presenter, are elected to parliament.

In the 1997 Labour landslide election, just under 250 MPs left parliament through retirement or defeat at the polls. In the 1945 Labour landslide, half of the MPs returned to parliament were new. However, this was exceptional because of the second world war.

Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, and Jack Straw, the justice secretary, are drawing up sweeping reforms to modernise parliament in the wake of the expenses row.

A spokesman said they would "certainly" consider axing prime ministerial control over election timing.

Though I do think the Telegraph's crossing the line at the minute.  They should just publish all the expenses details they've got rather than this ridiculous drip-feed.

[jimmy olsen]

Man I wish that would happen here, both parties need to be cleaned out and new blood brought in.

[Admiral Yi]

That McKay fellow looks he grew up with his face tied to an Incan head press.

[Razgovory]

Man I wish that would happen here, both parties need to be cleaned out and new blood brought in.

We did that 3 years ago.

[jimmy olsen]

Man I wish that would happen here, both parties need to be cleaned out and new blood brought in.

We did that 3 years ago.

No where near that percentage lost their seats, and most were only from one party.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think this a good thing 

I've been getting increasingly cross about the main parties, their machines, and the lack of involvement by the electorate...........ever since 2000 or so.

I'm hoping the general election in 2010 will be a corker 

[Sheilbh]

I'm hoping the general election in 2010 will be a corker 

I think it will.  They won't be running on manifestos but each MP running on their individual expense sheets

Unfortunately I worry that a lot of good MPs could go because their claims can be spun in a negatives way.  For example the whole Letwin thing is ridiculous.  He didn't flip houses, or get expenses he wasn't due.  He got a bust pipe fixed.  Now, admittedly, that pipe went underneath his tennis court and so rather played into the whole 'Tory grandee' image, but I think an MP should be able to claim for essential repairs like a water pipe leaking, in the constituency/London home.

I'm a bit worried about the poisonous atmosphere and the public mood that seems to want MPs to live in Spartan monks and, when they're not attending to the Public's needs, to be getting flogged for their sins (for sins there will inevitably be).

Edit: As a counterpart to the Times article here's Andrew Rawnsley.  I pretty much agree with this in its entirety.  Especially the sheer lunacy of cutting the number of MPs:

A climate of loathing towards all MPs is bad for democracy

We should pillory those who deserve it, but an enfeebled Parliament cringeing before the mob will not serve Britain well

The prime minister has denounced Parliament as "useless" and declared that "it must be modernised". He will shortly bring forward a "popular initiative" to change the constitution which would see the number of MPs slashed to 100 and himself gaining greater power. That is the Silvio Berlusconi solution. It is a warning from Italy to be careful about what you wish for from the crisis of legitimacy that is overwhelming our own House of Commons.

Ignited by the expenses scandal, a volcanic eruption against politics is spewing forth a lava flow of demands for reform. Some are good ideas which aren't going to happen any time very soon. In that category is a democratised House of Lords and electoral reform for the Commons. Some are crowd-pleasing clamours which would have counterproductive results. The glibly populist cry for a cut in the number of MPs will win easy applause from any audience of voters seething about designer furniture, whirlpool baths and silk cushions. Yet the fundamental problem is not that there are too many MPs. The real trouble is that there are not sufficient MPs of high calibre. The skills pool is too shallow to supply enough quality ministers and forensic scrutineers of the executive. When John Major or Tony Blair were forming cabinets, their private complaint was never that they had too much talent on their benches to choose from.

Some of the notions for cleansing Parliament sound lovely in theory but would prove calamitous in practice. Into that category belongs the idea that we would be better off with MPs who are independent of party. Martin Bell is a splendid chap. I regretted, as I suspect he did too, that he promised to stand down after only one term. One Man in a White Suit in the Commons is a good thing. An entire House of Martins is a nightmare. It would descend into anarchy, freeze in paralysis or the independents would soon start whipping themselves into parties anyway in order to get anything agreed and done.

Some of the calls for change are self-serving. In that category falls Gordon Brown's attack on the Commons as "a gentlemen's club". Hint: those chandelier-swinging, moat-dredging, duck-fancying Tories are the ones who belong to clubs. In the opportunistic category is David Cameron's call for an instant general election, a demand he makes with all the disinterest of a man sitting on a double digit lead in the opinion polls. The Tory leader is not calling for an election because he thinks the prime minister is bonkers enough to agree to one. Mr Cameron is making this demand in the hope of boosting the Tory performance in the June local and Euro polls.

His focus groups are telling him that a snap general election is hugely popular with furious voters. Yet the cause of serious reform would not be well-served by a general election conducted in a spasm of disgust about parliamentary expenses. Not if it produced a Conservative government with a large parliamentary majority on a minority of the vote which came to office with a hazy prospectus for power. There has been one big, but little remarked upon bonus to David Cameron from three weeks' focus on expenses to the exclusion of almost any other politics. This consuming furore has further delayed the moment when the Conservatives come under pressure to reveal precisely what they plan to do with power. In so much as he has given us a glimpse of his thoughts about how to reinvigorate democracy, David Cameron has so far shown himself to be no constitutional radical.

Michael Martin has been deposed from the Speaker's chair. Some of the most disgraced MPs are being shamed into announcing that they will not stand at the next election, the beginning of the purge that I argued for last week. If they are sensible, other offenders will jump before they are lynched. The system will now be cleaned up. The most important change will not be tighter and more frugal rules, nor a new set of invigilators independent of MPs, welcome though those developments will be. The most effective change will be transparency, always the best disinfectant of corruption. In future, all MPs will be obliged to publish their expense claims online, as members of the Scottish Parliament already do. That will be the most potent deterrent against any more fleecing of the taxpayer.

The wrong sort of general election would be one in which past claims for expenses dominated the campaign. What the next election ought to be about is who will best run Britain's economy, public services and foreign policy over the next five years, not who bought the most plasma TVs over the last five. It would be a good thing, too, if the next election were also a competition between the parties to come up with the best ideas for reviving democracy. Some members of the cabinet are trying to press a radical agenda on Gordon Brown, another constitutional conservative who fluffed opportunities to reform early in his premiership. At the centre of this question is the role of the House of Commons, an institution which is now deeply traumatised. Some MPs, it is said, are feeling suicidal. Even in the best of times, many of them lead lives of quiet desperation.

"Honourable Member" was once a title of high distinction; it is now a badge with "kick me" inscribed on it. The role has been diminishing in both prestige and power over many years. One well-rehearsed reason is the dominance of the executive. Gordon Brown arrived at Number 10 saying he would pay more respect to Parliament than did Tony Blair. Yet Mr Brown launched his first, abortive attempt to reform the expenses regime with his gurning on YouTube; he made his most recent statement not to the Commons, but to a room full of journalists at a Downing Street news conference. The Commons has been further enfeebled by more than a decade of big majority government, the loss of power upwards to the European Union, downwards to devolved governments and outwards to quangoland and executive agencies.

Another cause of the enfeeblement of Parliament is the way our culture defines political success. Too many MPs are obsessed by the quest to become a minister; too few MPs regard it as a worthy ambition to be an authoritative backbencher who is skilled at invigilating the executive and interrogating ministers. Even a select committee chairman as successful and respected as Chris Mullin allowed himself to be seduced into becoming "Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Folding Deckchairs". There has also been the growth of "pavement politics" which is the Lib Dems' paradoxical contribution to the weakening of the stature of MPs. It has encouraged many MPs to act as though they are not much more than glorified Citizens' Advice Bureaux.

That is one of the consequences of the consumerisation of politics. Long gone and rightly so are the days when voters behaved with grovelling deference to those they send to Parliament. Where we don't want to end up is at the other extreme when the only posture that politicians dare adopt is the pre-emptive cringe before the mob. An enduring climate of raging contempt for Parliament will not be healthy for democracy. I know of more than one able MP, not tainted by any scandal, who is thinking about throwing in the towel. As one put it to me: "Who wants to be unable to walk down the street without being abused?" We should fear the onset of the day when the only people prepared to stand for election are those with skins so armoured-plated that they don't care if they are universally hated. We do not want Member of Parliament to become a job for which only sadists and weirdos apply.

"This has further empowered the media, I suppose, hasn't it?" said one of the prime minister's more thoughtful advisers to me the other day, answering his own question with a depressed nod of the head. The mighty beast of the media regards itself as the investigator, the prosecutor, the jury and the hanging judge of politicians. The Daily Telegraph has done a public service by exposing many scams that would have remained hidden in the censored version of MPs' expenses that the Commons planned to publish. What is also true is that a few genuine mistakes, a lot of sly fiddling and some absolutely outrageous frauds have become conflated into a storm of indiscriminate loathing towards all MPs. We ought to be apprehensive if the result of this crisis is to drain further authority from elected representatives and put even more arbitrary power in the hands of the unelected legislature of the media. This will often mean more power for press moguls who are accountable to no one and do not even live in Britain.

The pulverisation of politics will also shift more power to pressure groups, especially those that can harness the media by hitching campaigns to celebrity. Joanna Lumley has done an absolutely fabulous job for the Gurkhas. I have a huge amount of sympathy for their case and her presentation of it has been a masterclass in campaigning. Yet I am left feeling a little queasy when an actress can dictate terms to a prime minister. Democracy is not directly menaced by the fragrant Joanna. It may be indirectly threatened if she has set a perilous precedent for media-fuelled , star-fronted campaigns against emasculated politicians. We may find that the next cause to put its celebrities on Downing Street's lawn is not so attractive.

So I join you in spitting contempt on those MPs who deserve it. I agree that the House of Commons has brought this savage humiliation on itself. Let's pillory those politicians who have asked for every rotten egg that is hurled at their cowering heads. Then we should take a breath. Before we burn down the Reichstag, we ought to question whether democracy will be served by holding elective politics in permanent and universal contempt.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Westminster to be born?

I hope Frank Field becomes Speaker because I think he'd rather forcefully act to strengthen the House so that it becomes a centre of some power again.

Daniel Finkelstein's interesting on this as well.  He argues that mainstream mass political parties arose in response to the mass media.  There was a need for members to convince not just the house, or their constituence but the country through the use of media.  He thinks that this is the first 'internet' scandal and that we're in a point of transition between mass parties and.....something else.

[Razgovory]

Man I wish that would happen here, both parties need to be cleaned out and new blood brought in.

We did that 3 years ago.

No where near that percentage lost their seats, and most were only from one party.

Well it was the corrupt party.

[Sheilbh]

That McKay fellow looks he grew up with his face tied to an Incan head press.

He got into a bit of difficulty, before he resigned, after a local meeting in his constituency:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8064689.stm

He always looks weird.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I believe Brown loathes Frank Field, which is a recommendation in itself  . another old favourite, Ann Widdecombe, is apparently willing to sit as Speaker for a year but intends resigning her seat at the next election. These are significant parliamentarians IMO, we need someone significant to take on the role.

What the electorate has to do, IMO, is to use the information being made available to work out who the crooks are and to distinguish them from the 80-90 per cent who are merely beneficiaries of a lax expenses system. One hopes that all this will be made clear in the 2010 campaign at the constituency level.

Sudden changes in the constitutional arrangements should be avoided, legislate in haste and repent at leisure one might say.

The only overt changes I would make would be to MPs salaries and expenses. £64,000 is far too low and has led to a sense of grievance which has exacerbated the fiddling. I think a figure of about £100k is more like it, enough to avoid financial distress but not enough to be an incentive. The expenses need to be publicly available and more restrictive, though simply publishing claims will probably restrict their misuse sufficently.

I hope that things go well in the 2010 election and we get a hung parliament and that the Commons will become more powerful vis-a-vis the executive. We have suffered from an overmighty executive for some decades now, it would be better if it was weaker.