David Cameron's media footwork is fast and impeccable. Watching his and Gordon Brown's manoeuvres over MPs' expenses is eerily like watching Muhammad Ali versus George Foreman. David Cameron dances around the shambling creature into which Gordon Brown has degenerated, picking him off with elegant blows and easily evading Brown's ‘clunking great fists'.
But (and I may have got this wrong) is this not a triumph of spin over substance? Are these virtual rather than real blows? Cameron, forewarned I guess by the Telegraph, grabbed the news agenda with his demand that his shadow cabinet and MPs must pay back the thousands of pounds of outrageous expenses that they have claimed; Brown lumbers after him with a counter proposal and ends up vainly claiming in front of a mocking interviewer on television to have got in the first blow.
Yet doesn't Brown's proposal actually have a great deal more merit? He asked the Commons members' allowances committee to set up an independent body to carry out a cross-party review of all expenses claimed to ensure not only that they were "made within the rules", but also "for the purpose for which the allowance existed". The review would be undertaken by a team from outside the Commons (so circumnavigating both the Speaker and the ludicrous director general of resources who must between them share a huge burden of irresponsible conduct); and it would begin with 2008-09, and then work back over the previous four years.
First, by emphasising the "purpose" for which the rules exist, Brown's proposal reinforces the requirement that the expenses must be "wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred" in the course of an MP's parliamentary duties; secondly and more fundamentally, by removing the process from party officials who will be concerned with damage-limitation to a team accountable to Parliament and independent both of the craven lot who have created the moral and financial mess and of party managers and whips. It is Parliament that must take on the task of cleansing parliamentary politics, directed by an all-party parliamentary committee, not individual party leaders.
In this sense, it seems to me that Brown has in his shambling way provided real leadership while Cameron has given the illusion of doing so while protecting himself and his party from too much damage. He seems to be leading the agenda, and he is - in a totally self-serving but apparently frank and open way. His performance in the Commons sealed his media triumph. He argued that a committee would take ages to investigate MPs' expenses and would come up with the conclusion that they had all obeyed the rules. But as I have indicated above, the terms of reference for the inquiry will apply stricter criteria than either the Commons authorities or Cameron's quick-fix response.
This is not to say that Brown and Harman are not ultimately responsible, along with Cameron and his colleagues, Mr Speaker, Commons officials and senior MPs for allowing the morass of corruption to engulf Parliament by their refusal to own up and cleanse the system years ago. Nor is it to believe that MPs can restore trust by paying back their more egregious claims. This corruption is so outrageous that saying sorry while they pay back public money they should never have seized in the first place is hardly sufficient recompense for their sins. Steve Bell's wicked parody of a piggy; Hazel Blears is symbolic of almost universal contempt and derision. I have always felt sorry for pigs and more so now.
