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The Speaker has fallen - So what’s next. Part 2 - The Expenses and the Media

May 21, 2009 | Written by admin

Whether this was intentional or not, very cleverly, the Speaker was made to be the fall-guy.

Effectively, the Speaker is the CEO of the House and the buck stops with him when it comes to rules and guidelines of the House. With the downfall of the Speaker on that basis, the story has been deflected away from the MPs to the need for change within Parliament.

Unfortunatly for the MPs, the story has refocuesed itself back onto them, with revelations that more MPs have claimed for mortgages that didn’t exist, claimed for flood damage when they could have used their insurance, or built duck islands, all on expenses.

But surely, there is still lots more to come. Even with 25 journalists working on this story day and night, they can’t have gone through every single receipt and every single backbencher yet. Now that the Speaker has fallen, the Parliamentary smokescreen been blown away, opening the door for the Telegraph to publish more stories about wayward MPs?

If you knew the expenses details of Morely, Chaytor and Hogg, would you hold onto that story until the public was already demanding blood, or would you have released them earlier before stories on the higher profile Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet MPS, which were interesting but ultimately less tantalising?

Will an MP talk to the Telegraph again? Obviously, but its reputation of being in the pockets of the Tories has now clearly gone and they have led the pack of attack dogs that is the media in this situation.

But, as a former member of the fourth estate, I’m on their side. I’ve heard people say the media has gone too far etc. but this is what the media is here to do. It is part of their remit nay, responsibility to stir up the establishment and right wrongs. This is journalism that hasn’t been seen in Britain for a long time - proper hard muckraking, designed to bring the seemingly unaccountable to account.

Tags: Expenses, MPs, politics, telegraph