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The relentless quantity, speed and complexity of have, between then, tended to produce a kind of "equality of shame".

That said, it would be impossible - as well as invidious - for me to draw up some sort of league of shame, though those putting in claims for money they hadn't actually spent would surely top the list.

I'm struck by how it is often not the amount claimed, but the list of items claimed for that has caused the greatest outrage - whether trivial (bath plugs or dog food) or extravagant (moats and duck islands). My colleague Stephanie Flanders has written more about this in a post called Count it, don't follow it.

This led - who under-claimed his allowance but did claim for a forester to tend to 500 trees - complaining that he'd suffered for being too transparent, and that he would have been spared a lot of grief if he'd simply claimed thousands of pounds in mortgage interest (as, say, his leader has done).

The very presence of an MP's name in the paper or face on a screen can lead to an assumption of guilt even if no guilt is proved. This is producing near despair amongst some in the Commons who are beginning to question why they and their families should suffer the pain and humiliation of public exposure when they weren't doing anything wrong. (See also Martin Rosenbaum's post The state of FOI.)

However, MPs who have held public meetings or given interviews and explained their claims have found that after the initial exposure of anger, they get a fair hearing.

I am going to be away for the next few days of revelations.

It will be interesting to see whether people will begin to distinguish between those who claimed for what they needed to live in two different places to serve their constituents, the careless, the greedy and the outright offenders.

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There will be much back-slapping in David Cameron's office this afternoon.

The Tory leader has struggled to get much attention for his call for a general election to elect a new Parliament to go along with a new Speaker. This, despite the fact that he is working in partnership with the Sun.

by warning that an election could cause "chaos". What did he mean by that, Mr Cameron demanded to know at Prime Minister's Questions.

The prime minister's reply was that he was referring to the chaos caused by a Conservative victory - thus appearing to suggest that he will not permit the electorate a vote because they might choose to change governments.

Mr Brown did go on to spell out the reasons he should have given for not going to the polls: namely, that this Parliament should sort out the current political and economic mess - but it was too late to stop the Tories claiming that he's running scared of the voters.

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In the end, he had no choice.

If Michael Martin had not , he would, eventually, have faced a formal .

Denied that debate yesterday, - telling him to his face that he was part of the problem and not the solution.

The Speaker's position depends on his unquestioned authority over the House of Commons. Michael Martin's authority finally died yesterday.

Some will complain that he has been made a scapegoat for the failings of individual MPs.

Others will insist that this Glaswegian sheet metal worker was the victim of class-based prejudice and snobbery.

There is some truth in both those charges.

However, the reason he has been driven from office is much more simple than that. At a time when the Commons desperately needed leadership, he failed to lead.

He failed to see this crisis coming.

He presided over the system which encouraged MPs to fiddle their expenses or to claim them to the max.

He wasted time and money on fighting calls from taxpayers to see what MPs were doing with their money.

He did little to stand up to those MPs who resisted reform.

His reaction to the publication of MPs' expenses was to call in the police and to attack those MPs who criticised him, rather than using his position to apologise to the country or to speak to MPs on behalf of the electorate.

acted too often as the shop steward of the Commons and too rarely as if he held one of the highest offices in the land.

When the Commons was exposed as indulging in old-style Spanish practices, the shop steward simply had to go.

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Whether friends or foes of Michael Martin, many on all sides at Westminster believe that it is now not a question of if the Speaker will go, but when.

They cannot see how his authority can or will recover from .

However, as his statement made clear, it is the government that controls not just whether a motion of no confidence in him is debated but, crucially, when.

The signs are that, after a meeting with the Speaker last night, the prime minister may have agreed to buy him a little time.

The Speaker will now chair a meeting of all Westminster's party leaders tomorrow afternoon.

He may hope to be able to announce the outcome of those talks before the Commons takes a half-term break on Thursday.

He may hope that ministers will resist the mounting pressure to debate his future before then.

He may then hope to be able to announce his retirement in his own way rather than to be the first Speaker forced from office in 300 years.

Of course, his hopes may prove to be unfounded.

Speaker Martin has his defenders.

Even some of his critics fear that he is being made a scapegoat.

Others are determined that no Speaker should be forced from office.

However, many at Westminster have come to the conclusion that his time is up.

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The Speaker had three vital encounters yesterday which, I'm told, have helped to determine whether he goes or stays.

First, he went to Mass.

Next, he spoke with his family.

Finally, I'm told that he met the prime minister.

As I wrote earlier, it is the government which decides whether the motion of no confidence in the Speaker will be debated this week.

Gordon Brown would, I'm sure, not have risked accusations of constitutional impropriety by telling the Speaker that he should resign.

However, the prime minister's view of whether the government would find time for a no confidence motion or delay it will have have indicated to Michael Martin whether he could fight on or whether his time was up.

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The Speaker's fate hangs in the balance this morning.

Senior figures in both the cabinet and the shadow cabinet now privately share the . Not only that they believe that, whether Michael Martin understands this or not, he will be gone soon.

A minister close to Gordon Brown tells me that "There is inevitability to it all. Events have their own momentum" before stressing that he is not speaking for the prime minister who has moved from public support to the Speaker to neutrality (the line now is that this is a matter for the Commons and not the government).

If the Speaker is listening to these voices he will announce his resignation this afternoon. However, those close to him - like - insist that his intention is to stay until the next election and reflect his anger that he's being treated "like a paedophile".

So, how can he avoid being the first Speaker to be ousted since in 1695 who was removed for the "high crime and misdemeanour" of taking bribes?

He has to avoid the motion of no confidence in him being debated this week. Though there may well still be a majority of MPs prepared to back him - most Labour backbenchers plus, I'm told 15-20 Tories - the divisions such a debate would create would be fatal to his authority and the status of the Speaker.

So, the Speaker's Plan for Survival needs to include a plan, a timetable, an apology and, above all, time:

• a plan - to reform the expenses system
• a timetable - for his departure at the next election
• an apology - to those MPs he attacked last week and to the public as a whole
• time - to let the heat go out of calls for him to go

A plan does not exist according to MPs who advise him and the chairman of the independent enquiry into MPs expenses.

The timetable for his departure is too long for his critics.

An apology will come too late for most.

That leaves time.

Senior figures on the Labour and Tory benches are extremely reluctant to break parliamentary convention by criticising the Speaker openly. If they refuse to sign the motion of no confidence in him the government may argue that there is no justification for re-arranging parliamentary business to debate it before the Commons goes into recess this Thursday. Tempers may then cool.

That is the hope of the Speaker's allies.

The government whips are, I'm told, neutral on the issue.

So an awful lot hangs on who does what between now and the Speaker's statement this afternoon.

UPDATE, 10:55: "I'm a celebrity, get me into here" is Esther Rantzen's response to the MPs' expenses crisis. The veteran consumer champion and advocate of children's rights has just declared that she is ready to stand as an independent anti-sleaze candidate. A celebrity articulating the public's anger could be very potent indeed, as Martin Bell proved when he stood against Neil Hamilton.

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First they wrote cheques; now they're beginning to pay with their jobs.

as David Cameron's parliamentary aide after admitting that the taxpayer is paying for both his homes. He was able to double-dip into the public purse because he's married to another Conservative MP, Julie Kirkbride. She claimed for one home; he claimed for another.

This means that all eyes are now on how Gordon Brown handles . No-one can claim that his allowances were within the rules.

He claimed £800 a month for 20 months for a mortgage he no longer had. The word last night from Labour sources was that he had made a mistake and that he had done the right thing by rectifying it. The tone today is markedly different.

There is now, I should note, a growing gulf between party leaders and their MPs. Tories are complaining to me about what one calls "summary mob justice" in which all are judged guilty so that the good are punished while the real bad guys escape lightly.

Voluntary repayments by the shadow cabinet of legitimate claims for furniture, repair works or gardening were repaid, I was told, as "the price of David Cameron's press release". The tariff for extravagance has been set high. What will be the tariff for flagrant breach of the rules?

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With her typical style and willingness to fly in the face of received wisdom, Ann Widdecombe warned this morning of the dangers of a "my shirt is hairier than yours" competition between political leaders who want to prove that they're more sorry and more willing to force their colleagues to pay back money than their rivals.

and are well worth a listen. They capture well the sense of frustration that many who work in the Commons feel about the firestorm they're living through.

It is that competition that lies behind a dispute about whether the prime minister has oversold the decision of a cross-party Commons committee to set up an independent investigation into all MPs' claims for the past four years.

. I understand that it has been in principle but the practicalities have not been agreed.

Commons officials are still examining whether it will be possible to retrospectively identify claims which "did not conform to both the rules and the purpose for which the allowance existed, and which ought to be repaid". They will report back to another meeting tonight. It may prove easier said than done.

In any event, much has now been agreed between the party leaders on which they could not previously agree.

• The allowance for second homes will now be limited to bills - ie rent, mortgage, council tax and utilities. They will be barred from claiming for furniture, white goods and fixtures and fittings

• Ö÷²¥´óÐã "flipping" will be stopped - MPs will have to say which is their second home at the beginning of each Parliament and stick to it unless their personal circumstances change significantly

• MPs selling homes won't be able to avoid capital gains tax by telling the taxman one thing and the Commons another about which is their second home

What remains at issue is that Labour wants a cap on the amount that can be spent on mortgage interest payments and the Lib Dems are arguing that MPs should repay any gain they make by selling a house which the taxpayer bought and did up.

There is no agreement on these yet.

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There is nothing like the whiff - or should that be the stench - of scandal to concentrate the minds of our political leaders.

What was unthinkable just a few weeks ago has suddenly become unavoidable.

For David Cameron the stories of cash for moats and manure was both a threat and an opportunity. A threat to his claim to have changed and modernised the Conservative Party but also an opportunity to demonstrate leadership in doing just that.

As a result, some Tory MPs are writing very large cheques tonight.

Others are waiting nervously for the choice their leader says they'll face between paying up or getting out of the party.

Still more will lose a substantial slice of what they've come to regard as their legitimate income - as they are no longer able to claim for things they once could.

Labour who've been left trailing in David Cameron's wake, have tonight rushed to say that they would go further still - limiting the generous mortgage payments which the Tory leader, amongst others, benefits from to the tune of over £24,000 a year. An awful lot of money but just one receipt.

None of this, of course, will be enough to silence those who complain that politicians only said and agreed to change after being caught with their hands in the till.

None of this will rescue the careers of once rising stars or senior backbench figures who will struggle to recover from the publication of their expenses claims.

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For a former chairman of the Conservative Party and an icon of the Thatcher era to invite voters at next month's European elections to boycott his party is extraordinary.

Norman Tebbit did not say "vote UKIP" - he knows that to have done so would have led to his instant expulsion from the Tories - but he might just as well have.

Lord Tebbit says that his advice is a protest against Westminster's abuse of expenses. Methinks it might just have something to do with the issue of Europe.

After all, one of the 12 UKIP MEP's elected in 2004, , after being found guilty of eight charges of false accounting, eight of obtaining a money transfer by deception, four of evading liability and one of failing to notify a change of circumstances.

This after a trial in which the court heard that £73,000 in benefits which he received was used to pay off credit card debts which he had run up funding an "extravagant lifestyle" such as restaurant dinners, private health care and holidays to the US, France and the Caribbean.

He was expelled from UKIP allowing the party's leader Nigel Farage to declare that:

"When people have broken faith with us, we have simply got rid of them - which is a marked contrast to the way that the big parties are handling the current expenses crisis."

Another former UKIP MEP, Tom Wise, is currently facing charges of false accounting and money laundering .

No wonder David Cameron is searching today - with the help of aides, the party whips and lawyers - for a way to discipline some in his own party for their expenses abuse. Although, unlike the case of Ashley Mote, no-one has yet suggested any breach of Parliamentary rules let alone the law.

The expenses saga is turning out to be a political game changer.

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The shop steward of the Commons has spoken and wasn't it telling?

Speaker Martin showed his anger not at the behaviour of MPs who have brought the Commons into disrepute but, instead, with those who criticise the way he has handled the sorry expenses saga.

On a day when the prime minister joined other party leaders in , the Speaker did not.

Whilst he did speak of the need for "serious change" his passion was reserved for worrying aloud about MPs' fears - legitimate, of course - that their confidential data might have been stolen and misused.

The Speaker cannot and never could have acted alone to change the expenses system. He is a representative of MPs not their leader. He is restricted by what the political parties are prepared to countenance.

However, he is the figurehead of the Commons. During his time in the chair MPs have fought a costly and counter-productive battle to stop publication of their expenses and failed to agree reform.

Once again, voices are being raised ever so softly at Westminster about whether it is time for someone else to take his place.

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It is with great sadness that I have to announce the death of the "honourable member".

Let's be clear, I am not arguing that there are no "honourable" men and women left in Parliament. There are many.

I am not saying that every "revelation" in recent days has proved MPs to be "on the take". A number of those stories have simply not stood up to scrutiny. Even the Telegraph was forced to clarify that it wasn't claiming any impropriety in the arrangement Gordon Brown made to share a cleaner with his brother (whose wife writes ).

Nor do I believe that even the worst practices revealed in the past few days justify the corrosive cynicism of the "I told you so... they're all it... they're all the same" crowd. It is now very easy for voters to compare and contrast the behaviour of individual MPs.

My point is simply that for the past 20 years or so MPs have behaved in precisely the way that they have legally prevented other groups from behaving. Trade unionists, doctors, the police and many many others used to argue that they could be trusted to manage their own affairs. Few would argue that now.

Yet the House of Commons has run itself as if Members of Parliament can and should be assumed to be honourable and, by implication, better than those they govern.

It is this idea that underpinned the creation, the exploitation and the attempt to cover up a system of allowances which has now caused such damage to the reputation of all those involved in politics.

It is now clear that parliamentary reform is likely to be imposed on MPs by external pressure from the standards watchdog, auditors and the electorate.

In the short term, many at Westminster fear that voters will react by rewarding smaller or fringe or extreme parties. The are for an institution few voters know or care much about. Voting is done using a system of proportional representation which maximises the chances of smaller parties. In the past the Greens shocked the political establishment with huge gains in 1999 as did UKIP in 2004.

There is, of course, absolutely no guarantee that any politician not yet in Westminster is "honourable". One of those elected to the European Parliament on a UKIP ticket - the MEP Tom Wise - . He is no longer in the party.

Honour in politics is something that, as in the rest of life, will have to earned, proved and upheld and not merely assumed.

No surprise then that the albeit "on behalf of politicians, on behalf of all parties for what has happened in the events of these last few days".

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The fate of nations, of monarchs and of the British people have been sealed in the Commons.

Yet now the reputation of the mother of all parliaments has been brought low by written and exploited here by claims for a kitkat, a tin of pet food and a bottle of shampoo... .

Nothing revealed today has been enough to trigger an investigation let alone a resignation. Some of the headlines suggesting wrongdoing do not stand up to close scrutiny.

However, once again there is evidence aplenty of overclaiming; of playing the system to extract every penny possible and of attempts to get the taxpayer to pay for things that almost everyone else would be expected to pay for themselves.

Once again the gap between the reactions of politicians and the public has been stark.

Those whose expenses have been revealed claim either to be following the rules or to have made administrative errors. The prime minister was joined in blaming the system by the leaders of both main opposition parties who know their MPs will be next in the firing line.

What no-one said was sorry. And this on a day when M&S publicly apologised for the somewhat lesser misdemeanour of -

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Every receipt from every claim by every MP for four years made under a system which all parties now agree was not only open to abuse but all too often encouraged it.

The Commons has been bracing itself for this ever since they lost a battle in the courts to prevent publication under Freedom of Information legislation. What they were not ready for was a leak of every detail to a newspaper, probably in return for a large sum of money.

What ministers call "inadvertent mistakes" others will describe much less charitably. What they say was "within the rules" others will call plain greedy. This will damage not just them and the government but the reputation of politics as a whole.

Neverthless, what's been revealed so far looks unlilkely to force anyone from office and compared with allegations of fraud that politicians have faced in many other countries this would be regarded as small beer.

Ask any MP and they'll insist that you don't get rich by going into politics. They'll tell you that they need to live in two places to do their job properly and that costs money which they're entitled to re-claim.

Tonight some are facing very awkward questions indeed and others - in all parties and at all levels - fear that they may be next.

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The government is increasingly concerned that companies are being put off bidding for a stake in running Royal Mail by the ferocity of the political and trade union opposition to proposals to part-privatise the business.

The business department has been in talks with other postal companies - in particular TNT, the former Dutch post office and Deutsche Post - about whether, and on what terms, they would take a minority stake in Royal Mail.

The government argues that a private sector partner is necessary to bring about changes which the public sector management have failed to bring about.

I have been told that both political and economic factors may delay the implementation of part-privatisation. TNT, the company most likely to be a partner for the Royal Mail, has recently announced a sharp drop in its own profits, a redundancy programme and wage cuts in the Netherlands.

Ministers insist that they will proceed to a Commons vote on the issue even though they may have to rely on Conservative votes to avoid defeat. However, some in government may argue that this news could offer Gordon Brown a get-out-of-jail-free card on the trickiest policy issue he faces between now and the summer.

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As I was saying...

Gordon Brown does not face an organised conspiracy to remove him as Labour leader.

What he faces, instead, is a disorganised panic.

This is in stark contrast to this time last year when a number of cabinet ministers were actively discussing resigning en bloc to force their leader out. Only a change of heart by some over the summer of 2008 combined with a worsening economic crisis saved the prime minister then.

Today some of those involved - though not all - argue passionately that it would be wrong, as well as unfair, to drop the pilot at this time.

As has often been observed, Labour's rules make it very hard for a "peasants' revolt" or a stalking horse campaign to succeed.

What's more, even though many senior Labour figures now expect to lose the next election they are united in believing that an economic recovery combined with a slip by David Cameron means that a turnaround is possible.

They believe that the Tory leader has already made a mistake by abandoning sunshine and embracing gloom. Hence Gordon Brown's contrast in his speech yesterday about the "politics of opportunity and growth" versus "the politics of austerity and defeatism."

Today Peter Mandelson puts intellectual flesh on those political bones. In a speech to the CBI, the business secretary argues:

"We will neither exit the recession as quickly as we can, nor build the future strength we need, if we allow pessimism to descend on us or lower our expectations of what we can achieve.

"A lot of research has been done over the years about how a recession affects the basic expectations of a society.

"Sometimes recession creates a sense of shared purpose. Sometimes it does the opposite, replacing the greater tolerance and optimism that often comes with economic growth with a starker and more fatalistic mindset.

"A recession, in other words, is a psychological event as well as an economic one."

Thus, Labour MPs whether pro or anti Brown will - if they can stop talking about themselves - argue that Tory talk of debt and austerity and cuts are bad for Britain.

Now, of course, there needs to be a "but" in this piece. Disorganised panic can all very easily turn into organised conspiracy if things get even worse and the leader fails to lead.

Gordon Brown can, though, still as he's done before turn things around in his party. That, of course, is not the same as turning things around in the country...

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The forthcoming will be a test of Gordon Brown's leadership and authority but not in the way some are suggesting.

Unlike , the Tories are backing the government's position and are, I'm told, unlikely to switch to siding with Labour rebels.

This is, in part, because the Conservatives favour more and not less private sector involvement in the Royal Mail. No doubt they would like Labour to take the heat on this rather than face it if they are elected. What's more, they also believe that Gordon Brown will suffer more if he wins with their support than if he is defeated.

Of course, no government wants to rely on opposition backing but any suggestion that defeat on the Royal Mail would finish off Gordon Brown will guarantee that the Tories stride into the yes lobby with ministers.

This doesn't make the prime minister's problems any easier. He faces a choice between backing down and facing further accusations that he's lost authority and abandoned New Labour or standing firm and splitting his party and antagonising his union backers.

As I've noted before, his "loyal deputy" Harriet Harman and his Chief Whip, Nick Brown, have previously tried to kick this idea into the long grass.

Now what do they do?

PS. Incidentally, I do not believe that Gordon Brown is about to be de-fenestrated for reasons I'll spell out later.

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