Sinister events in Westminster

Guido wonders who leaked the news of Jacqui Smith's departure to the media and speculates that there may be more to this than meets the eye

Are we just at the rolling cock-up stage of government? It is hard to see who on the government side benefits from leaking this now apart from a deliberate Machiavellian internal saboteur. Someone with skills in the dark arts of spin who might have decided it is time, for the sake of the survival of his beloved New Labour, to bring down the curtain on Gordon Brown. Jacqui exiting in a messy way puts the reshuffle speculation front and centre and adds to the sense of Brown’s government on the verge of collapse on the very eve of an election. It takes a crisis to precipitate a solution.

Government falling apart as the wheels come off

Jacqui Smith is rumoured to be leaving the cabinet.

Downing Street are calling it pure speculation but the BBC are saying that it has been confirmed by Westminster sources.

Did she jump or was she pushed?

Make no mistake this is a serious day for the Prime Minister.The home secretary is one of the grand offices of state and to be forced out either by the expenses scandal or maybe pure incompetence is a devastating blow.

On top of this three more Labour MP's have announced that they are stepping down.One David Chayter as a result of expenses,the others Beverley Hughes and Patricia Hewitt look like they are deserting a sinking ship.

It seems strange for both of these to announce their stepping down during this most difficult week for Labour.

Harriet Harman is currently on the World at One trying to plaster over the cracks and not doing a very good job.

Now it seems that the door is open for Ed Balls to get the keys to No 11 and Alistair Darling to go to the Home Office.

A final word on the Pornogate

comes from the Economist's Bagehot who muses that

They're all at it, or at least lots of them are, not just on the Labour benches. Brazenly exploiting their parliamentary allowances has become an unremarkable habit for many MPs, one so well-established that some of them genuinely can't see what the current fuss is about. This is a problem with Parliament as a whole, not just the government. The Tories' restrained reaction to the Smith affair only goes to show how vulnerable they feel about the issue of nest-feathering too.

That expenses of course not porno films

Maybe Brown should end it now for Smith

As might be expected much has been written about the Home Secretary over the last 24 hours but maybe Michael Brown's column in the Indy just about sums it all up for Jacqui Smith.

Entitled the Home secretary is now a joke,Brown writes that

Jacqui Smith and her husband have a maximum of 13 more pay packets and expenses claims before the voters of her Redditch constituency call time on both their services. Simultaneously she will be relieved of her jobs as Home Secretary and Member of Parliament. As a consequence, her husband will also be dismissed as her £40,000-a-year constituency organiser. There can now be no doubt that Ms Smith is on political death row.

He makes clear that she is already a spent force

Throughout her remaining months in office, everywhere she goes, every dispatch box appearance and every television interview she undertakes will be accompanied by public ridicule and laughter. Let every voter enjoy this grisly spectacle until the electoral grim reaper puts Ms Smith out of her misery.

What were they thinking of?

The latest revelations about the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in this morning's Mail on Sunday may well be a gaffe too far for the Prime Minister.
Hot on the heels of the second home controversy her husband claiming expenses for porn films is surely the height of stupidity.
One would like to be a fly on the wall in their residence this morning.

She is already the cabinet mnnister with the slimmest majority as Mike Smithson points out here,her seat is under threat at the next election

Peter Hoskin describes the news as unbelievable at Coffee House

It would be amusing - in a Frankie Howerd, "Titter ye not" kind of way - were it not such a mockery of the taxpayer.

The writing ,one feels, is on the wall

Send the Home Secretary to jail

Peter Oborne makes his views on Jacqui Smith's second home fairly plain in the Mail this morning.

She is no more than a common thief he maintains.

it is little more than a common scam

he says adding that

if any of the civil servants who work under Jacqui Smith were caught trying the same stunt, they'd be arrested and sent to jail. So would any of the policemen under her charge.

Whilst I would not quite go the extremes of the Mail,Smith has once again made a grave misjudgement,especially at this time of economic hardship and the current arguments about bank bonuses.

She has of course done nothing legally wrong but morally it is incorrect.Labour has enough on its plate

Other things on Jacqui's mind perhaps

Jacqui Smith is in the news today over yet another government cock up over information.

The Daily Pundit wonders whether her mind might be on other things.After all with a majority of just 2,716 in her Redditch constituencty her chances of coming back as shadow Home Secretary seem a little distant in two years time.

But it won't be Keighley, even though Ann Cryer has just announced that she's standing down at the next election.
With a majority of just 4,852 and the Tories breathing down Labour's necks I wouldn't fancy Ann's chances of holding Keighley let alone Jacqui Smith's. However, there's a whisper that all is not lost for the worst Labour Home Secretary since the last Labour Home Secretary. According to those in the know, Frank Field is set to be made an offer he can't refuse - a seat in the House of Lords.

A possible leader?

Yesterday the Daily Mail asked whether this was the worst Home Secretary that we had even had

we are saddled with a party hack who is good at defending MPs' outrageously bloated expenses and her boss's shortcomings, but quite incapable of the clarity of thought that the knife crisis demands.

Some sympathy though from Open House's Nigel Morris who says that

The job of Home Secretary is always one of the most gruelling in government, even in the slimmed-down department headed by Jacqui Smith.
There is always the potential cock-up, crisis or catastrophe round the corner. You deal with many of the issues that most preoccupy the public – crime, terrorism and immigration.

For him the biggest problem has been

the man in Downing Street, a presence constantly looming at her shoulder.

and a good example this week when

the department’s plans for an all-singing and all-dancing launch of its youth crime plans were wrecked by Mr Brown’s announcement of its central measure of targeting help on problem families.
Number 10 was already seething over her bungled promise to take knife offenders into hospital to see stab victims. Its anger was shared by many Labour MPs.

Remember that not long ago she was being touted as a possible leader.I wouldn't be putting any money on that at the moment

More Sleaze,more problems for Brown and for Jacqui Smith

Another Sunday morning and more problems for Gordon Brown.Many of the papers saying that he will plunged into crisis over the resignatio of Wendy Alexander and the forhcoming by election in Glasgow East but it doesn't end there.

The Sunday Times carries a report on its front page that Labour's Donors are falling out of favour with the party,according to the paper

Key donors who bankrolled new Labour are now reluctant to support Brown, claiming he lacks the qualities required to salvage the party’s fortunes.
— The millionaire businessman Sir Maurice Hatter, who has donated more than £176,000 to the party since 2001, said it was time for a change of leader.
“He hasn’t got the charisma,” he said. “He was a good number two, but he is not a number one. I just don’t think he is a prime minister.”

The Observer meanwhile focuses on problems for the Home Secretary

The home secretary is at the centre of the worst race row to engulf the police service for almost a decade as chief constables stand accused of blocking an inquiry into discrimination against Muslim officers.
Jacqui Smith will be asked to intervene tomorrow after the damning revelation that at least 20 police forces refused to co-operate with the first audit into the treatment of Muslim and black officers. Information from those forces that did take part suggested there was routine racial discrimination against them.

The Mail meanwhile discovers another political sleaze story claiming that

More than 100 MPs are using their expenses to commit a multi-million-pound tax dodge, it was claimed last night.
They are accused of using huge sums in parliamentary allowances to fund a second home while telling HM Revenue & Customs that it is in fact their main home.
Because MPs' second homes are usually in London, where property is more expensive, they can avoid massive capital gains tax bills by nominating the second home as their main home, because main homes are exempt from the tax.

Jacqui Smith on why? we need 42 day legislation

I am struggling to understand why the government is persisting with the 42 day legislation as has been mentioned on this blog before.

Simon Jenkins writing in yesterday's Guardian made a very good case for dumping the legisaltion

It is equalled in almost no other free country and backed by almost no one in Britain's judicial or security establishments. Opponents or known sceptics embrace the former lord chancellor, the former attorney general, the security minister, the director of public prosecution, numerous police chiefs including London's and, so it is said, the leadership of MI5. In an unguarded moment, the whips even murmured that Brown regards it as an inconvenience "inherited from Tony Blair".

Perhaps then the Home secretary can shed some light on the reasons why.Speaking to the Spectator which is out today Ms Smith sheds some light on the darkness but not a great deal

The whole point is that these powers are being sought before they are absolutely necessary but on the basis that they will soon become so

.

Whatever else it is, this is not ‘internment’, the shredding of Magna Carta or the end of habeas corpus.

The irony of the present parliamentary row over 42 days is that her opponents seem willing to accept almost any crackdown other than this particular measure

Smith charms the rebels

Has Jacqui Smith turned on the charm and persuaded the dissident back benchers to rally behind the 42 day legislation?

John Craig claims that was indeed the case at last night's meting of the Parliamentary party

when Jacqui Smith went to Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons to address the Parliamentary Labour Party later, by all accounts she played a blinder, speaking softly and in measured tones.
She spoke of safeguards and moving in the direction of those MPs with concerns about the 42-day proposal. And, I'm told, she managed to persuade some rebels to back the Government.
"I'll vote for this through gritted teeth," one potential rebel apparently declared.

Andrew Grice over at the Indy blog thinks so

The Labour rebellion against plans to allow police to detain suspected terrorists for 42 days without charge appears to be fading tonight. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith won plaudits after offering more concessions to Labour MPs when she addressed their weekly meeting just now. She also warned them of the grave political conferences of defeating the Government. Smith said: "We have gone a million miles. Meet us on the way. Make no mistake. Defeat will have a political message." Afterwards, some potential rebels seemed to have been won over. Even some critics predicted that ministers would now win next week's crucial vote

This morning's Telegraph meanwhile quotes the former assistant chief of the Met Peter Clarke who says

the row over extending the detention time limit has been distorted by politicians.
In the strongest defence yet of the Government's plans, Mr Clarke warns that the current 28-day limit will "undoubtedly" soon become insufficient to gather enough evidence to charge a suspect in increasingly complex terrorist investigations.

David Ottewell points out that not everyone is happy with the home secretary as this piece of Wiki vandalism shows

Labour looks to talk to the streets through Smith's announcements

Jacqui Smith's prouncements over the last 24 hours may well be signaling the move of the Labour party back to the issues on the streets.

Yesterday's reversal on the classification of cannabis,whilst not popular with the medical fraternity is popular with middle England who see drugs as the causes of social and criminal problems.The fact that this particular drug is the least of our worries is neither here nor there as far as policy goes.

Today the Home secretary moves towards one of the biggest worries on the street,the gangs of youths who hang around intimidating the general public.

Speaking at Westminster,bbc online reports her remarks

Youths who persistently misbehave and intimidate others in their communities should be "harassed themselves",

and some of the measures may include

repeated home visits and checks to identify benefit fraud or council and road tax non-payment.

The moves follow the success of a similar initiative in Basildon Essex where

Dramatic" results from the new approach included burglaries, criminal damage and car crime stopping altogether on one estate during the operation and staying at a low level afterwards.
"Those responsible for anti-social behaviour had no room for manoeuvre and nowhere to hide," Ms Smith said of the operation.

You can read the complete details here courtesy of Politics home

Jacqui in trouble-but isn't this just electioneering?

I find it quite difficult to get my head around the news that the Conservatives have complained to the cabinet secretary over remarks made by the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

On this morning's today progamme the Home Secretary announced that 300 additional officers will be deployed as part of an anti terrorism initiative to prevent radicalisation.

Foul!!! cry the Tories who say that she has broken electoral rules.Eric Pickles speaking on Radio 4's One O' clock news say this is politically motivated and centred on areas where the Labour party is in trouble.

But is a national anouncement like this a local issue?Again Pickles says yes because police policy is a local issue.He accuses the Labour party of using precious resources to help their local campaign.

The guidence says

"Particular care should be taken over official support, and the use of
public resources, including publicity, for ministerial announcements which could
have a bearing on matters relevant to the local elections.
"In some cases it
may be better to defer an announcement until after the elections, but this would
need to be balanced carefully against any implication that deferral could itself
influence the political outcome."

Could a terrorism announcement be construed as this and could be delayed until after the 1st of May?