The Barron Knight (01/07/14)
Here's another great article form the latest edition of Private Eye and as the writer says, no wonder people get cynical about politics and politicians.
If you ask me it's a disgrace that a Labour MP, probably someone who regards himself as a good 'socialist', should think it's OK to hold on to a £500,000 profit from selling a property in London which was bought and paid for with public money.
So I will be keeping my eyes peeled to see if Sir Kevin Barron steps down next year ahead of the general election, as part of a sordid fix which the Eye quite rightly draws to public attention.
By the way, I wonder if Sir Kevin is related to any of the Barron Knights who, for the uninitiated, were a dire pop group from the 1960s?
ROTHER BOTHER
Rotheram, once the most impregnable Labour stronghold in Yorkshire, has suddenly come over all Ukippy. At ht local elections Nigel Farage's party won 46.4 percent of the vote, against 42.9 percent for Labour. If the swing is repeated at next year's general election, Labour could lose all three of its parliamentary seats in the district.
Might this startling debacle by any chance be related to the way the local Labour MPs seem determined to confirm all the public's worst suspicions about the political classes? The party's jealous reputation certainly wasn't improved by the jailing of Rotherham MP Denis MacShane for expenses fraud last December. But we shouldn't overlook the contribution of Sir Kevin Barron MP, MP for neighbouring Rother Valley, who tops the league table of MPs enriching themselves from the expenses system.
Sir Kevin now has a mansion in the Peak District, bought with the £500,000 profit he made from selling a Westminster property that had been paid for by maxing up the interest-only mortgage, financed by the taxpayer. Not that he was the only one, of course: MPs such as Maria Miller, Geeorge Osborne, and Alan Duncan also took full advantage of the scheme. But none had the chutzpah of Barron, who as chairman of the standards and privileges committee, aka the double-standards committee, now presumes to sit in judgment on other MPs.
Barron told many people in Rotherham that he would stand down sat the next election - he will be 70 in 2016 - to enjoy life with a new wife, whom he sensibly employes at taxpayers' expense as an assistant. But now he has popped up to get himself reselected. Mosr in South Yorkshire assume he will trade the candidacy for a peerage just before the 2015 election - if the announcement is floes enough to polling day, the Labour leader can parachute in one of his proteges without the democratic inconvenience of a proper selection process.
This sort of sordid fix is a variant on what happened in the Rotherham seat after MacShane's resignation in 2012. Labour's NEC in London imposed a shortlist of two prospective candidates, both unknown outsiders, while excluding the local councillor who had misty support. At the selection meeting half the Labour members walked out in protest.
The party was eventually lumbered with Sarah Champion, a hospice chief executive who had no previous track record whatever in Labour politics but enjoyed the patronage of Sir Kevin Barron.
Although the Rotherham Politics website has been exposing these Labour shenanigans for some time, the main local newspaper, the Rotherham Advertiser, often seems oblivious to the scandals under its nose. By happy coincidence, Sarah Champion MP employes as her constituency assistant one Valerie Jones - wife of the Rotherham Advertiser editor Andrew Mosley. Is it any wonder the local electorate has such a jaundiced opinion of the political class?
