Giles Chichester has resigned as leader of the Tory MEPs and his career is effectively over. Guido can’t see him being re-selected. As is always seemingly the way with these things we never see any criminal charges. The guilty politician will waffle on about “good faith”, “mistakes” and our old favourite “a technical breach of the rules”.

In reality it is criminal fraud. Returning once again to the subject, there are still, right now, 13 Tory MEPs who refuse to disclose what they have done with their expenses. Den Dover has a very similar set-up to Chichester, with hundreds of thousands of pounds paid to a family firm based in his home, he has a lot of questions to answer. Is it acceptable that public servants who work for the voters and spend public money won’t say where the money has gone? Guido doesn’t think so…

UPDATE : Apparently Chichester has already been re-selected to fight next years Euro-elections. Surely the Tories won’t want to run an expense fiddler? Surely?