Denis MacShane has surfaced to try and flog his prison diaries. Choosing the softest of soft interviews, MacShame was his usual unpleasant self on the Victoria Derbyshi*e Show:
The whole video is worth watching for MacShame’s total lack of contrition, his blaming of his colleagues for doing him in rather than the coppers and the CPS, and some extraordinary defamation of Grant Shapps regarding nom de plumes. Obviously he backs a pay rise for MPs.
He also claims that he started fiddling his expenses when he was a BBC journalist, and only pleaded guilty “because his savings were gone”. He’s still churning out that tired old line that he made no personal gain from his expenses troughing. Which makes you wonder what he did with all those laptops, and that garage.
Clearly prison has not reformed this man; he seems to laugh off the fact that he was sentenced to six months in prison for defrauding taxpayers of £13,000 in forged receipts.
Even Derbyshire concludes that he is ‘shameless’.
Send him back down.
Scoop from the Yorkshire Post: in 2009 child abuse campaigners in Rotherham sent a five page letter to Denis MacShane detailing concerns about widespread abuse in his constituency, but received no response. In the letter, to which MacShane was copied in, the campaigners wrote: “I would appreciate your urgent response to this letter and more importantly your speedy and effective intervention on this case before one of the children, or another, gets hurt”. Guido publishes it in full here:
Renowned for his honesty, MacShane says he has no memory of the letter. The convicted fraudster visited the European Parliament yesterday, where UKIP MEP Jane Collins raised a Point of Order accusing him of “turning a blind eye to the abuse of 1,400 children in one of my constituencies and he’s in the coffee bar like a bad smell”.
If only he had been more interested in what was going on his constituency than his jaunts to Europe when he was still an MP…
Former Rotheram MP Denis MacShane concedes…
“I think there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat if I may put it like that… Perhaps yes, as a true Guardian reader, and liberal leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.”
“No single individual, no constituent, no child, no family came to see me…” but buy my book!
Rotherham’s former Labour MP has broken his silence on the child abuse scandal, from the comfort of the Dordogne:
Anyone interested in Rotherham child abuse might read p 156 of my Prison Diaries @BitebackPub
— Denis MacShane (@DenisMacShane) August 26, 2014
Or you could just read the 160 page report which covers the time Denis was the local Labour MP and seemingly oblivious to what was happening on his patch and the failings of his friends and allies on the local Labour council.
Far more insightful, and free.
No Guardian column for ex-con Denis MacShane, so he’s publishing his prison diaries instead. Readers will have nothing but sympathy for the crook who spent Christmas Day in the clink:
Christmas Day
9.50am: My door opens and a screw barks, ‘Catholic service…’ The mass is brisk and to the point.
To my surprise, Asil Nadir reads one of the lessons. I vaguely know his story as the Polly Peck tycoon who gave hundreds of thousands to the Conservative Party in the 1980s then went back to his native Turkish Cyprus where he avoided extradition after his company went bust.
I chat briefly to him afterwards. He has read about my case and shrugs his shoulder as if to say, ‘British politics, what do you expect?’
It’s a time to shower, to make a phone call, play pool, clean out your cell, fill in forms and chat. Officers can allow it to run for up to two hours or just thirty minutes.
More than anything, I want to call my children, Laura and Benjamin, and my partner Vicky. But there is only one phone for 80 prisoners on the spur.
I wonder if any Prison Minister knows what it is like when you cannot say happy Christmas to your children.
At the final meal of the day. I opted for a half-chicken – a special for Christmas – only to be told all the chickens had gone. In other words, the servers had given the half-chicken to their mates.
Instead it was two thin slices of industrial turkey. At least there was a tiny cocktail sausage with a bit of bacon and a smidgen of stuffing.
The heart bleeds…
