The grassroots of all the main parties are pretty outraged with their parliamentary representatives. ConservativeHome polled readers who overwhelmingly wanted troughing Tories punished and deselected. LibDem activists lobbied their Federal Executive over Chris Rennard’s dishonesty. Labour activists including prospective candidates and elected councillors have written to the party’s governing NEC to change the rules to allow troughing MPs to be deselected more easily.

Clegg has been lucky in that none of his MPs have so far been accused of flipping properties. The difference between the reactions of the party leaders is clear.  When Cameron became aware that Andrew MacKay was on the fiddle, he immediately dispensed with his senior adviser before the sun rose.   Cameron went further yesterday and told Conservatives to sack their local Tory MP if they had their snoughts in the trough.  Guido will stick his neck out and say that by contrast Gordon will do whatever he can to hold onto Nick Brown, his troughing chief whip, come what may. No wonder over 100 Labour activists have described the prime minister as “negligent” in his response so far to the unfolding revelations about the allowance system.

The Labour Party whips office has been revealed to be corrupt through and through, yet it is supposed to police the PLP’s behaviour.  Labour’s chief whip Nick Brown has claimed tens of thousands of pounds without producing a receipt.  Gordon Brown sits in cabinet with James Purnell, Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith and Geoff Hoon.  Each of them has defrauded the taxpayer and milked the system to an extraordinary degree.  As long as they sit around the table he presides over a cabinet of crooks.

The Federal Executive of the LibDems is meeting at 5.30 tonight.  Guido hears there are mutterings about the party chief-exec Chris Rennard’s expenses situation (he is a non-voting member of the executive).  He pretends his main residence is in Eastbourne and thus claims for “second home” expenses in London.  He also signs into the attendance register at the Lords on his way to do his day job at the LibDem HQ office in Cowley Street.  Handy extra dosh to pay for all those summer parties he and Lady Rennard throw in their Stockwell home just over the other side of the Thames.

Wonder if they will just ask him not to throw any more parties?

UPDATE : Liberal Vision’s Mark Littlewood is reporting that LibDem Voice’s Alix Mortimer has written to members of the Fed Exec calling for a resolution of the Rennard problem.  The grassroots is calling for him to be brought to book: privately behind closed doors and under point 5 (subsections [a] to [b]) of her blog post. Insurrection is in the air…

15.30 Speaker called a meeting with all party leaders.  Gordon Prentice (Labour) and Douglas Carswell (Conservative) made Points of Order regarding the No Confidence Motion that were refused by the Speaker. Told to retire by David Winnick (Labour).  David Heath (LibDem) got heated.

Chamber looked ready to do damage.

15.43 Richard Shepherd (Conservative)  called for the Motion to be debated.  Stuart Bell (Labour) toadied to the Speaker.  David Davis asked how the motion could be made into a substantive motion, only with the government’s blessing said the Speaker (to jeers).

15.45 Susan Kramer called for an opposition day debate on the motion.

MPs leave looking unhappy.  Speaker gave nothing away.

UPDATE : PoliticsHome have the full transcript.

John Stonborough spun for the Speaker and the House of Commons Commission from 2001 to 2003. He was hired because he understood how to handle a hostile media environment.

On Stonborough’s blog he reflects back on how Michael Martin dealt with critical counsel:

On the July 1, 2003, I had one of my regular private meetings with the Speaker in his study overlooking the river. It was a friendly encounter, just the two of us, and I decided to mention this business of claiming for his second home. I think I had mentioned it once previously. I should not have needed to do this, but few Commons officials had the guts to voice their concerns to him. I did.

The Speaker went puce. He told me to stay where I was and summoned the Clerk of the House, Roger Sands, and made me repeat my “allegation” in front of him. I wrote to the Speaker afterwards saying I thought he had been a bit rough on me. Being an adviser is not a popularity contest. The Speaker never spoke to me again and like others before and after me I was cast out.

The speaker is a proud, stubborn and incompetent obstacle to reform because he has abused the system as badly as the worst parliamentarian.  Time’s up…

Douglas Carswell’s motion in the House of Commons reads:

No Confidence in the Speaker
“That this House has no confidence in Mr Speaker and calls for him to step down; notes that Mr Speaker has failed to provide leadership in matters relating to hon. Members’ expenses; believes that a new Speaker urgently needs to be elected by secret ballot, free from manipulation by party Whips, under Standing Order No. 1B; and believes that a new Speaker should proceed to reform the House in such a way as to make it an effective legislature once again.”

Nick Clegg has today signed the speaker’s exit pass by telling him it is time to go.  Don’t fret, his troughing and incompetence will be rewarded with a peerage and a back seat on the Lord’s Gravy Train.  Once a trougher, always a trougher…

Guido has been campaigning for this reckoning for years and now we are at the point where the reality of the venality of the political class has been revealed, public anger is exploding.  However the impotence of voting is exposed, because they are all at it. They treat voters like sheep to be fleeced.

There are calls for a demonstration – a “Rally of the Robbed”.  That would achieve nothing, even if we burnt parliament to the ground.  We face a kleptocratic class that has control of all the main parties.  Cameron has so far taken the whip away from Bob Spink and Derek Conway.  It remains to be seen what happens to Andrew MacKay, Julie Kirkbride and the long list of other Tory troughers.  Nick Clegg says he will come down like “a ton of bricks” on expense fiddlers.  So far a few small cheques have been written with no sign of a single brick lobbed.  Gordon Brown sits in cabinet with James Purnell, Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith and Geoff Hoon.  Each of them has defrauded the taxpayer and milked the system to an extraordinary degree.  As long as they sit around the table he presides over a cabinet of crooks.

Like most humans, politicians are motivated by fear and greed.  Greed motivated the now revealed looting of the public purse. Fear is the only thing that will get politicians to change their ways, and what they fear most is losing their positions.  The mainstream parties are putting up the bogeyman of the BNP as the beneficiary of the none of the above vote.  Tebbit has smartly advocated voters voting for a minority party, there are palatable options available whatever your political leanings.  No party is perfect, but if your sympathies are to the left, this election is the time to vote Green, if your sympathies are to the right, time to vote UKIP, if you are more centrist, perhaps Libertas deserves your vote.  That would punish the major parties.

Cameron has already ordered his troops to stop claiming dodgy expenses and it now seems likely that all MPs will finally lose their gold-plated expense fiddles.  As sure as Hoon has houses they will inevitably demand pay rises.  Examine the situation:  an MP’s current compensation package (without dishonesty or blatant looting) is worth some £120,000 to £130,000 if added to the basic salary are their “within the rules” allowances and pensions valued at pre-tax equivalent market rates.  Guido gives a range because of arguments as to the value of their pension package.  So let us settle on a figure of £125,000 as the current all-in value of their package.  Don’t forget many of them also increase the household income by employing children and spouses (or their 80-year-old mother in Peter Hain’s case).  MP’s basic salaries of £64.766 puts them in the top 3% of earners.  MP’s all-in packages put them in the top 1% of earners, yet they are in the words of the late Tony Banks “a sort of high-powered social worker”. Social workers are paid £30,000 a year.

There is an all party consensus developing in Westminster that to make up for their loss of fiddles they should get a pay rise of some £30,000 – a rise equivalent to the aforesaid social worker’s annual salary, or the annual pay of an army officer risking his life in the taliban’s line of fire.  What on earth makes politicians think they are worth three times as much as a lieutenant in Helmand?  Being paid to hang round in taxpayer subsidised bars in SW1 for a late vote is not exactly as stressful as taking deadly incoming fire from AK47s or writing to the mothers and wives of young men under your command who have given their lives for their country.

The politicians of SW1 are by comparison undeserving, untrustworthy and overpaid.  They have a sense of self-entitlement that is as unjustified as their use of the term “honourable”.  They will try to justify a pay rise by comparison to surgeons or headmasters.  We need high pay to attract and retain those professionals.  Every available safe seat attracts hundreds of applicants, there is no need to raise the rewards.  Paying politicians high rewards attracts exactly the wrong type of careerist into politics and the political class have now shown themselves to be as despicable as they are interchangeable. We want people in politics who are more like good priests – poor and honest.

Simon Hoggart makes a very good point this morning, the MPs expense scandal is un-named.  “Expense-gate” somehow isn’t right.  Guido likes “The Troughalypse”, though that isn’t self-descriptive.  Maybe “Snoutgate”.  Suggestions in the comments welcome…

Essentially they nominated three different properties in two years to be their main residence.   We paid for their million pound property portfolio.  Plus a few of the usual “accidental” double claims.  We also pay £600 every month for their food bills.  Bear in mind these two troughers have a combined household income of some £300,000 from the taxpayer, yet  they still feel we need to pay their Waitrose bills.  Every little helps, eh?

Public service can be so so rewarding…

Hat-tip: The Telegraph.

The Shadow Climate Change Minister Greg Barker is doing a Blears – he says he doesn’t have to but he will anyway.  He is close (socially*) to the Cameron inner circle.  It seems that the closer you are to Cameron the whiter-than-white you have to be.

Julie Kirkbride seems to have got off lighter than her husband, yet she is equally guilty of over-claiming…

*Someone once told Guido (unkindly) that Barker’s closeness to the Cameroon inner circle was largely a result of his willingness to pick up the restaurant tab.