Sobering reality of life after the gravy train crash

"RUN! IT'S GOING TO CRASH!"

Things have got so bad that Mr Brown started smiling while giving television interviews. This desperately inappropriate smile starts flashing across his face whenever the Prime Minister has his back to the wall. It is what is known in psychiatric language as “a cry for help”, or to give it its full technical name, “a cry for help in getting the British people to believe in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that I am the right man to lead us out of this crisis”.

Mr Brown disclosed during a visit to Derbyshire that Elliot Morley (Lab, Scunthorpe), a former ministerial colleague who claimed £16,000 of public money for a mortgage that had already been paid, has been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party.

In a subsequent interview about Mr Morley, the Prime Minister added: “He is no longer an adviser on climate change.” But there were doubts whether even this decisive step would persuade people that Mr Brown was rising to the level of events.

Back at Westminster, MPs ran around explaining to anyone who would listen that they had never claimed one penny of expenses for which they did not have an irreproachable moral claim. They then added that they would go back over all their invoices just to check they had not claimed in a fit of absence of mind for a property empire, a yacht, a diamond necklace, a string of racehorses or a tin of dog food.

The consensus among our legislators, including the many who believe their behaviour to have been irreproachable, is that they are all now stuck in the same gravy boat.

We hastened to transport questions, where we hoped there would be at least some preliminary examination of how the gravy train crashed.

Those of us who saw it rushing along in the final stages of its journey could see it was going far too fast, with many on board either drunk with power or consoling themselves in the subsidised dining car for their lack of power, though when they saw impertinent people staring through the windows, they pulled down the blinds.

But Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary, was not going to break the habit of a lifetime and start taking the British people into his confidence.

We instead noticed the ominous absence from his usual place of Andrew Mackay (C, Bracknell), who was due to ask a question about “proposed changes to speed limits”.

It turned out that Mr Mackay had instead confessed to an “error of judgment” on his second home claims and resigned as an aide to David Cameron.

We have a horrible feeling that this affair is not going to end well, and would implore any MP who happens to have acquired a gas cooker from John Lewis not to put his or her head in the oven.

There is life after politics.