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Found: honest politician of integrity and principle
• READING Nick Brown’s letter last week led me to reflect on the contrast between what a depressingly large number of politicians say and what they actually do when put to the test in the House of Commons. Brave words in the media are so rarely backed up in Parliament, when they have to walk the walk and vote for what they believe in, rather than follow their party line.
This is why I have the greatest admiration for Jeremy Corbyn, because since he was elected in 1983 he has not only managed to get it spectacularly right about all the main issues of the day; more importantly, he has had the backbone to back up his words by action in the House of Commons.
Jeremy was advocating dialogue with Sinn Fein years before the Good Friday agreement – and was reviled for it; and he stood alongside Chris Smith in voting against the war in Iraq back when the Labour leadership was arguing that the war was just and necessary.
More recently, he has voted against ID cards, against post office closures, against Trident and in support of the Gurkhas’ right to live in the UK – all against the Labour government line.
If we are looking for that rare phenomenon, an honest politician of integrity and principle, then we need look no further than our own MP for Islington North.
JOHN WYMAN-WHITE
Pemberton Gardens, N19
• COMPARING Jeremy Corbyn’s expense claims with 644 other MPs is neither fair nor meaningful (At last, an MP with low expenses, May 22). As an inner London MP he did not qualify for the additional living allowance, and claimed a London allowance (£2,812) instead.
To make a fairer comparison, please remove the additional living allowance and the London allowance from the calculation. This puts Mr Corbyn’s expenses (£126,498 without the London allowance) slightly above the national average of £126,006 and certainly above the London-based MP average of £122,447. So please don’t use the table of MPs’ expenses to suggest Mr Corbyn has been particularly thrifty, or to endorse his criticism of other MPs. It simply does not compare like-with-like.
BP
N5
• YOUR feature on the MPs’ expenses scandal makes fascinating reading (Your mission: to save this House of ill repute, May 22).
A Labour MP, a Labour councillor and a member of the Green Party are given the opportunity to say how confidence can be restored in politicians. And what do they do? The MP and councillor spend all their column inches redescribing the situation, as if we hadn’t heard it all 1,000 times already, and then say that they hope things will get better.
Andrew Myer, who is (so far) merely a member of a party, answers the question, and says exactly what needs to be done to clean up politics. Full marks to him, and full marks to anyone standing for public office who will actually answer the questions that have been put to them, not the ones they would prefer to answer.
STEVE TAYLOR
Dresden Road, N19
• ON MPs’ expenses, Emily Thornberry may be “bored that we don’t seem able to resolve it” but most decent people who play by the rules have been horrified rather than bored to see how many MPs have been abusing the system.
The allowance system was a bad one which Labour, as the biggest party in the House of Commons for 12 years, should have reformed.
As someone who is not a politician but a working mother and a local campaigner who wants change for people in this country, I believe we desperately need to stop totally unjustifiable claims on the taxpayer. We are supposed to have a Parliament, not a lifestyle-support system for MPs.
I do not have a second home and, unlike Ms Thornberry and Bridget Fox, I have already made it clear that, if elected, I will not take the London supplementary allowance paid to inner London MPs.
David Cameron is right to discipline MPs who have behaved badly, to aim to reduce the total number of MPs and to give power back from No 10 to a reformed Parliament. That shows real leadership. Hard-pressed taxpayers cannot be expected to put up with the present system. Politics isn’t working properly and it is costing us far too much.
ANTONIA COX
Conservative parliamentary spokeswoman for Islington South and Finsbury.
• LIKE so many of my fellow voters, I’ve been shocked and disgusted by revelations about greedy and corrupt MPs over the last few weeks.
We need total openness about MPs’ expenses, now and in the future. I am disappointed that local Labour MP Emily Thornberry failed to vote for opening up MPs’ expenses when she had the chance.
Last week, I was one of more than 80 leading candidates from across the country who wrote to the Speaker demanding he publish all MPs’ expenses – or resign. Now he has quit. But that is not enough. We need a wholesale reform of politics so that this betrayal of the voters cannot happen again.
That’s why I am backing calls for a fairer voting system, so voters are in charge and MPs cannot rely on safe seats; reform of party funding and the House of Lords; no more buying peerages and policies; and a recall system, so that voters can force a by-election if their MP has let them down
We need politicians from all parties who are willing to make these changes. And if existing MPs won’t change the system, then we need to elect a new team who will.
BRIDGET FOX
Lib Dem prospective parliamentary candidate, Islington South and Finsbury
• COUNCILLOR Paul Convery’s hand-wringing about his party’s MPs being caught with their fingers in the till is a bit rich given his loyalty to a party that in government has adopted and progressed the previous Conservative government’s agenda of redistributing wealth and power upwards (Gravy-train MPs deserve this hurricane of hostility, May 22).
“Loss of confidence” in politics, which is hardly new, is generally of little concern to the Labour Party or the other two main political parties. One or other of them always gets into power and in truth politics has been reduced to discussion on which of them manages better the same policies and ideology in the interest of the middle and business classes.
Cllr Convery obviously feels that a couple of hundred new “honest” parliamentary candidates joining the same failed model might reinstate the status quo, but it won’t address working class people’s massive disengagement with politics or their need for a political voice at the national level.
It won’t address the centralisation of power and destruction of local democracy and accountability, or its virtual replacement with unelected quangos directly answerable to government.
All of which surely lays the ground not only for MPs to dip their fingers in the expenses till but also offers other financial opportunities of highly-paid jobs with the companies they have assisted in power.
SHARON HAYWARD
Independent Working Class Association
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