Gordon Brown forced into an embarrassing climbdown on MP's expenses
After his surprise video release on YouTube, Gordon Brown has been forced into a humiliating climb down this evening leaving his attempt to grab the moral high ground in tatters. Despite ordering an outside review of MPs expenses earlier this year, Gordon Brown recently took control of the issue telling the nation exactly what he would do in an embarrassing YouTube video.
It soon became apparent, as we covered in one of our earlier post, that MPs within the Houses of Parliament were unwilling to support the move despite rumours of £2000 interim payments to MPs over the summer period. The inability of the Labour Party Whip to rein in the growing number of MPs unwilling to support the move is of significant concern to Gordon Brown who appears to be losing control of his party. The fact that the Prime Minister was looking to replace the second home allowance with a flat £150 daily rate for those who attended parliament, was in effect "jumping out of the frying pan into the fire".
By effectively taking away an allowance which had attracted significant criticism and replacing it with a one which paid MPs for "attending their office", this was never going to wash with UK voters. There will be a number of smaller votes throughout the week regarding some changes to the MP's expenses system but these will be fairly irrelevant in the overall picture.
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