Comment of The Day, on New Labour’s champion snout-trougher, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith:
nothappy
31 Mar 09, 12:22am (about 8 hours ago)
There is a theory that this is Jaqui’s exit strategy. And a sly one it is.
Possibly and most likely, if there is any justice or common sense left in the UK, the inquiries into her ‘second home’ scam aren’t going too well for her and the lawyers have informed her that she may well be open to criminal fraud charges being brought against her at the end of them…
. Either
So Labour wonks have cooked up this ’embarrassment’ (not her fault, you understand — her husband’s) so she does the decent thing and resigns asap… £116,000 + salary, perks and pension better off, with her reputation as the poor little wronged woman a la Tessa Jowell more or less intact. Far better for all concerned than the first criminal trial of a Home Secretary for the misuse of public funds scenario.
Either way, it’s not going to die down or go away, so get it over with and go, girlfriend.
It’s an ingenious theory, it fits the facts, and it’s certainly neatly Mandelsonian, but if so I don’t think he’s reckoned with Smith’s sense of entitlement to office.
On previous form Our Lady of The Embonpoint is beyond embarassment; she seems convinced that, having reached her level of incompetence, her mere holding of the office somehow then dignifies all she does, no matter how sleazy or dishonest. According to Polly Toynbee she’s even a victim of a new wave of puritanism. Oh, please.
No, I really doubt that the Home Secretary’d go even if her kids were to be dragged in – not that they’re not already. Imagine the crap those poor kids’re taking at school; everyone knows their Dad’s a wanker, even though most Dads are, if truth be told. But most Dads’ little pecadilloes aren’t front-page fodder.
Most parents, however hatefully self-righteous and grasping, would naturally want such an ordeal over as soon as possible – or at least you’d think so; yet Smith still refuses to resign, although it would seem the quickest way out of what must be excruciating for her children.
How is it humanly possible for a woman to be so placidly, stupidly bovine and yet so selfishly hard-faced and brazen at the same time?
I doubt she’d go even if it were to turn out it was one or both of the Smith-Timney offspring who actually watched the movies, and that Timney Sr.’d been taking the rap for one or both; something that might even seem a little noble, until you remember he’s her admin assistant and paid 40,000 pounds a year out of the public purse, in addition to her own annual 300,000 in salary and allowances – and he was responsible for processing the expenses claim. Duh.
What would be mildly amusing is if the diary evidence that Smith’s reportedly convinced will clear her of dishonestly fiddling the second home allowance to pay off her sister’s mortgage were to show she was actually at at home, for certain values of ‘home’, at the time the pron was rented, or even if the avowed antiporn campaigner turns out to have watched it herself.
But no, even then, even if the tabloids were to go totally paparazzi on the past sexual behaviour (there’s a lot happens at party conferences) of a woman who wants to police everyone else’s, and that of her family too, I still doubt she’d go.
She has no shame. If this is Mandelson’s exit strategy I think he’s got it wrong.
