Chris Davies and MEPs on the Fiddle

Chris Davies, LibDem MEP for the North West of England, has made himself pretty unpopular amongst some of his colleagues with his campaign to open up MEPs’ expenses to greater scrutiny. But that doesn’t stop him being right. The fact that MEPs have now voted 442 to 209 against the publication of reports which uncovered widespread abuse of staff allowances can only result in greater public disdain for the European Parliament, which is anyway an institutuion of which few EU citizens know much. The cover-up is handing the issue on a platter to anti-European forces such as UKIP. But Chris Davies has rightly won the press coverage on this matter, and LibDems should champion their core belief in transparency and honesty in politics and its funding.

 

A Brief Encounter on Waterloo Bridge

Bleary-eyed and somewhat jet-lagged, I joined a pack of Southwark and Camden councillors, Simon Hughes, Chris Rennard and other LibDem worthies early yesterday morning, for a photo-shoot with Brian Paddick on the central reservation of Waterloo Bridge, as we all pretended to be a cross-river tram. The TV crews and phoographers loved it, even if the commuters struggling past us looked distinctly bemused. It made a change from delivering leaflets, anyway.

At the other end of the day, I was at the Gallery in Foyle’s bookshop for the launch of Andrew Hosken’s unauthorised biography of Ken Livingstone (Arcadia, £15.99), described by the Evening Standard in the following terms: ‘No book is more eagerly awaited in all campaign camps’. How many people will have the chance to read it before polling day next Thursday is another matter, but I shall be reviewing it. Hosken’s earlier book was about that other extraordinary London political figure, Dame Shirley Porter. Labour gliterati were out in force at the Foyle’s launch, but so too Merlene Toh Emerson, who is flying the LibDem flag in London West Central in the GLA elections.