CHIEF TREASURY secretary David Laws, described as “a genius” by colleagues, inflicted £6.2 billion of cuts in public spending which will hit millions of people. However, after only two weeks in post the Lib Dem MP resigned from the Cabinet, following the revelation that he had claimed over £40,000 in MPs’ expenses to rent rooms in homes owned by his partner.
Laws is on the right of the Lib Dems, more a Conservative neo-liberal than a social-liberal. He is co-author of the Lib Dems’ ‘Orange Book’ – full of vicious anti-working class dogma – and was a high-flying City banker before becoming an MP. Laws was a key member of the Lib Dems’ team that negotiated the current coalition with the Tories.
The resignation is a huge embarrassment for PM David Cameron, who has constantly banged on about ‘good governance’ and his coalition making a ‘clean break’ from the previous Labour government’s sleaze scandals.
Laws said his motivation in this expenses scandal was not personal gain but to keep the relationship with a man private and not to reveal his own sexuality. But surely, if the millionaire “genius” MP wanted to keep his personal affairs private then he shouldn’t have had his hand in the till, claiming dodgy expenses that drew attention to his partner. Rottenness and corruption is not solely the preserve of the two main parties it seems. They really are all the same.
In contrast to these scoundrels, “a workers’ MP on a worker’s wage” was the campaigning slogan of our Socialist Party candidates who stood as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in the general election.
