Out with the publicists and hypocrites!

The election was not a good night for former Home Secretaries. Charles Clarke, a persistent thorn in the side of Gordon Brown, lost his Norwich South seat to the Liberal Democrats’ Simon Wright. Wright secured a narrow majority of 310 votes. Clarke who was defending a notional majority of 3,023, said: “I blame my loss on the fact that we were not able to make our case.”

It was also gratifying to see Jacqui Smith close to tears as she lost her Redditch constituency. Swept in with the Labour landslide of 1997, the Blair Babe enjoyed a rapid rise through the ranks. If her political obituary ever comes to be written it will be adult films and second homes that will play a prominent part. It was her claim for her cable television package, and two adult films, that propelled her into the headlines rather than her role as the first female Home Secretary. Her husband apologised, but the damage was done.

Criticised for designating her sister’s house in London as her main home rather than her residence in Redditch, an arrangement for which she claimed more than £116,000 over six years, she was found to have broken the rules on expenses and ordered to apologise to the Commons. She stood down as Home Secretary last June: on election night her humiliation was complete when her majority of 2,716 was turned into one of 5,821 for her Tory opponent Karen Lumley.

Another casualty of the evening was the colourful character and shocking (to say the least) self publicist Lembit Öpik in Montgomeryshire, who finally had that stupid smile wiped off his face. He and ITV weather presenter Siân Lloyd appeared on Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on 15 April 2006, winning £64,000 for the Motor Neurone Disease Association and Action for Children.

Öpik later become involved with then-24-year-old Gabriela Irimia of pop music double-act The Cheeky Girls after dumping Lloyd. He announced his engagement to her in a popular magazine, after proposing in Rome. They split up in July 2008 after a "difficult period" in the relationship. In 2009, tabloid newspapers reported he was dating model Katie Green. Öpik and Green denied the rumours while appearing on Sky News, clarifying that they are just friends who share an interest in "campaigning against the fashion industry's continued use of too-thin models".

Mr Öpik, who will also be remembered for his fear that a giant asteroid will hit the Earth and destroy mankind, and his colourful love life, was destroyed not by a large lump of extra-planetary rock, but by Glyn Davies, who turned a Liberal Democrat majority of 7,048 into a Tory one of 1,184. I don’t think the Lib Dems will miss him much somehow.

But as the results showed, the reassuring proverb that pride comes before a fall does not apply only to MPs.

Esther Rantzen believed that by sheer force of celebrity she had a chance to win over the voters of Luton South and show that a presenter who made her name on a programme starring talking dogs was an ideal choice to succeed Margaret Moran, the MP who claimed £22,500 for a home 100 miles from her constituency. The voters thought otherwise: Ms Rantzen came fourth, garnering only 1,872 votes. Serves her right, seems to be the fate of self publicists and hypocrites in this election.

As to hypocrites there is surely none worse than Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, there was no doubt. He was brought down by scandal. The DUP leader lost his East Belfast seat to the Alliance Party in one of the biggest upsets of the night.

His defeat came in the wake of damaging revelations about himself and his wife Iris, nicknamed the Swish Family Robinson after reports that they claimed more than £500,000 a year in salary and expenses. Mr Robinson was forced temporarily to stand down as First Minister in January to address claims that he knew that his wife had failed to declare her role in obtaining £50,000 for her teenage lover’s business but did not report her to the authorities. The DUP leader took office again after claiming that an independent legal adviser cleared him of wrongdoing.

Well, would you ever believe it? Peter Robinson found innocent of any wrong-doing!

THREE WEEKS after he stood down as First Minister because of a sexual and financial scandal involving his wife, Peter Robinson has announced that he is returning to Northern Ireland’s First Minister’s job.

The Democratic Unionist leader, who was fighting to save his career and also his party’s position, said he had been cleared of breaching his code of office, an accusation which had been made by the BBC in its Spotlight documentary.

Spotlight said that Robinson should have reported to the authorities when he discovered that his wife had “borrowed” £50,000 from two property developers so that she could set up her teenage boyfriend in a café business. However, Robinson said that a legal review had ruled he had not breached his ministerial code.

Meanwhile the BBC said it stood by the Spotlight allegations.

With, I admit, absolutely no inside knowledge of the goings on in Belfast, but based on the evidence turned up by Spotlight (a Northern Ireland version of Panorama, which did air the programme on the mainland), I find it strange that the First Minister has been found not to have breached the Ministerial Code.

After she had allegedly tried and allegedly failed to commit suicide, his 60 year old wife allegedly told him all about the 19 year old kid she was having an affair with, and the deals that she set him up with to fulfil his dream of having a café. As he tried to put his personal life together again (no one would deny the man must have been having a hard time knowing what his wife had been up to, not only with the teenager, but allegedly with his father too), he must also have been aware that this was political dynamite.

His party is strongly Fundamentalist Christian, as is his church, both founded by the Rev Dr Paisley*. They take the Bible and its teachings very seriously. He must have known that having an affair with a father and son would blow his wife’s career out of the water. (She was a councillor, MLA and MP and that’s a lot of salary and expenses). He must have known too, it would affect her standing in their party/church, which are the same thing. Added to that, the attempted suicide would not have done them any good, with it being a sin, according to the teachings of the Bible. Unfortunately Mrs Robinson hadn’t just been a quiet advocate of morality. She bawled from the roof tops about filth and depravity. She was nauseated by it all (well obviously except when she was doing it). So she was finished, politically and religiously.

In these circumstances I am not really surprised that he would have allegedly wanted to withhold information from the authorities regarding her money borrowing activities, enough being as good as a feast. (Or there’s only so much depravity that a fundamentalist party or church can take.)

I am, however, delighted that the QC that HE appointed to look into HIS involvement has found HIM to be completely in the clear. Isn’t it nice how you can trust the British legal system? Makes you feel all warm inside. So, that will be that.


Unless, of course, Sinn Féin don't believe a Queen's Cousellor......


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*Ian Paisley helped to establish the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in the early 1950s. He also set up the DUP and led it until recently. His title 'Doctor' was obtained from an outlawed seminary in Illinois, and was therefore bogus. He was, however, later awarded an honourary doctorate by a his close friend Bob Jones, founder of the Bob Jones Fundamentalist College in South Carolina.


Signed Dr Tris Price-Williams (my friend conferrred it on me, honest).

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....AND (you wouldn't believe it, but) THERE'S MORE........

I normally wouldn’t post twice on the same subject on consecutive days, but events have left yesterday’s post so far behind that I feel obliged, in the interests of accuracy, to add to what I said in the post about Mrs Robinson.

A BBC programme “Spotlight” has come up with more details about Iris Robinson and her husband Peter, and how between them they have broken the law and the code of conduct for councillors, MPs, MLAs and Ministers.

In short they have broken more or less every code that there is, and the law to boot.

Mrs Robinson’s lover, in some sort of grotesque re-enactment of her namesake in the film 'The Graduate', was a 19 year old boy. Just for once in the Robinson story there's nothing actually illegal about that, but it's pretty weird for a religious fanatic given to quoting selectively from the Bible on morality, to have a ‘boy’ friend 40 years her junior. The details of their business transactions et al can be read here on the BBC website. They are rather complex so I won't repeat them here, but, as I said seem to have broken every code in the book, including the legal one.

Apart from the revelation that this pensioner had a sexual relationship with a teenage lad young enough to be her grandson, and that she later asked the boy for £5,000 for herself (the sex wasn't enough apparently, she needed cash too), we learn from the programme that her husband, the First Minister of the Province of Northern Ireland, knowlingly concealed information about her illegal financial activities from the authorities. A silly thing for a First Minister to do.

His position is now totally untenable. He has brought his party and the Northern Ireland Assembly into disrepute. He must resign immediately. She has made such an almighty fool of herself that whatever dignity she might once have had has been swept away. She has become a comic figure.

She has brought shame on her party, on her council, on the Assembly, on Parliament, on her family, on the boy she used, and on her religion and her church. This evil, nasty, hypocritical little tart really is finished.

Update: Despite the fact that the Northern Irish Assembly and the UK Parliament are both in session, Mrs Robinson is reported by the Belfast Irish News newspaper this morning to be heading for a week’s holiday in the ski resort of Chamonix in the next few days. Last night Spotlight said that Mrs Robinson was too unwell to respond to its questions, according to her solicitor.

Nice work if you can get it.

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