Will the police measures distract attention from the meeting itself

With world leaders arriving in London for Thursday’s G20 meeting in the capital a big police operation is going on to ensure that the gathering itself can take place in relative peace and safety.

Given the bomb attacks in London in July 2005 when the G8 meeting was taking place in Gleneagles there’s obviously a worry about police over-stretch.

Meanwhile the person ostensibly in charge of all of this, Jacqui Smith, has her own problems to deal.

All the parties have their own political agenda and, of course, David Cameron has been given a boost by being invited to a private meeting with Barack Obama.

Whatever we are in for an interesting few days.

What do MPs do to justify all their cash?

This morning Ermintrude made a point that is worth its own thread - what is it that MPs do to justify all the cash that they get.

Expressing the hope that a realistic appraisal of an MPs role should come out of this mess he wrote: “What bugs me is the frequent suggestion that their jobs are equivalent to other professional like headteachers or GPs. They’re not.”

This reminds me of one of my all-time favourite contributions to PB. A couple of years ago a new party was set up called “Save Bedford Hospital” and looked ready to eat into Labour’s vote in this marginal constituency. The consultant who was running it got a lot of media attention and after one such appearance Roger came up with the brilliant damning observation - “..well after hearing XXXX I’d much prefer to have him as my MP than my doctor”.

One of the hard things in assessing an MPs role is that much of their time is taken with party political matters or electioneering - things that shouldn’t be paid for.

On how they vote there’s a whole apparatus is each parliamentary group thinking that one through and from the whips’ perspective their function is to do as they are told.

What about case-work? I’m sure all MPs receive a lot of correspondence and quite a few requests from constituents asking for help over one thing or another. But how big a burden is this and how much of it is really directed to the party political side of their work?

And if case-work was so burdensome how come that well in excess of 100 MPs are able to take on paid extra work as ministers of one sort or another?

The big test would be whether the “quality of MPs”, however you want to measure that, is affected by how much cash is thrown at them? Well there does not seem to be a shortage of people wanting to change places with them.

My solution on the second home issue is to allow the equivalent cost of a maximum of four nights a week at the Days Inn Westminster during the period when the house is sitting. A perfectly good hotel and maybe we could add on a fiver a night for the odd “premium” movie.

So what do you think - how much should an MP get paid? With the latest increase announced yesterday it will be just under £65,000 a year. Is that too high or too low? Let’s see what the PB community thinks.

Has he become distracted by the G20 meeting?

Well here we are - another day of appalling front pages for MPs in the tabloid press as the Jacqui Smith porn issue rumbles on and outline details of expenses for every single MPs are published.

What then will be the overall impact on the outcome of the general election? Will it all be forgotten about in a few days or is this another boost for the opposition - particularly the Tories?

I think we will look back on yesterday and conclude that Brown made a serious mistake in not demanding Jacqui Smith’s immediate resignation. Her porn on the public purse is the story that is resonating and one that will blow up time and time again. It is hard to see how she can function in such a sensitive role as home secretary with this hanging round her neck.

Brown had a chance yesterday morning to close down the issue and appear decisive on the whole expenses explosion. This would have taken out much of the sting and the message would have been that the PM is firm on such matters. If Cameron had been in the same position then I think he would have been brutal, perhaps even over-brutal.

As it is Brown could now appear to be weak and ineffective in dealing with the explosion of stories on MP expenses that we’ll see in the coming days and weeks.

What the mass publication of data does is to create local issue in every single seat up and down the country and we should expect further nasties to emerge. What a gift if you are campaigning to unseat an incumbent in a marginal seat.

Not only can you attack the individual MP for his/her custodianship of public money you can also point ot the weakness of the PM on the matter.

Could it be that Gord has been so focussed on this week’s G20 meeting that his eye has not been on the ball? I think so.

CON 40(-1) LD 18(+1) LAB 28(-2)

But could there be no votes for Labour in the G20 meeting?

What should be the final poll for March, ComRes for the Indy, is now out and shows a small increase in the Tory lead - although the shares of both the main parties slipped on the last polls from the pollster a week and a half ago.

The notable feature is the high figure for “others” 14% which shows the Greens and SNP on 3% with the BNP on 2%. Only three people in the whole survey said UKIP and they were given a rounded up 1%.

In other questions the poll asked for voters’ views ahead of this week’s G20 meeting there are three findings that might cause concern at Brown Central.

Brown “has the right policies to get Britain out of recession” - Agree 31%: Disagree 58%

Brown “should focus more on finding a domestic solution to the economic crisis than a global one” - Agree 72%: Disagree 22%

I am optimistic that the economy will improve before the end of this year” - Agree 27%: Disagree 70%

So the Tory lead extends and every single poll in 2009 has had Cameron’s party in 40s. Something dramatic needs to happen for this to be turned round and it’s very hard to work out what that, if anything, could be.

Looking at the detail a key factor remains the difference between the parties on “certainty to vote”. Tory supporters records 65%, Lib Dem 63% while only 45% of those saying they were voting Labour were certain to turn-out.