This morning I have found my opponent, Phil Hope MP, a junior minister, at the heart of the expenses row. He has been all over Sky News and the BBC, stating that he will repay over £40,000 of public money claimed to furnish a very small two bedroom flat in Southwark.
I have given a statement to our local paper, which has been flooded with angry letters from constituents. His decision is the right one. Under the old, rotten system, Phil had the right not just to a second home, which I feel is a necessity, but to furnish it. It is unfortunate that furniture claimed for included a table and chairs from John Lewis. Back when the original vote on abolishing the "John Lewis list" was taken, and defeated by a majority of Labour MPs, Phil was absent. I feel I criticised that absence legitimately. He should have voted to abolish the list. Strength of feeling in Corby is enormous - Northants is losing over seventy jobs a day. Phil is doing the proper thing by paying back this money.
Phil has stated that he used the furniture to make a modest flat habitable. I have to say that I take him at his word. My fight with Phil Hope and Labour is political, and not personal. I intended to keep our campaign in Corby & East Northants purely a straight ideological one - and God knows that gives me enough ammunition. Phil acted with great kindness over a matter relating to a sickness of one of our councillors. While I cannot go any further without breaching confidences, his actions at that time were in the highest tradition of politics. I consider him a fundamentally decent guy, a man of personal integrity, and take no pleasure at all in what is happening to him today. Nor can our own party afford to gloat. Some of the Tory claims are simply embarrassing. The difference is our leader has acted - Phil's leader has not.
