quote

"it was as if he had been put on earth to do the job that was asked of him." (george osborne)
"which i feel all my life has prepared me for." (david laws)

crikey talk about setting the bar high, we are not talking about a job here, nor are we talking about a vocation, we are talking destiny.
ah if only reality lived up to the hype.

david laws was the treasury chief secretary, a very important job in the con/dem coalition government. he has had to resign because of, what looks to be, financial jiggery-pokery. before the revelations in the daily telegraph david laws was a rising star in the political galaxy. he had been a very successful investment banker who decided he wanted to enter politics to make a difference (isn’t that what they all say). once in politics he quickly became part of the new breed of liberal democrats all for free trade, belief in the private sector, less power for the european union and a smaller role for the state in providing welfare provision.
quite why he was a liberal and not a conservative is beyond me. seems it was also beyond the tories as george osborne had offered him a seat on the, then, shadow cabinet. to his credit david laws turned it down. i guess that changed when there was real power on offer.

david laws was also one of the crucial architects of the conservative and liberal democratic coalition.

for all intents and purposes we are talking about a golden boy of politics.
how quickly that can change.

the daily telegraph has revealed that he has claimed £40,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay rent to his partner. for eight years he had been claiming up to £950 a month to rent two rooms in two london properties (which is pretty impressive for an mp that proudly boasts that he spends 4 days a week in his yeovil constituency).
his partner owned the properties.
since 2006 members of parliament have been banned from leasing accommodation from a partner.

the reason this is coming out now is because at the height of the expense scandal david laws hadn’t revealed that his landlord was also his lover.

david laws believes he was had the right to keep his sexuality and his gay relationship private. he is right. it shouldn’t matter what a person’s sexuality is, people are entitled to have a life that is theirs and theirs alone. a person’s sexuality very rarely affects how they do their job.
what does affect them is the opinions, real or perceived, of others. this appears to be the rationale behind david laws’ decision to keep his relationship secret.
a few weeks back a soap star was complaining that his character’s storyline of a man coming to terms with the fact he was gay was getting people calling him a poof or queer. he moaned that in this day and age people should be able to realise that he was just an actor playing a role and that soaps were not real. he may as well have asked to wear a big t-shirt that said “i am not a fag” or “i am not a shirt lifter”.
the shock isn’t that there are people out there who believe that soaps are real, but that there are still people who judge people based on their sexual preferences (oh ok yes there is something wrong with people who like sheep).
so it is easy to see why david laws would have wanted to keep his relationship a secret from the public (as well as, it seems, his friends and family).

what is harder to understand is how that translates into a situation where he believes it justifies him misusing parliamentary expenses.
of course the irony of this is that nick clegg was pretty sanctimonious about the liberal democrats when it came to the expense scandal. so that is a bit of an ooops moment. additionally one of david laws’ main tasks as treasury chief secretary was to oversee the various cost cutting plans to aid the reduction of the government deficit, which also included tough new rules on pay and perks of public sector employees. ooops again.

it is believed that mr. laws is independently wealthy, if that is true then that just compounds the issue. his partner is a political lobbyist and probably isn’t short of a bob or two.

to his credit david laws has been quick to take action and has resigned his post, taking responsibility for his actions. though call me an old cynic (perhaps less of the old) the speed at which he has offered to pay back the money tends to indicate that even he knows he has broken the rules.
given his hawkish views on the deficit i can’t say he will be missed.

(and aren’t you all proud of me that i didn’t sink to the level of doing a his boyfriend is a political lobbyist i guess that means he has backdoor access, i tell you i could write for the sun.)