Maria Miller MP – Culture Secretary, Minister for Women and Equalities – is, by all accounts, a woefully incompetent minister. But there are so few female Conservative MPs who could be considered for cabinet positions that, predictably, David Cameron didn’t fire her when she was found to have fiddled her expenses. Indeed he gave her public support even before he’d received the final report on the matter.
We’ve considered presenting him with this year’s ‘Toady of the Year’ award – he won it in 2012 and 2013 – but we’re saving that for when he ‘reluctantly’ introduces all-women PPC shortlists for the 2015 general election, as he surely will, following Labour’s lead. In the autumn of 2009 he announced his intention to introduce these shortlists for the 2010 general election, prompting me (along with others) to cancel my party membership. The legislation allowing political parties to use all-women shortlists was introduced by Harriet Harman MP. The day after Cameron’s announcement I started work on my book David and Goliatha: David Cameron – heir to Harman?
Miller barely co-operated with the inquiry into her expenses fiddling, and got away with paying less than £6,000 back to the taxpayer, and making a perfunctory 30-second apology in the House of Commons. The woman has no shame, and in keeping her in the cabinet, Dave shows yet again that he has none either, his sole motivator being self-preservation. To my mind he’s the least principled prime minister – from any political party – in the past century.
Amanda Platell’s short piece on the Miller expenses scandal in today’s Daily Mail:
Justice for Men & Boys 