Richard Needham on Julie Kirkbride

*** Please note I am not Mark Wadsworth ***

The former MP tries to defend the indefensible...

Little did I expect to witness the public and relentless execution paper by paper, news report by news report, hour by hour, of a decent, hardworking, minor public figure who has been ruthlessly hounded as if she was a major public enemy. Guilty until proved innocent has been the media mantra over the last few days.

Trial by media is normally a bad thing, because it's unnecessary when there is a judicial process. But there is no such process for MPs.

Maybe we should do so, and allow these MPs to justify their actions. After all, this is exactly why we have a jury system. That someone can steal a car to take a dying child to hospital and that 12 men can decide that the theft was justified. So, let's see Kirkbride in court justifying her decision like any thief would have to. Or alternatively, a means to call for an election mid-term.

Almost every Sky and BBC news report involves sending a ‘team’ to discover what the locals in Bromsgrove are saying about Julie. This entails interviewing those signing a ‘Julie Must Go’ petition being organised by George Galloway’s Respect Party. (Not that I have heard that mentioned by Sky or the BBC).

And who organises it is entirely irrelevant. If the people of Bromsgrove are signing it, you should get the message: they want her out.

Firstly by being married to Andrew MacKay she is tarred with his brush. The fact that he has fallen on his sword means the spotlight swivels onto her. There are several Cabinet Ministers who enjoyed grace and favour residences and thereby failed the ‘reasonableness’ test on claiming for second home allowances like Andrew.

They remain in post and in residence and one would have thought were more worthy of media outrage than Julie who after all, as David Cameron pointed out, has a perfectly legitimate claim while living in London and owning a flat in her constituency.

If you think that voting Conservative will restore any sense of "personal responsibility" back to civil society then think again. Even burglars and fraudsters don't try and justify their behaviour by saying that "everyone else is doing it".

But the accusations now levelled against her drip by drip, day by day, are to do with her employing or using members of her family to help run her family and parliamentary life.

Because such behaviour generally stinks of nepotism.

There are millions of small businesses where family members help out in one way or the other. In doctors or dentists surgeries, in small legal practices, in shops, in factories, wherever you look families are helping each other and many of them rely for their income from the public purse.

If you are working in the free market, employing your idiot son or your incompetent uncle is like robbing from yourself. To pay them means raising your costs or lowering your profits, so you don't do it.

Even if you are a small business working for government, you are subject to things like competitive tendering and service level agreements.

The difference is that MPs don't work like that. Their expenses aren't fixed or based on a formula or subject to much competition (except maybe when the election comes around every few years). Paying someone extra doesn't personally cost them much.

So Julie lets her brother live rent free in a small bedroom in her constituency flat in return for which he looks after Angus weekend after weekend. (For the avoidance of doubt I know he does because I have seen it). He helps her buy IT equipment for her office use because he knows about it and she does not. He sets up her website and does what a retired elder brother might do for his sister anywhere else in the country without comment or vilification.

And I'm sure that the business that's registered at the address in his name is all about the her son/helping the people of Bromsgove too.

What planet do these people live on? While most employers are considerate to their employees having families (like taking time off to look after sick children or having first pick of summer holiday dates), they basically consider that your costs for your children are your business. Why does someone from the Party of Individual Responsibility expect me to pay for the accommodation for their children and child-minder?

Julie also employs her sister part-time who happens to live in Dorset. The accusation is that because she lives in Dorset she can’t know anything about Bromsgrove. Nonsense, if she’d lived in London they wouldn’t complain and no doubt she has been to Bromsgrove often enough. She’s a professional woman who is networked into Julie’s office both in Westminster and in the constituency and her job is to deal with Julie’s constituents problems when Julie’s full time PA is away or on holiday.

Let me get this straight... she was employing her PA at £12,000 a year to cover sickness/holiday/training, yes?

You can hire a PA in Bromsgrove for about £20/hour. Working 37 hours a week, that suggests that her "full time PA" takes 16 weeks off per year. Sounds like a hell of a lot of time off for a full time employee.

The media is now so wound up about Julie’s family involvement that I am surprised she is not being compared to Silvio Berlusconi!

I'd rather have Silvio. He seems to fuck a lot less people than most of our MPs.

Of course, the circus will soon move on and Julie may or may not survive – although I pray she does. But it will leave behind a badly damaged family, a little boy who may face a torrid time at school and a horrible taste that anyone can be treated as guilty of misusing their position, misusing public funds and tarnishing democracy when all Julie Kirkbride has ever, ever done is what she believes was the best for her constituents, her party and her country.

What young mum will want to go to the Mother of Parliaments now?

Oh fuck off. Thatcher ended up as prime minister when it was a women-unfriendly place and her party weren't exactly open to having women MPs. And not once did she piss and moan about the press or her family.