David Laws: Painted From Memory

Eight Things We Learned From David Laws' Memoirs, The Guardian.

They say a week is a long time in politics, which is about how long Mr Laws served in the coalition government before being forced to resign as the then closeted millionaire was fraudulently claiming £950 a month 'rent' on his boyfriend's house.

Coalition: The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government is published by Biteback.

Here's Biteback's Iain Dale on why you should never pay more than a £5,000 advance for a politcian's memoirs.

Which is probably much less than he got paid for serialisation rights in The Mail On Sunday.

Gay Star News: Where Politicans' Sexuality Trumps Their Ideology

Gay Star News.

Is this a cause for celebration when almost half are Tory shitbags?

And as for the likes of Labour's Ben Bradshaw and Stephen Twigg...

PS Good to see the back of the Lib Dem's leading crypto-Tory gay crook, David Laws, though. :)

Letter Of The Week: The Guardian

Can anyone explain why Denis MacShane (Report, 3 November) has been forced, rightly, to resign as MP for falsely claiming £12,000 in expenses, while David Laws, who falsely claimed over £40,000 for rent, ostensibly to hide the fact that he was gay, is not only back in parliament (after only a seven-day suspension, compared with 12 months imposed on MacShane before he decided to quit), but is now installed as minister for schools?

Michael McColgan
Sheffield 

Letter to The Guardian.

Pink List 2012: Randoms

To the Independent On Sunday who publish their ever ludicrous and tokenistic Pink List 2012 of "influential lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people who, you feel, make Britain safer, fairer, better and more entertaining."
These things are like reading out requests on a radio show - thrilling if you're mentioned, but baffling/boring to everyone else.
Anyway, I'm just bitter - straight in at number one, who else could it be, but... Nicola Adams.
Who?
Only a bisexual Olympic boxer, no less!
Wow.
Ever since she boxed bisexually at the Olympics Fagburn has felt the world has changed forever. 
The top-rated chap is, but of course, Peter Tatchell - "legend".
So legendary that the IoS forgot to include him in last year's list.
(There's a separate list of "national treasures" - barf).*
At least it's obvious La Tatchell does stuff for The Gays, but how the bumbum did that awful right-wing closet case David Laws make the top 10?
Answers on a fiddled expenses form...

* There's also a top ten of journalists which - remarkably - includes those joyless, reactionary Uncle Toms, Julie Bindel and Andrew Pierce. Presumably for services to homophobia.
(Ironically all the potted bios of these supposed exemplars of good journalism are so badly written, they read like the sorry result of 'Take your child to work day').

• There is a companion piece claiming one in two young LGBT people self-harm. This is hysterical junk, and completely unscientific, so I'm not sure it's even worth dignifying with a critique.
When will people realise some gay groups and individuals have a vested financial interest in making out things are far worse for LGBTs than they actually are?
Still, let's keep those grants coming...

Update: And here's an amusing demolition job by my close personal showbiz pal, The Guyliner.

David Laws: Oh Father

Daily Mail.

Whilst I abhor David Laws' politics - and agree he got off far more lightly than us "welfare scum" would (and the Mail will probably be sensationlising this story), but maybe he hasn't talked to his dad for 15 years cause he was a homophobic bully?
Just a thought.

David Laws: Coming Out

He seems much more at ease with himself than when he was last a minister. But it must have been traumatic to feel obliged to disclose that he was in a Tory coalition. 
“It was a multiple car crash in a political sense and personal sense. Although funnily enough the last year has been the happiest year of my life. I could be honest about who I was.”
In some ways, he wishes that he had come out as more right-wing than most Tories earlier. “It does simplify life enormously not having secrets. It would have made my life a lot easier and happier — and that of those close to me. But these things are constrained by circumstances. When you have protected your privacy and presented yourself as one particular individual then there never seems to be the perfect time to change that until you are forced to.” 

David Laws, glowingly profiled in The Times.
Some words may have been changed...

Thought For The Day: Richard Littlejohn

"As Peter Mandelson proves, if you’re going to break the rules, it helps to be gay. Then we’re deep into ‘personal tragedy’ territory and speedy rehabilitation. It’s hankies all round, not handcuffs.
"By rights, Laws should have been put on trial for fraud, not brought back into government before he’s even given his own constituents the chance to pass their verdict on him. But now it’s time to ‘move on’. It’s the modern way.
"Perhaps they’ll put him in charge of approved schools."

Richard Littlejohn back on top form in the Daily Mail.
That's right, Dicky, there's one law for the bumders, and one for the likes of you.
You couldn't make it up! etc etc.

Cabinet Reshuffle: News In Briefs

Lynne Featherstone - It emerged late in the day that Featherstone is leaving her post, Home Office (Equalities) Minister, as Equalities is being moved to the Department for Culture (See Maria Miller below). A good friend to The Gays - unacknowledged architect of getting marriage equality on the agenda. And thus predictably hated by the Daily Mail and the Tory Right.

Chris Grayling - Justice Secretary. Supports hoteliers right to be homophobic. Votes "moderately against gay rights". Irony! Hardline right-winger. Replaces the liberal pro-gay Tory, Ken Clarke, who was attacked by the tabloids for being "soft on crime". Be afraid.

Nick Herbert. Tweeted he was resigning as Policing Minister late this afternoon. It's thought in a queeny flounce at not being promoted.

David Laws - Education Minister. Went to private school, natch. Return of the unconvicted fraudster. Background in business, which shows how the Tories see our schools. Only a slight return - he's an Education Minister, and hasn't returned to Cabinet - notorious heterosexual Michael Gove remains Secretary of State for Education.

Maria Miller - Culture Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities. As Equalities - bafflingly - moves over to her new department, Culture, she takes over the equalities brief from Lynne Featherstone. I'm not sure where all these shenanigans leave Theresa May. According to a tweet earlier from Coalition 4 Equal Marriage, Miller has not told them whether she supports gay marriage. Votes "moderately against gay rights" (Has only been able to vote on two gay bills, but absent for one, against another). Gay marriage looks ever further off now.

Lady Warsi - Minister for Faith And Communities. Homophobe. Irony! Demoted from party "chairman" [sic]. Knows a lot about faith and communities as when standing for election in 2005 published a special leaflet for Muslim areas full of homophobic lies about Labour [sick]. Unelected. Appointment by tokenism.

[This was updated through the day, so ended up a bit garbled - not helped by different uses of the word "Cabinet". Hopefully it makes sense now]

PS In general, Cameron's reshuffle has been seen as a lurch to the right.  Oh crap...

David Laws: On Returning

The Sunday Telegraph runs a thinly disguised love letter to "homosexual" David Laws, masquerading as an interview.
Apparently, Mr Laws is "widely tipped to return to front-bench politics in the Cabinet reshuffle expected in the autumn," replacing Vince Cable as business secretary, they're hoping.
His big idea? Slash taxes and public spending.
Which is a bit rich coming from a multi-millionaire who fiddled his parliamentary expenses, I'm sure you'll agree.
He describes inadvertently outing himself through that expenses scandal - he didn't declare that the man he'd claimed and paid £40,000 to in rent was his boyfriend - as "a very difficult thing.”
“Quite often politicians have single car crashes which are quite painful, but this was a multiple car crash – affecting many different parts of my life at once. It took a long time to recover from that."
He adds; “Michael Gove was very supportive – I am a big fan of his."
Who knew!
Oh, and he supports gay marriage - and arguably becomes the first person to put the case for marriage equality in the pages of the Telegraph unchallenged. 
The Telegraph lauds Laws as "one of a species now almost extinct – a Liberal Democrat popular with Tories"
Can it be long til David Laws does the decent thing and comes out as a Conservative?

David Laws: Back Again

'David Laws to return to 'big government job' within months
'The political comeback of David Laws has been delayed to allow the former Liberal Democrat Treasury minister to get a "big government job" within months, it has emerged.'

The Sunday Telegraph.
Oh, hang on. Wasn't he coming back last autumn?
So Laws - who resigned cause he lied cause he didn't want anyone to know he was gay and was living with his boyfriend - might come back cause Chris Huhne resigned cause he tried to pin a criminal charge on his ex-wife who he left for a lesbian.
Gotta love this coalition government.
They'll let The Gays marry, you know.

David Laws: Musical Chairs

"OUTED Treasury chief David Laws is lined up for a surprise return to Government in the autumn, The Sun can reveal.
"PM David Cameron plans to hand the expenses scandal MP a new role - probably in the Cabinet Office.
"Lib Dem Mr Laws was found last year to have claimed "unjustified" housing expenses for years in a bid to hide a relationship with his gay partner.
"But Mr Cameron and Deputy PM Nick Clegg believe his peace-making skills within the Coalition will outweigh any backlash about his frontline return.
"Mr Cameron told a confidant: "Nick and I want David back. September or October is not too early. We need him back as soon as possible. It's very important for us now to have more voices like his inside Government..."

The Sun.
And they never get stuff wrong, do they?
Do you think it's too early to have started hacking phones again?
I guess Laws has to go back eventually - and they say Chris Huhne may have to stand down soon over that lying to the police about who was driving the car when "someone" was breaking the law thing.
Oh, those crazy Lib Dems!

David Laws: "So How Did He Get Himself Into This Mess?"

The Financial Times tries to find out.
"To say that he kept his sexuality under wraps is something of an understatement. He never discussed it with anyone until he started his relationship with James Lundie “10 years ago, or whenever it was”. Lundie is sometimes described in the media as the Most Handsome Liberal Democrat – a ­curiously uncoveted title. Veteran journalist Lynn Barber called the lobbyist “dazzlingly handsome, nay gorgeous”. Was this Laws’s first serious relationship? “Yes – the first. Full stop.”
"But Britain in the 1980s was hardly Uganda; he was growing up in one of the west’s most tolerant societies and had political leanings towards a party that openly embraced diversity of every kind. Even if he felt unable to come out at school, surely it would have been possible at Cambridge University (where he secured a double first in economics with some of the highest marks recorded in the past 30 years)? “At university none of my friends were gay,” he says. It was just easier to say nothing."
Good piece by George Parker.
Can't stick his politics but I do feel sorry for the silly bugger.

Correction Of The Month: Rafael Nadal

"In the feature on Rafael Nadal ('Anyone for tension?', Magazine, last week), we reported that David Law said there are no gays on the tennis tour. Law, in fact, said he was not aware of anyone on the men’s tour who had publicly stated they were gay. We apologise for this error."

The Sunday Times.

Thoughts For The Day: Simon Callow

You were one of the first mainstream actors to come out publicly. What made you do it?
I’m a very unconvincing liar.

Are you surprised in this day and age that someone like David Laws felt pressured to “stay in” — and torpedo his own career?
Yup. The longer you leave it the harder it gets. All those lies to all those people over all those years.

Are you bored with being asked about gayness all the time?
Nope.

You’ve said recently you don’t care about Oscars. Is that because you’ve never won one?
Yup.

Simon Callow on fruitily good form in The Sunday Times today.

David Laws: The Vortex

David Laws is interviewed in The Times today.
Windswept hair, unironed Indian cotton shirt, but that's not the main thing...
David Laws breaks his silence on being gay and why he kept it secret.

“Certainly becoming a public figure, if you are also a very private individual, doesn’t make it a more obvious time to be open about your sexuality. In fact you become even more sensitive about it.”

At the risk of repeating myself yet again, I abhor Laws' politics, but feel much sympathy about how he ended up in a crazed vortex of denial about his sexuality.
And I hate hearing gay men - whose circumstances have been very different or more fortunate - gloating over his closetry and downfall.
The interview is behind the Murdoch paywall, but may be posted below...

David Laws: Oops!

I believe there was a conflict between [Mr Laws'] private interest in secrecy and the public interest in him being open and honest in relation to his expenses claims. I recognise and have very great sympathy with Mr Laws for the difficulty of the decision he had to make in resolving that conflict, because it affected all aspects of his life as he had presented it over many years. But it was, in my view, a decision which he had to make under the Code of Conduct and one which he should have straightaway resolved in the public interest, either by being open with the House authorities about the relationship with his landlord, or by making no claims at all against his accommodation allowance and accepting the ever-present risk that the relationship would anyway come to public attention, as, eventually, it did.

John Lyon, parliamentary commissioner for standards.
And this is what the committee said:

It is clear that Mr Laws recognized that there was potential conflict between the public interest and his private interest. By omitting to seek advice he made himself the sole judge of whether that conflict was properly resolved. It was inappropriate for him to be judge and jury in his own cause. As the Commissioner comments, it can never be acceptable to submit misleading documents to those charged with overseeing public finances. As this case shows, Mr Laws' desire for secrecy led him to act in a way which was not compatible with the standards expected of an MP.

• There was also a problem with Laws's claims before July 2006...

From The Guardian.

Fagburn thinks Laws is a quite awful politician - he's the main player behind the Lib Dems turn to the Right, free market economics and this unelected coalition - but I do not rejoice in this news.
The closet is a place people go to because homophobia exists.
And I will stand by anyone still trapped in there.

Update: I have to confess I keep changing my mind about David Laws - which is just what kept happening when the story broke last year.
The Telegraph ran a quite useful Q&A on Lawsgate - both the Times and the Telegraph have called for a swift return to Cabinet.
There seems to be a lot of gloating from gay men, which makes me feel uncomfortable.
Richard Littlejohn hates him, unsurprisingly - a nasty piece of vitriol neatly demolished by Angry Mob.
And no-one has a clue if Laws will return to the Cabinet or not.

David Laws: Knocked For Six

Looks like it could be game over for David Laws.
Last year he resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after just 17 days when it emerged he'd claimed £40,000 to pay rent to his boyfriend - the first big fuck-up of the Coalition government.
Apart from the Coalition itself.
Laws had claimed this was because he was trying to hide he was gay - which is sad, but perhaps understandable.
But BBC News reports; "The standards and privileges committee is understood to have decided Mr Laws broke 'around six' expenses rules."
Oops!
More on this story later...

Election Results: Bareback Coalition

Although the results of the various elections on Thursday gave various reasons to be (reasonably) cheerful, Fagburn spent the next few days with a certain sense of dread.
A year ago the Con-Dem Coalition was welcomed with a rapidly cliched series of gay love and marriage-metaphors, The Brokeback Coalition, A Very Civil Partnership etc etc etc...
So it was inevitable that the newly gaping Con-Dem faultline would be described in terms of a a not so gay divorce.
Adams in The Sunday Telegraph was one of several cartoonists who rose to the distinctly unchallenging challenge.
Fagburn hopes that last Friday proves to be the beginning of the end, and that the Liberal Democrats and this rotten Coalition government will now both tear themselves apart.

Update: "David Laws, the Liberal Democrat former cabinet minister, may have his return to Government blocked this week with the publication of a report into his expenses [paid to his boyfriend] that is expected to be highly critical" reports the Telegraph.
Telegraph anti-gay bias?
The Torygraph has been arguing for Laws to be back in the cabinet since November.

David Laws: Expressway To Your Heart

Exciting news!
The Daily Express has found a gay man they like.
"DAVID Laws, who has the dubious honour of being the shortest-serving Cabinet minister of modern times, showed appalling judgment when he broke the rules to claim parliamentary allowances to rent a property from his gay lover."
I'm betting there's a "but"...
"But yesterday the former chief secretary to the Treasury demonstrated how sharp a political mind has been lost to the government."
Laws is creeping back into public life, if you haven't noticed.
He took his time out to write a book about the birth pangs of the Coalition government, 22 Days In May, which shows his pleasure that the Lib Dems formed a coalition with the Tories and not Labour.
We've always known David Laws was well to the Right of the Lib Dems on economics - which is why the Express adore him.
"Almost alone among senior coalition figures David Laws acknowledged that middle income earners are suffering disproportionately from the efforts to cut the deficit and called for their taxes to be cut before the next election. When you take into account taxes, national insurance contributions, pensions and student loan repayments, said Mr Laws, many middle-income earners are facing marginal tax rates of almost 50 per cent..."
Mr Laws is of course something of an expert in how the well-off can screw more money out of the state.

Update: The Daily Telegraph love Laws too - 'An early return to the frontline for David Laws. Telegraph View: The Liberal Democrat who resigned six months ago should be hastened back into the Government.'

David Laws: Missing

David Laws has stepped out of the shadows and given his first interview since the cock-up that led to his coming out and resignation in May.
You can hear the interview with the former Treasury Secretary on BBC Radio 5 Live at 7pm in the unfortunately titled Pienaar's Politics.
Asked if he missed being a minister, Laws said; "Everybody wants to be in the front line".
Although seeing as his cut-loving Lib-Dem colleagues in the Con-Dem coalition couldn't be less popular if they were caught putting cats in wheelie bins, Mr Laws stepping aside now looks like a pretty smart move.

UPDATE: He couldn't/wouldn't talk about expenses or his coming out. Ho-hum...