THERE is a defence to be put for Tory MP Geoffrey Cox reportedly earning nigh on a million pounds a year with his second job as a QC, but you won’t find me making it here.
The legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg is your man for that unseemly task. On his blog, Rozenberg says “being a backbench MP should not be a full-time job. Our representatives in parliament should remain in touch with the real world”.
Former Tory MP Dominic Grieve also mentioned the real world when he popped up on the Today programme.
This ‘real world’ doesn’t seem to be the one the rest of us live in, where you do one or perhaps two jobs to make ends meet.
No, this is a smug stratosphere where people paid £82,000 a year from the public purse are offered even more for sitting in a meeting or two, preparing the odd talk, having a quiet word in ministerial ears.
MPs of all parties have other jobs, it is true, some in the real world. MPs who are also doctors and medics, for example, can make informed contributions to the debate about Covid-19.
But most of the MPs raising eyebrows on the register of interests are older male Tories who are already well-padded. Being an MP should be a platform for public service, not a job advert for snuffling up money.
I mean, how do you explain £100,000 a year for Chris Grayling to advise Hutchinson Ports? Sadly, Grayling gets the last laugh here. ‘Failing Grayling’ they used to call him, and not without reason, but now he’s raking in an extra hundred grand for offering advice on a topic about which he once knew so little.
Then again, Boris Johnson is reported to have cleared a million in his last year before becoming prime minister, including around £300,000 for writing his tatty weekly column in the Daily Telegraph.
And yet even with all that money, when Johnson can’t run to the cost of a holiday or a few rolls of gold wallpaper, a rich pal with deep pockets steps in.
Tory sleaze and MPs’ extra jobs have resurfaced thanks to the Owen Paterson lobbying row. The now former Tory MP was said to be creaming in £100,000-plus a year extra for lobbying on behalf of two companies.
But that pales next to that true master of the game, David Cameron.
The former prime minister – biggest achievement in office: the unending shitshow of Brexit – celebrated his resignation by landing a job lobbying for Greensill Capital and reportedly earned £7.2m in salary and bonuses before the firm collapsed.
What on earth did he do to earn that much? How that was never a bigger scandal must just be one of those mysteries.
Geoffrey Cox, a man whose appearance suggests he’s spent some of those side earnings on a good meal or two, added to the outrage by voting from the Caribbean while working his side job.
Maybe not all second jobs for MPs should go, but earning a fortune while sitting in the Caribbean – isn’t that taking the piss?
Still, sometimes with MPs you don’t know what you’ve got till they’ve gone. Interviewed on the Today programme, the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown was challenged about his second jobs…
Q: You earned nearly £1 million in 2014 on top of your parliamentary wage.
A: No, I didn’t actually. I gave all the money to charity, I’ve always done that.
I wouldn’t always have said this, but I do miss Gordon.
To close, as the veteran broadcaster Adam Boulton is leaving Sky News, here is an unforgettable clip of him talking about Cameron, as shared on Twitter by Mahyar Tousi…
🚨 Adam Boulton is leaving Sky News
Let’s never forget how he once gave us the best thing that’s ever happened on a British news channel. pic.twitter.com/bs6SbgVgsm
— Mahyar Tousi (@MahyarTousi) November 9, 2021
No doubt the Daily Mail will put out the lie that all MPs are all as bad as each other.
Brown’s case, and others, show that that is not true. Almost all of the biggest gainers from second jobs (or in the case of Cox, clearly first jobs) are Tories.
Brown is a shining example of an honourable politician. There are others too.
Why don’t we hear more of the youngest MP – 25 year old Nadia Whittome – who became Labour MP for Nottingham East in 2019. She said then that until wages rise for the likes of carers, teaching assistants and nurses, she would take home from her MP’s salary only a “worker’s wage” of £35K after tax. The rest she gives to charity.
Keep telling it like it is, Julian.