Relaxing The Rules: Swinegate Returns

The good citizens of Wales must be very afraid.

On the very day the government re-announced the last government's "Equality Strategy", Ann Clwyd, MP for Cynon Valley, apparently rose to her hind legs and said this in support of relaxing the rules recently passed by MPs to curb expenses abuse:

"During my election campaign, someone came up to me and shouted 'Thief!' and if I had been a man I would have run after him and punched him in the face.”

So Ann clearly reckons it would have been okay for ex-MP David Chaytor to lamp his outraged constituents - at least, presumably before this week's guilty plea - and now the Equality Strategy means there's nothing to stop her 'aving a go...

I empathise with MPs who say they are struggling with legislation that they misconceived in their haste to get re-elected. Really I do. Because you could say that about an awful lot of their output, including their appalling attack on the digital economy in the course of the infamous "wash-up".

But we soldier on without being entitled to run people down in the street and punch them in the face, and so must our MPs - male or female.

There must be limits to the extent MPs can relax the rules for themselves.