Denis MacShane Talking Sense

Yes, you read aright.

Among other wise words herein, Sir Nicholas Winterton does in fact deserve an enormous amount of credit. MacShane focuses on his opposition to Mugabe when that monster was being backed by Thatcher and knighted by Major. Rightly so. But there is plenty more.

And Sir Anthony Steen’s work against child-trafficking, and his long campaign to expose the disappearances from the care system, now risk having no one to continue them in Parliament. All because of some infelicitous, but undoubtedly accurate, remarks about how people were envious of his big house.

David Cameron’s deeply dodgy expenses claims are all right. But, like Douglas Hogg’s moat for which not a penny was paid, like Sir Peter Viggers’s duck house for which not a penny was paid, and like whatever it was that Ian Gibson did wrong (voting against the Iraq War, to be precise), this is not.

So trafficked children can, quite literally, get lost.