Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

This week I gave lunch to two councillors and an ex-councillor from my constituency, at the House of Commons. I was asked what was the thing I enjoyed most about being a Member of Parliament – not for the first time.

It is true that here every day is different, and that you also have a ringside seat at the heart of the nation’s political process. You also meet extraordinary people, from unsung heroes in your own constituency to the great and the good. I recently met the brilliantly articulate Bill Clinton, and also Gerhard Schroder, who tells stories of his political life with terrific panache and good humour.

However it is the constituency which is the most satisfying not least because you can directly make an impact on people’s lives. For example, yesterday I wrote to the new Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, pleading with him to speed up a decision about the future of Newmarket Hospital in my constituency. The hospital fulfils all the criteria the government favours, something admitted to me by his predecessor, Patricia Hewitt, in our various meetings. However, what with a change of Prime Minister and a Cabinet reshuffle, things have been on hold. It will certainly be a very happy day for me if we can get what my constituents really want. To put it mildly, after all the campaigning, I am on tenterhooks, because I know how much the decision means to the people who elected me, and indeed to their Parliamentary representative.

We can take some pride in the fact that, of all the many attractions in London, Parliament and the beauty of its buildings have an enduring appeal to young and old. Tourists from all over the world, as well as people living in other parts of the UK, come to see Big Ben and the famous Gothic architecture of our Parliament. However, in recent years this experience has been blighted by one or two protestors in Parliament Square. I am referring, in particular, to the foul and offensive tirade of abuse that pours forth from a megaphone every day in full view of visitors, tourists, school children and the police.

We have an enviable tradition in this country of free speech, liberty to form pressure groups and to come and protest for a particular cause. There are hundreds of different groups ranging from local hospital campaigners to organisations like Amnesty International who arrange to protest outside Parliament every year. It gives MPs a chance to listen, meet and discuss their concerns and gives individuals the opportunity to make their voice heard.

Yet, this is very different. Using their megaphone, obscenities such as “B******s!”, “A load of s**t”, and before Prime Minister’s Questions, the cry of “you f*****g b*****d!” can be heard loudly outside the Houses of Parliament. Imagine a group of young schoolchildren being taken on a visit to Westminster and returning home after hearing such foul-mouthed and unpleasant language. It would not be allowed on daytime television, and yet in takes place in view of police officers who are powerless to intervene, and deeply embarrassed. If they try to intervene directly they are shouted down with the megaphone.

I am investigating along with others to see what action can be taken to stop this offensive behaviour.

If it is true that all political careers end in failure, there is a strong underlying assumption that politicians never leave office at the time of their own choosing.

Had Margaret Thatcher left on her tenth anniversary, she would have gone in the most favourable circumstances. The next two years were the unhappiest possible for her. By contrast Tony Blair is going deeply mistrusted and unpopular.

I suspect that ultimately attitudes will level out, especially when Gordon Brown takes over. I would like to suggest that those Labour MPs who have been baying for his blood will begin to miss him. We will not!

I jokingly asked a Labour whip the day before the vote whether he had a knuckle-duster ready for use. He rather sardonically replied that it would take a bit more than that…..

The Liberal Democrats, all over the place and increasingly marginalised and irrelevant, argued that we had to wait until 2010 to decide, a view more to do with their own divisions. The overall majority was made possible by the Conservative vote, not a joyous moment for the Government. Labour MPs not only looked at the future of Trident per se, but also had the opportunity of giving the Prime Minister a bruising. Discipline within the party is breaking down as Labour MPs look beyond the Blair reign.

When the wheels begin to come off a Government, they continue to do so. If Gordon thinks he will restore calm, trust and discipline to his Party he has an unwelcome surprise ahead of him. The vote was simply another sign of more to come.

About two years after I became a Member of Parliament in 1992, a Cabinet Minister, surveying the huge difficulties engulfing the then Government said to me “It normally isn’t like this. Don’t worry it is early days and normality will return”. Well, of course, it did not.

Yesterday I bumped into a Government Minister, and observed to him “Well this is all rather like what we went through in the mid-Nineties”. “Yes” he replied, “That is true but at least it is happening at this stage of the Parliament, not at the end, so the storms will pass…………..er, at least, I hope that that is the case”, he added with a very nervous smile.

The players and the story are different this time. But I have news for him – it really is déjà vu all over again.

When Tony Blair talked about a clunking fist in the Queen’s Speech debate, everybody, including John Prescott – laughed.

Two years ago, I was behind the Deputy Prime Minister in a queue in the House of Commons tea room.   He very menacingly turned around and asked “Why do you persecute me?”   I assured him that I did not do so, had never done so, and had no idea what he was talking about.  It transpired that he thought that I was my Parliamentary colleague, Andrew Robathan, who has indeed greatly interested himself in John Prescott’s various perks.

A year later, Tory and Labour MPs were voting together in the division lobby when a particularly ferocious looking John Prescott inched past me.  He looked as if were about to practice his clunking fist on me so I quickly said “please do not hit me”.  His reply “Don’t worry it’s the other officer type I am after” was something of a relief.

Regrettably, for the enjoyment of the nation, he will not be succeeding Tony Blair.  I can also confidently predict that David Cameron will never receive a knock-out blow from Gordon Brown (we presume) either.  Or even John Reid.  The story may not be quite over yet…..

I am sure that when the Queen first heard about a film being made about her, surrounding the events at the time of the death of Diana, she must have been rather apprehensive. Instead it has made her even more popular - and set off a fashion for Barbour jackets in Manhattan!

She is with us today at the State Opening. Despite all the difficulties which have beset her family, she has been a totally exemplary Head of State. As one surveys the inadequacies and vanities of many heads of state in republics we can give thanks that we have nothing like that. She has seen prime ministers and presidents come and go over five decades; she has provided astonishing continuity.

Let us hope that there will be many more occasions when she presides over the opening of Parliament. Not for her the lecture circuit, which the current incumbent of 10 Downing Street will be doing from next year. 

Tomorrow we hear the Queen’s Speech amid all the trappings of Parliamentary spectacle and tradition. I have at times felt sorry for the Sovereign who has had to read out cringe-making drivel about how everything is being updated and modernised, New Labour weasel words for lack of action and/or functional incompetence.

Clearly the Government thinks that by talking tough about criminality and terrorism, the electorate will overlook their failings. They only have to look across the Atlantic to see that when credibility is lost, the politics of fear do not work. The electorate will not be fooled; an avalanche of recent criminal justice legislation cannot dispel the public’s view that we have the most dysfunctional Home Office ever. To his great credit, David Davis has set down clear lines of rejection of insupportable invasions of our liberties, while pointing out robustly the catalogue of failures associated with this Government. There have been repeated calls for effective border monitoring, the use of intercept evidence and a specific senior Minister for home security – none of this has happened.

For years, terrorist groupings, to the fury of foreign Governments, operated from here without hindrance. The collapse of our asylum and immigration arrangements has meant we have no idea who is here, let alone be able to deport them.

So if, as I suspect, the Government seek to portray the Conservatives as soft and lily-livered, it will backfire. They will personalise their attacks on David Cameron. It will not work.

We will get a flavour of their folly at the State Opening tomorrow. 

It was supposedly said by Lady Eden, of the 1956 Suez crisis, that she felt as if the Suez Canal ran through Downing Street.  I wonder what Cherie thinks about Iraq today.

Yesterday said it all.  So febrile and lacking in confidence is the Government becoming, that Tony Blair was not to be seen in the chamber of the House of Commons at all during the debate on Iraq.   We are always told that what happens abroad does not impact voters domestically, yet the Iraq debacle crystallises the terrible triumph of spin over substance that marks the Blair era.

It was Suez that cost Sir Anthony Eden his job.  It is the tragic situation in the Middle East which will cause Blair to leave office with such a diminished reputation.

At the weekend in my constituency, a number of people came up to me to congratulate me on my frugality and my personal value for money.  Initially this puzzled me until discovering that my spending on Parliamentary allowances was less than other MPs in East Anglia.

Whilst working in the financial services industry before entering Parliament, there were times when I was in the office by 7.15am, and sometimes working until 10pm.   When politicians used to tell me they worked very hard, my reaction was “oh yes?”  Actually, it really is true.  There might be a notion that during the summer Parliamentary recess, MPs are reclining on some sun drenched chaise longue or sipping rum punches.   That is not true either.   In this context, I was amused to read that a distinguished journalist friend, who really is at the top of his profession and deserves to be rewarded as such, described our housing allowance as a “racket”.   We get around £3,000 each month after tax and various deductions, and without some help to run a second residence either in London or in one’s constituency, it would be, er, something of a challenge.

I make absolutely no complaint whatsoever.  We really are the servants of the people and should never forget it.  Also, I freely admit that Gordon Brown’s assault on people’s pensions have shone a fresh light on our own arrangements.

Throughout the ages politicians collectively have been held in low regard.   That will never change.  Nevertheless perhaps we can draw a bit of comfort from the fact that we are routinely bracketed, in the public’s generalised lack of affection, with estate agents and journalists.

Mercifully there is still a respectable margin between said MPs, estate agents and journalists, and those who are detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure!