The Right Stuff

I went to watch a rugby tournament at the weekend near to where I live in what has become an annual pilgrimage. Every year friends and I, as well as the other ten thousand spectators, will one minute be watching Fijian crush some English schoolboys and the next be sharing a hot tub with Gene Simmons from Kiss.

All in all it’s a bizarre weekend and not one that I could compare to a current parliamentary hot potato.

In amongst the skull crushing and debauchery my Blackberry alerted me that David Laws, the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, had resigned. This happened just as a bar girl dropped a tray of lagers all over a group of Amy Winehouse's.

Isolated, these two incidents have no relevance to one another. But as Lager-Gate unfolded in front of me I started to draw parallels between the bar urchin and the departing cabinet minister

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The girl (who, for the sake of legalities I must say looked at least sixteen years old), despite dropping umpteen pints remained calm and dignified. She managed the situation professionally and apologetically with a bemused smile wiped across her pug-face. I came to the conclusion that, despite this expensive misdemeanour, she remained a perfectly capable bargirl regardless of her butterfingers.

The only thing David Laws had splashed that day was his face over the Telegraph's front page. The paper said that Laws had used £40,000 of taxpayers money to rent a residence from his longterm partner,an act which since 2006 has been banned. Despite Laws' pledge to repay the money he gradually made his way through peak-time London traffic to the Treasury and announced his position had become "untenable".

It later emerged that the Telegraph's expose had not only ousted Laws from his Cabinet position - at 17 days, the shortest Cabinet career in British political history - but had also outed the MP as a homosexual: something he had fought his adult life to keep secret to protect those he loved.

But like the bar girl, was Laws, despite his error, not the right person for his job? Was he not, as Tom Wolfe would say, made of the Right Stuff to assist George Osborne tackling our sovereign deficit?

Laws' rise to the forefront of British politics came after earning a double first in economics at Cambridge and making a fortune in the City at JP Morgan and Barclays de Zoete Wedd. He inherited the safe Liberal Democrat seat of Yeovil, succeeding Paddy Ashdown, and increased his majority in the constituency in 2005.

His rise through the Lib Dem party meant he played a key role in the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition talk and landed the coveted Chief Secretary of the Treasury position he later resign from. Laws' vast economic background made him the ideal partner for Osborne but he now finds himself in political exile and I can't help but feel a little sorry for the man.

The Coalition has lost an amiable politician and a highly capable economist, his reputation is one that far exceeds the sleeze suggested by the recent 'scandal'. I'm not pointing the finger at the Telegraph for they have a right to uncover examples of misconduct such as Laws' misappropriation of expenses, I just think that, like the bar girl, Laws should have been give the opportunity to brush himself off and start again.