A General Election is the only way that trust can be restored

I was very happy to support David Cameron’s call earlier this week for an immediate General Election as a means of restoring people’s trust in our political system.

As an elected politician of 11 years experience and a political anorak for many years before that, I have never known a situation like the one we have at present. And there is a very good reason for this - it is unprecedented.

The ongoing scandals surrounding MPs’ expenses - MPs from all parties – has brought shame on our Parliament and our country.

Over the last few weeks, we have had wave after wave of party leaders and others including the Speaker running to the fore claiming they have the solution to the problem.

And yes, clearly I would say this, but I think only David Cameron has come anywhere close to making the rights calls and taking the proper action against those individuals in his own party who have stepped out of line.

But there is a bigger issue that must be addressed –people must be allowed to have their say on their local MP’s conduct.

Parliament belongs to the people, not MPs, and people must have faith in their Parliament.

Mandates must be renewed and a General Election must be called.

Please click on to http://www.signforchange.com/ if you want to support the Conservative campaign for this to happen.

Brown dithers and deflects whilst Cameron is ready to lead

In the midst of the ongoing and, at times, jaw-dropping controversy over MPs’ expenses, the deepening recession continues to bite in an equally shocking manner.

Yesterday we learnt that 244,000 people had lost their jobs over the last three months – the largest quarterly rise since 1981 - taking the total number of unemployed to 2.22 million.

And today we had further confirmation that the Labour Government was much too optimistic with its economic forecasts in last month’s Budget after the Bank of England announced that the economy would contract by 4.5% this year – a full 1% more than that predicted by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.

David Cameron rightly received credit for his leadership in taking swift and very strong action on Conservative MPs’ expenses yesterday whilst, yet again, Gordon Brown dithered.

And whilst Gordon Brown continues to spend his time trying to deflect blame for his central role in the economic crisis which is costing so many people their jobs and homes, David Cameron and George Osborne have never looked more ready to take responsibility in Government for placing us back on the road to economic recovery.