Alistair Darling to repay some of his expenses

If Gordon Brown does want to move Alistair Darling out of No. 11 his task just got a lot easier. Gordon Brown’s defence of Alistair Darling’s position over the £1,004 service charge on a flat in Lambeth sounded equivocal at 7am in TV interviews.

The PM was fully standing by his “friend” by the time he spoke to Radio 4’s Today programme at 8am.

Alistair Darling, soon after that, had another look at the whole thing and realised that he’d have to pay some money back.

The problem seems to be that Alistair Darling was focused on the Telegraph headline claim – the idea that he had simultaneously claimed on two homes – a breach of the rules.

At the time he claimed, he was living in Lambeth and so claiming for the next few months’ service charge there was legitimate.

He wasn’t focused on what David Cameron calls the “smell test” – does it stink when the voters look at it? He moved out of the Lambeth flat during the period for which he had pre-claimed.

David Cameron has a bunch of auditors who look at things with this in mind – with a cruel eye, you might say. Gordon Brown’s ministers have more informal self-checks going on.

They’re bound to look at themselves more benignly and so they may be missing the sort of traps that Alistair Darling just walked into.

If the Daily Telegraph can find a nugget like this in the chancellor’s file more than six weeks after they acquired the disc on MPs’ expenses, what else lurks for other big beasts?