Legg ‘damns MPs as criminals’ but how many will revolt?

Forty to 50 Labour MPs are now in Committee Room 11 at the Commons letting off steam with the Chief Whip and Harriet Harman.

It is a fuller briefing that was promised to MPs last night at the PLP explaining how we got into a position where MPs are being asked to pay back invoiced, cleared, claimed amounts they had been told were all within the rules.

They are hoping for co-ordinated action that will see Thomas Legg back down and stop making retrospective cash payback demands.

But many MPs will simply pay back the money to save, as they see it, what remains of their reputation and not join in a collective revolt.

I suspect Legg won’t be very keen to back down either and scanning the headlines will feel that he judged it about right.

MPs on all sides feel he has simply ridden an hysterical wave and is, in the words of one former Cabinet minister I spoke to, “damning us all as f***ing criminals”.

The mood in this place is easily as low as it was at the height of the Telegraph stories… quite a few Labour MPs specifically fingering Gordon Brown for demanding this audit then not keeping a tight enough grip on its remit.

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