Tory tactics in attacking PM risks backlash on all parties

Labour has decided it’s a bit too embarrassing to carry on using its lawyers while the three Labour MPs facing trials are using them too, so it is letting it be known that it will not be instructing the firm, Steel and Shamash, until the cases of the three MPs are finished.

That’s a second cave-in, the Tories will claim, after pre-briefing on David Cameron’s speech this morning seemed to trigger Labour to suspend its three MPs from the party.

In the same paragraph of his speech David Cameron said it was wrong for the MPs to use Labour’s lawyers.

The Tories think some of their most successful attacks on Gordon Brown have come from moments like this when they feel they’ve forced him to act. They believe this plays into some the negatives that voters have of the prime minister.

They must also recognise that few will be focused on the minutiae of this saga and that putting the expenses story in the headlines, layered with personal abuse against the prime minister, risks reviving the public’s “plague on all your houses” view of the parties.

The Liberal Democrats have been told that their hopes to put in an amendment to the Constitutional Renewal Bill tomorrow tightening up the laws of parliamentary privilege are too late.

The party must now ponder whether to bring an amendment at report stage later on or heed the subtle hint delivered this afternoon by the Speaker that MPs really should consider belting up on this one or risk being the politician labelled as the one who collapsed the trial.