0wen paterson affair. in a report, the parliamentary. standards watchdog said he had repeatedly broken lobbying i rules while working as a paid consultant for two firms. borisjohnson wanted to save his friend and former minister 0wen paterson from being punished for breaking the paid lobbying rules. his plan? create a new conservative controlled committee to review the work of the standards watchdog. i think the thing that the paterson affair tells us most about is the government s attitude towards parliament. opening up the whole questions about how mps are dealt with by parliament, how the standards process works. but, on the basis of trying to save one individual case, and that blew up in their face. the ayes to the right, 238!
Governments in by elections. even in old bexley, a 13 point drop in support but there is a big difference between that and a 31 point drop in support. this is actually the second biggest fall in conservative support in any by election where there wasn t some unusual intervention by a third party candidate. this isn tjust a normal bit of by election protest, this is a substantial piece of by election protest. basically the conservative party has lost between six and eight points in the national opinion polls, since the affair that started this saga which ended up with this by election which was the 0wen paterson affair. that s a pretty substantial loss in a short space of time and it s something that should worry the conservative party. in particular what they need to realise, a lot of the coalition
Constituents. because ultimately this comes down to people and the rest of the country, not what s going on here and whether boris johnson is up or down within his own party. for many people particularly at this time of year, it brings back all the difficult decisions they had to make last year, the bad memories, reopening wounds and the fact that they weren t able to spend christmas with loved ones, and in many cases people were facing much more tragic circumstances. but certainly it would be very interesting to see those tory mps on the benches tomorrow and see how supportive they are. , ., , y tomorrow and see how supportive they are. , ., , , ., ., tomorrow and see how supportive they are. ,., ., ., ., are. obviously we had a bit of that when people are. obviously we had a bit of that when people didn t are. obviously we had a bit of that when people didn t turn are. obviously we had a bit of that when people didn t turn out to - are. obviously we had a bit of that when peo