World | UK
Book lifts lids on excesses in Commons
Veteran MP's tell-all account caricatures and enrages colleagues with thinly veiled personal attacks
- Daily Mail
- Published: 00:00 January 23, 2012
London: A veteran MP has enraged fellow politicians by making a series of scathing personal attacks on them in a book that claims to lift the lid on corruption at Westminster.
Labour's Paul Flynn exposes junketing, boozing and "serial seducers who have sex in their Commons offices".
His book, How To Be An MP, says "travel glutton Gulliver" MPs "prostitute" themselves on foreign trips paid for by "greedy" businessmen and tyrants.
He claims curbs on sleaze after the expenses scandal have not ended the risk of Westminster being "re-infested with corruption". And he advises MPs to get rid of trouble-making constituents by telling them they are mad.
But Flynn, 76, faces an angry backlash from MPs over his thinly disguised caricatures of real-life politicians. They include the "witch doctor", "tantric teaser", "media tart", "shroud waver", "world conscience", "in-flight fueller", "virtuoso bore" and "single-issue eccentric". Most are not identified, but some appear easily recognisable.
The "witch doctor" MP is an unnamed "eccentric" who supports "wild alternative medical advice". Flynn says the MP repaid £755 (Dh4,316) he claimed in expenses for "astrology software" and had a £125 claim for a seminar on "the male and female essence" rejected. In the expenses scandal, the Tory MP David Tredinnick, an advocate of alternative medicine, paid back £755 for astrology software and had a £125 claim for a course in ‘the male and female essence' turned down.
Flynn, MP for Newport West, also refers to an unnamed member branded "Gorillagram" because he "could earn a living delivering gorillagrams without the aid of a monkey suit". Then there was an anonymous Tory known as the "Talking Grow Bag" for his "dreary country suits" and a "Fred Nobody MP" asking endless questions about an African country he had visited. Asked to name them, Flynn refused, saying: "It might upset them. There are lots of Fred Nobodies. It could be one of 20."
Flynn lambasts "Gulliver" MPs "travel gluttons consoled by long hours in the sun at the poolside of a luxury hotel". He wrote: "Commercial jaunts stuff large quantities of protein and alcohol into MPs: ideal for those who have decided to prostitute their time to the highest bidder.
"Dozens of ugly repressive governments welcome soft-hearted, soft-brained MPs. Azerbaijan, Belarus and Equatorial Guinea are the latest favourites."
He alludes to three unnamed Tories who "in 2011 flew to the hell hole of Equatorial Guinea. They flew business-class to the oil-rich African country and the total cost of the visit was almost £25,000".
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