British Prime Minister David Cameron made a serious mistake when he tried to ignore widespread outrage that his Culture Secretary Maria Miller had fiddled with her mortgage costs to give herself a substantial extra payment from the taxpayer through her parliamentary expenses. Cameron should have been straightforward and asked her to resign when the scandal first broke rather than trying to make it go away, and now he has become tainted by the sleaziness of his greedy minister.
The challenge Cameron faces is how to restore his reputation for being a very poor judge of character. Only three years ago he allowed himself to get sucked into the scandal around the illegal activities of News International owned by the Murdoch family, which permanently damaged his reputation, as the country was just recovering from the firestorm over MP’s expenses. The problem is that Cameron has been a decent and competent prime minister. He has been loyal to his allies, done well by letting ministers get on with their jobs and has been successful in keeping the coalition on track. But Cameron could not have believed that he could have got away with letting Miller continue in her position. The Miller affair was not as serious as the News International scandal, which implicated Cameron directly, but it still calls his judgement into question and makes him seem out of touch with the basic qualities that British people want to see in their leader.
