As members of the BMAC prepare their questions and gather their wits for this morning's grilling of Boris's true number two Simon Milton and GLA finance chief Martin Clarke, new angles on the story keep opening up. Apologists trolling at my Cif piece yesterday imagine that screaming "Lee Jasper" loudly enough will make the Clement problem go away, but City Hall and other London Tories know better. Not only are the comparisons highly inexact, but the relevant context is not something that happened under the previous Mayor but the promises made by the present one.
That is why, as Paul Waugh documented yesterday, True Blues from James Cleverly to MP Justine Greening are hopping mad about it. The possibility of a police investigation adds to the sense that the scandal over politicians' expenses has flowed along the Thames from the Labour-controlled Commons to the Tory-run City Hall. The Tory blogosphere has been very subdued: see this sober post by Tim Montgomerie.
Clement's undoing has had the further effect of opening up parts of Tory London local government to scrutiny. Adam has discovered that:
Only one of Ian Clement's Bexley Council colleagues declared their meals with the former Deputy Mayor and only then after the revelations of this past week.
The "one" was Gareth Bacon, who did so only after his difficult interview with the Beeb's Tim Donovan on Sunday (Adam, by the way, had put in a FoI request about Clement's use of his Bexley credit card. He, along with the borough's Labour group, deserves credit for those being so diligently published). Tories in Chipping Barnet won't be relishing the publicity either. Then there's these matters to consider, as set out by Tom at Boris Watch:
What interests me are the role Clement and the Bexley Machine played in Boris's election campaign...and how his departure affects the plan to move power from the centre to the Tory boroughs, which was essentially Clement's job - he was the man to give the Boroughs a Voice.
There's a lot in the issue of Tory boroughs' relationships with the Boris administration, not least the confidence they have taken from his presence and the clues some of their policies - perhaps more than Boris's own - might provide about the character of a future Conservative government. As for the matter of Bexley's money and Clement's work on Johnson's campaign, well, as I reported yesterday the Bexley Labour group has been putting in plenty of hours.
Among other things it is wondering what work Clement was doing on 13 September, 5 and 8 October and 3 December 2007, and on 3, 4, 6, 10 and 21 January and 2 and 28 April 2008, a time period coinciding with that of the Boris Johnson mayoral election campaign. On each of these days he purchased travel cards that would have enabled him to go anywhere in London. No details have been provided about any meetings he attended on Bexley's behalf on those days. Two other tickets bought in February 2008 were claimed for in relation to Bexley-business appointments, but why were these bought before eight in the morning when the appointments weren't until mid-afternoon?
That's a taste of it. And I haven't even started on the snacks.
