Poor little Julie

Listened to Julie Kirkbride's defence of her arrangements with her siblings. A brave fight-back but it won't save her, not when there is a "Julie Must Go" group in Bromsgrove and a public meeting at the weekend where she will be called fit to burn. She is not planning to attend.

This has gone beyond questions over second home claims and has become a horrible, unstoppable avalanche of anger fed by envy politics. Blood lust in fact. Poor little Julie just cannot win and will be deselected unless she stands down. What will sink her is that whatever she says, people will not believe that she and that deadbeat Andrew MacKay were not in cahoots to maximise their claims. It may not be fair but politics seldom is - part of its fascination - and yet there is no shortage of people who want to get involved. Terry Waite for example. God alive.

It must be a slow news day because Julie is the lead item on the PM bulletins.

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Get your money on the Lib Dem PPC for Saffron Walden. He or she will be a shoo-in if Simon Heffer - irascible, incompetent, irrelevant - stands against Sir Alan Haselhurst, deputy speaker and recipient of generous expenses, thus splitting the vote. What an appalling, ocean-going, bespoke-tailored steaming pile of horse manure Heffer is.