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Pressure mounts on Julie Kirkbride
Former Telegraph journalist turned Tory MP faces tough questions about rewards for her brother and sister
It looks increasingly likely that the next victim of the Daily Telegraph's expenses scoop will be one of the paper's own former reporters, Julie Kirkbride, now the Tory MP for Bromsgrove. It follows the revelation that she used taxpayers' money to reward both her brother and sister.
Kirkbride (pictured), who was political correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1992 to 1996 when she joined the Sunday Telegraph as social affairs editor, is the wife of another Tory MP, Andrew MacKay, who last weekend was forced to announce that he will stand down at the next election.
In one of the earlier Telegraph reports, it was revealed that, between them, Kirkbride and MacKay were claiming second-home allowances for both the properties they share - a flat in London and a property in Bromsgrove.
Now it transpires that Kirkbride has also been using the Commons allowances system to reward two siblings.
Brother Ian has been allowed to live rent-free in the Bromsgrove property, even registering an IT business at the address. Furthermore, he bought £1,000 worth of electrical equipment - including a digital camera, five memory cards and software - which were paid for out of his sister's office allowance.
Julie Kirkbride insists she has done nothing wrong and says the items purchased by her brother were "entirely in relation to my parliamentary duties" and not for his IT business.
Sister Karen is paid £12,000 a year - again by the taxpayer - to be Julie's "executive secretary". Yet she conducts this work from her own home in Dorset - more than 140 miles away from Julie's Bromsgrove constituency and 107 miles from Westminster.
Until the new revelations about her siblings, David Cameron had apparently been content with one scalp from the MacKay-Kirkbride family. But Tory party officials are now suggesting Kirkbride should meet her constituents to explain her claims. This is exactly what her husband had to do last week in his constituency, Bracknell. Such was the ugly reception he received that Cameron phoned him the next day and made it clear he had no choice but to stand down at the next election.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this posting, the Daily Telegraph disclosed on May 28 that Julie Kirkbride has increased her taxpayer-funded mortgage to help finance a £50,000 extension to her Bromsgrove home to create an extra bedroom for her brother, Ian. A BBC Today programme report from Bromsgrove found many constituents demanding her resignation. ·
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I am beginning to wonder whether this bizarre woman inhabits the same planet as I do.
Her oleaginous nepotistic bleatings on the radio seem to suggest she feels a saintly right to lead her people; it's her calling, and she loves it; she loves her job.
So would I, with the benefit of an ever-full trough of money, courtesy of her humble followers, from which to suck and leech.
Of course she must go as must all the corrupt self helpers. The problem is parties; a threat to democracy, they become monsters of manipulation and control. Loyalty to the party is more important than representing electors, time to ditch the parties and vote for independents who live in the constituency.