Fiona Mactaggart, MP who can afford to rebel

The Mole, The First Post's Westminster insider, espouses the theory today that some Labour backbenchers might prefer to keep Gordon Brown in power because that way they can at least keep their seats until 2010 and guarantee their salaries being paid a little longer than if they elect a new leader and force an early general election.

Which could explain why one of the Labour MPs demanding a leadership challenge to Gordon Brown - untroubled by the prospect of losing their parliamentary income - is Fiona Mactaggart, a former Home Office Minister who is reckoned to be the second richest Labour MP in the House of Commons after the former Jaguar chairman Geoffrey Robinson.

Mactaggart is among those who have requested leadership nomination papers, the initial procedure for a challenge, claiming the Labour party no longer has "a clear sense of leadership and direction" and that voters are "confused about what we stand for".

A former 'Blair babe' - one of the 101 women MPs elected in the Labour landslide on May 1 1997 - Mactaggart is not regarded as one of the 'usual suspects' among Labour rebels. However her politics do represent a rebellion from her parents' allegiances. Her father was Sir Ian Mactaggart, a baronet and multi-millionaire Glasgow property dealer. Her mother, Rosemary, was the daughter of Sir Herbert Williams Bt, a Tory MP for 27 years.

Before becoming a primary school teacher and later entering parliament, Fiona was general secretary of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. Sir Ian, on the other hand, was a right-wing Tory, prominent in the Monday Club, a body noted for its controversial anti-immigration stance. Despite her wayward political stance, Sir Ian still left her £6.5m in his will, about a fifth of his estate - enough to make an MP's annual salary of £61,820 seem pretty insignificant.
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