A Reason to Recall?

A puzzler for a Sunday evening; would the Chris Huhne affair, or the David Laws expenses issue, be enough to allow their constituencts to re-call them under the new provisions being laid out by David Cameron and Nick Clegg?

Mr Cameron has said in the past that re-call would be option where MPs have been "guilty of wrongdoing." Would this include, as some people have suggested today about Huhne, misleading your constituents over your private life?

Personally I hope not, and I have concerns that the re-call function would be too easily triggered (10% is required in any given constituency - one party alone could probably manage this in most seats). We need to know, and know soon, what safeguards will be put in place. This is crucial and very difficult question, and I don't have an answer, because those safeguards are needed for 2 reasons - for MPs against mob-rule and for the public against wrongdoing MPs. Can we manage both?

When should a Minister resign?

Any good AS Politics will tell you that there are 3 types of responsibility that a Minister has to observe - collective, ministerial and individual. With the formation of a coalition government who'd have thought the first two crisis points would be because of individual issues rather than collective ones (and by two LibDems!).

Chris Huhne, however, will politically survive his marital problems. That is because, unless there is more to come out, there is no law breaking, no hypocrisy and no lies to the public involved. I guess he'll also survive because the government couldn't hack losing a second LibDem Secretary of State in a row within six weeks of taking office. A friend mused that it also because there are few LibDems MPs left whom you actually appoint to the cabinet.

So all-in-all he's pretty safe at the moment, but it will be interesting to see if the mud sticks throughout the rest of his Ministerial and political career.