Calm down dear, it's merely my manifesto to purge the Commons of fiddlers and PC idiots

Roy Hattersley savages the idea of people like Michael Winner standing as MPs. Calm down dear, says the man himself, I'd merely purge the House and send PC idiots to the gulag.

By Michael Winner for the Daily Mail
Updated: 01:54 EST, 29 May 2009

The befuddled old political failure Roy Hattersley - in argument against the prospect of more independent MPs - reveals his legendary lack of wisdom in expressing his 'horrible fear at the prospect of Michael Winner putting his name forward as an MP'.

Calm down, dear. What are you afraid of? Do you really think anyone - 'Mr' H slags off Esther Rantzen as MP material also - is likely to be worse than the current lot? A trained gorilla would be better than what we've got now.

Or you, Roy, when you were bumbling about achieving nothing during your years in Parliament. Tell you what, why not publish, in great detail, your 'expenses' paid for by the nation over that time.

When I was on BBC1's Question Time in March, well before the current appalling disclosures of MPs on the fiddle, Tory chairman Eric Pickles was trying to defend a second-home allowance when he lived only a few miles from Parliament. The audience rightly booed him.

I said then it was clear the House of Commons was riddled with deception, fiddling and the milking of money from the taxpayer. I also reminded them that the only thing needed for the triumph of evil was for good men to remain silent.

'I ask the MPs on this panel,' I said, 'to tell us when they stood up in the House and criticised these excesses.' Of course, they hadn't. Nor I am sure did Mr - I know he's a lord. What did he do to deserve it? - Hattersley.

Those who didn't have their snout in the trough - if there are any - are as guilty as those who did. Because they knew what was going on and did nothing about it. I include in that bunch Messrs Cameron and Brown. Only now are they playing holier than thou with their promises to clean things up. Why didn't they do it earlier? It rings pretty false to me.

I don't believe that when, as a kid, I sat in the public gallery and watched the entrance of one of the greatest political performers of the century - Winston Churchill - into the House, the gentlemanly group assembled were claiming for bird-baths and mortgages that were already paid off.

When I shared a glass of sherry at Cambridge with Clement Attlee and Hugh Gaitskell, I thought in those days that it was an honour to be in the presence of our elected representatives.

The marvellously dotty Margaret Thatcher was, I'm sure, above such shenanigans. I liked her. 'Don't introduce Mr Winner to me!' she once trilled at the braided toastmaster at No10. 'Mr Winner and I are old friends.'

Silly Roy Hattersley obviously thinks he belongs to a super-race of people who are qualified to stand for Parliament. The rest of us riff-raff are inferior and shouldn't dare to seek office. Possibly he deludes himself that he had a successful career.

I've dealt with MPs a lot over the years. I have frequently been gobsmacked by their stupidity. Twenty-five years ago, when I arranged for a memorial to be unveiled to PC Yvonne Fletcher, the policewoman who was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in St James's Square, David Steel, then leader of the Liberal Party, declined to attend.

I put it to him that as Mrs Thatcher, David Owen and Neil Kinnock were coming - representing all other major parties - it might by intelligent for him to attend. (Owen was then one of the 'Gang of Four' who had left Labour to form the Social Democrats.)

Steel and I were on Breakfast TV the morning before the unveiling. The host asked Steel: 'Will you be going to the Yvonne Fletcher memorial ceremony?'

'I wasn't,' he replied, 'but Michael Winner twisted my arm.' What a stupid thing to say. He made sure everyone knew he didn't want to go and he annoyed me into the bargain. It was a pathetic sight watching him trying to bluff his way out.

You have only to listen to the imbecilic booing and cat-calling of our MPs in their so-called debates to realise that, whether they went to boarding school or not, they never rid themselves of their idiotic schoolboy mentality. And these are the people supposedly governing us lesser mortals! They're meant to be setting us an example!

As for promises from the few to repay their ill-gotten gains, what about the interest on those illicit sums? I never hear it suggested they should pay back the money plus interest. Never has so much been owed by so few to so many.

Many of us are on the fiddle one way or another. I stuck money in Switzerland in the late Sixties when tax here was 95 pence in the pound. I brought it all back in 1980 and it went into the UK economy. But I'd fiddled the revenue out of tax on the interest.

A few years ago, I decided to tell the taxman all, settle up and die a saint. I didn't just give the money back. I most properly had to give it back plus interest. A bill of over £3million.

Some of these MPs have had thousands of pounds of our money for years. Giving it back isn't enough. I paid interest on my fiddle. Why shouldn't they pay it on their swindles?

So if I've set them such a good example, why shouldn't I stand for election? The truth is - regardless of Roy Hattersley - I won't, because I couldn't stand being stuck in Parliament with so many MPs.

All MPs do is twitter. They twittered long before it became an internet sensation. They don't achieve anything. They're too busy filling Westminster with hot air. And filling their pockets with our money. Being an MP doesn't help anyone.

Instead, I fancy being a dictator. I'd give this country a total overhaul - imposing the values I was brought up with.

Stop letting crooks go free or being handed derisory sentences. Sack the judges who let off rapists and child molesters. Bring back the death penalty. Return to their country of origin, whether they hold a British passport or not, any serious offender. Stop immigration.

Don't get me wrong, I am aware of the benefits people of different races and religion have brought to this country. But enough is enough. My grandfather came here from Russia in 1896. I have his naturalisation papers - they were signed by Winston Churchill when he was an Under Secretary of State.

My mother came from Poland. But we all respected this country. We were and are proud and thankful for what it gave us. We worked. We didn't turn up, announce we were here to stay and get a flat and an income from social security.

What government and which MPs - Roy Hattersley probably - permitted that nonsense to happen? As for the civil rights and politically correct brigade, put them some place where they can't be heard - like the gulag.

Do they not realise we are fighting a war against forces of evil that are hell-bent on destroying our country?

During World War II, we didn't mess around. If people were reasonably suspected of being Nazi sympathisers they were put in a camp, well treated, but kept where they could do us no harm.

As for the rights culture, I'm more concerned for the civil rights of old ladies being beaten up for sweets and innocent citizens blown up by terrorists.

What about their rights? The rights of you and me. Decent, law-abiding citizens? It seems that if you're a drug-trafficker, a sex-slaver, a derelict, an enemy of this country - then you're welcome. Come on in, we'll pay your bills. We'll feed and house you. The result of this misplaced philanthropy is near-total chaos.

So that would be my platform as your prospective Member of Parliament. No chance for me, is there?

It's the wobbly, ineffectual Roy Hattersleys and the rip-off carpetbaggers who get elected and besmirch us all. I'll just have to stay an outsider.