MPs’ allowances: Brown backs down on change

Not a good day for our beloved leader. After walking tall with the troops in Afghanistan this morning, Gordon Brown flew to Pakistan where he was immediately snubbed by President Zardari. He told reporters on the plane to Islamabad that he would be holding a joint press conference with the Pakistani president. But apparently in retaliation for a speech Brown made in Kabul, where he talked about the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan being "a crucible for global terrorism", Zardari pulled out.

In his place, Zardari delegated his relatively junior Pakistani Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani to do the double-act with Brown. Downing Street aides tried to brush it off as "entirely appropriate" that the PM should meet his opposite number. But the truth is that, on his last trip in December, Brown and Zardari held a joint conference and that's what Brown was expecting again today.

This comes on top of bad news from Westminster where Brown has had to beat a humiliating retreat over the vexed issue of MPs' expenses and the £24,000-a-year second home allowance.

Word has reached the twitching ears of the Mole that Brown is not now going to push for a vote on Thursday on the replacement of the second homes allowance, after being advised flatly by his own ministers that he would lose the vote.

The Government is letting it be known this afternoon that the proposals for the replacement of the second home allowance with a flat fee for turning up are likely to be withdrawn and the whole issue is being put back until after a report by the sleaze Czar, Sir Christopher Kelly. And that will not be until after the next election.

Kelly was one of those who helped to kill the mad-cap scheme for a 'sign on' fee for MPs, telling the BBC last week: "I think the public would have great difficulty with the notion that claims for the reimbursement of expenses should not need to be backed by receipts."

The details are yet to be announced, but if true, it is a poor reflection on Brown's leadership. No doubt Downing Street will want to write the whole episode off as a storm in a Westminster tea-cup. But the saga of inaction, followed by panic, followed by surrender, raises questions about Brown's handling of the issue.

As public outrage grew over the disclosure of ministers' behaviour - in particularly Jacqui Smith's second home arrangements and the charging of her husband's porn movies to the taxpayer, even if it was accidental - Brown failed to understand how much damage it was doing.

At first, he said it was not an issue for him or his government. Then he agreed to the review by Sir Christopher Kelly. But as further revelations continued to keep the story in the news, Brown threw a fit.

It was over one expenses scandal last year that Brown is said to have thrown a computer printer across a room at Downing Street. Now, he was furious again and wanted an instant solution to get it out of the headlines.

The upshot is that Brown looks and sounds out of touch both with the public and his own side at Westminster. The more he tramps round the world - he's going to Poland on Tuesday on the way back from Afghanistan, and is expected to mark Holocaust Day at the Auschwitz memorial - the more people are saying: he just doesn't get it, does he?