Ann Keen MP - Big in Azerbaijan

It's not often that this blog gets visitors from far-flung outposts such as Baku, Azerbaijan but today it did! And I'm delighted to note that they came in search of news about Ann Keen MP. Little could I have known, when I wrote last October "It used to be granite-jawed Soviets who would whitewash the truth on the other side of the Iron Curtain, now it's our very own home-grown chubby-cheeked New Labour aparatchiks, like her", that she'd prove to be my most popular topic of all - and now, evidently, she's even gained notoriety in the old Evil Empire itself. Probably more to do with insuring her septuagenarian husband for £430K, so that the apartment she's bought with their expenses is all hers when he pops off, than my gripe about her indifference to dentist shortages and toothache in Lincolnshire. Even so, I'm glad if I can add anything to the body of knowledge about this bloody woman.

But still, you'd have thought a wheeze like hers would be small beer in former Soviet republics - hardly worth reporting in a country that ranks among the most corrupt in the world and where nothing much moves without palms being greased. She's obviously struck a chord there. I expect Azeri politicians who have to give hefty bribes to their own officials before they'll wave through big claims, envy Ann Keen - where all she and her husband need do is put in a non-itemised claim every month asking for £1600 each and it's paid, no questions asked. Maybe it was one of them. Just goes to show how much these emerging democracies still have to learn from countries like us, where we're mature enough to rely on our Members being Honourable and they can use public money to hide behind confidentiality until the truth is dragged from them through the courts.

Currently, they're sitting on an estimated £300,000 capital gain funded entirely by a one-way bet placed with taxpayers' money - it's this that gets people's backs up. I wonder if, now that she's in all the papers, she has the slightest twinge of guilt or shame. I doubt it, I expect she thinks she's worth every penny. Well, at least I console myself with the thought that she bought the new place at almost the peak of the property market. With luck, negative equity looms. And with a majority of 4,400, chances are she'll be slung out at the general election. So her next best bet for paying off the mortgage might well be collecting on her old man's insurance. What a position to be in. To look at your husband and know that if he doesn't wake up one morning, at least you'll have financial salvation.