Will David Laws Be First Casualty Of New Coalition?

The Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, could quite possibly be the new government's first casualty.

The MP, who only last week,  was in the spotlight spelling out to the nation huge proposed cuts in public spending, has found himself embroiled in a row about his expenses and a nine-year homosexual relationship that he had desperately tried to keep out of the public eye.

One has to have a certain amount of sympathy for Mr Laws, who is very popular amongst his constituents and is, by all accounts, an excellent Member of Parliament. This is coupled with the fact that he has only been in his job for a couple of weeks and for the first time in many years, the Liberal Party are now in government.

But can Mr Laws survive?

I'd say the odds are very much stacked against him.  Given the fact that MPs' expenses were under such scrutiny in the last Parliament, many people are now asking why he, Mr Laws, did not come clean and declare tens of thousands of pounds in expenses at a time when many of his fellow MPs did.

Things really do look bad for the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

The timing of this episode could not be worse.  We are in a new political era, defined by a different kind of politics. David Cameron was at great pains to state that the new Coalition was a fresh start for Britain, after thirteen years of Labour misrule.

Despite there now being a new government, many people will reach the conclusion that nothing has changed.