Andy McSmith's Diary: Who hasn’t forgotten getting a cheque for £325,000?

MP Geoffrey Cox earns fabulous sums practising law - and a single payment of £325,000 seems to have slipped his mind

Geoffrey Cox has already earned more than £376,000 this year practising law (PA)

“I am filled with envy,” Geoffrey Cox once told his fellow MPs. “I feel a little like the boy with his nose pressed against the pie shop window, looking inside at the good things within and feeling very excluded.”

His envy was directed at those who were sure they were right in an argument in which he was torn – but other MPs must have a similar experience when they see Cox’s entry in the Register of Members’ Interests. He earns fabulous sums practising law – more than £820,000 in 2014, and more than £376,000 so far this year – to top up his MP’s salary.

On 19 October, this cascade of money landed him with an acute embarrassment. There is a rule that MPs must declare outside earnings within 28 days, but a single payment of £325,000 that dropped into Mr Cox’s bank account in June slipped his mind –which of course could happen to any one of us – and he did not register it until 30 September.

A contrite Mr Cox has resigned from the Commons Standards Committee and reported himself to the parliamentary watchdog, Kathryn Hudson.

This is not a sleaze story, but an embarrassing cock-up. But it has fired up those who think that MPs should be barred from earning money outside Parliament. There is a good argument for having people who know the law in Parliament, where laws are made, and since MPs are never going to be paid the sort of money top barristers can earn, the only way to keep people with legal minds such as Cox’s inside Parliament is to let them keep practising.

Herman for hire

To relieve the pain of stepping down from his post as President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, 68, was awarded a “transitional allowance” of almost £134,000 a year, for three years, in addition to his £52,000 a year pension. Obviously, he would not want to have to scrape by on that, so he has now signed on with an agency as an after-dinner speaker. For a starting price of £25,000 a speech, you too could be bored to tears after dinner by old Rompuy-Pompuy.

Nothing against Jews but...

Beinazir Lasharie, a Labour councillor in Kensington and Chelsea, named after her father’s political hero, Benazir Bhutto, has achieved a unique double first. As a contestant on the Big Brother reality television show in June 2009, she was the first to be voted off. Now, she is the first to have her Labour Party membership suspended under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The Sun reported at the weekend that she had shared a video on Facebook that Isis is run by the Israeli secret service, and another saying that she had heard “compelling evidence” that Israel is behind Isis. “I’ve nothing against Jews… just sharing it!” she wrote.

A saint? Not Greavsie

Lord Greaves was once described on Liberal Democrat Voice as the party’s “oldest angry young man”. Now 73 years old, he has been getting into arguments with every leader of the Liberal or Liberal Democrat parties for more than 50 years. For example, no one was more vociferous in defending his fellow peer Lord Rennard when he was suspended from the party for alleged sexual harassment. Lord Greaves suggested that “perhaps half” the male members of the House of Lords had done what Lord Rennard was accused of doing.

He has also infuriated Andrew Stephenson, Tory MP for Pendle, in Lancashire, where Lord Greaves has his home. He has accused the MP of lying over a local planning dispute, and he posted a photograph of Mr Stephenson’s home on Facebook.

Pendle council wants to meet the MP, but the MP apparently won’t meet the council if Lord Greaves, who is a Pendle councillor, is present. “After many years of public service Lord Greaves’s increasingly erratic and strange behaviour … leads me to believe he should consider retiring from politics,” Mr Stephenson has told Pendle Today.

The leader of Pendle council, Mohammed Iqbal, is apparently hoping to persuade them to make up and be friends. I don’t fancy his chances of success.