Simon Danczuk - Pants On Fire

[UPDATE 1840 hours: as can be seen from the post, there is to be a story in tomorrow's Sun, for which I am told that Master Harry Cole will claim an exclusive. But you can read all about it right here.

Cole's USP is the revelation that Danczuk has - despite having previously given her a final warning and then sacked her - re-hired former wife Karen.

Exactly how much taxpayers' dosh Kazza will trouser for her new assignment, and how she will fit her burgeoning media career in, is not known.

I do hope the nice people at IPSA are looking in, and that they keep tabs on Kazza's attendance record. After all, it's our money]

For Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk, the moment of revelation comes later this week when the party releases its findings over his “sexting” of a 17 year old girl. Only then will he learn whether he has been readmitted to the party - or expelled. Perhaps that is why he has been doing the media rounds, telling anyone who will listen that it was all someone else’s fault, and that he’s done nothing wrong.

The latest Danczuk publicity drive brought him to BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show yesterday, when, live on air, he took the opportunity given him to … smear his first wife and spin yet another shameless pack of lies about his “sexting” of Sophena Houlihan, as well as demonstrate significant economy with the actualité over his recent expenses “honest mistake”. His story unravelled all too rapidly.

He claimed “It’s my first wife that’s affected my relationship with my two older children and that’s something I really regret … I don’t have a positive relationship with my two older children and I put that very much down to their mother … There are many fathers, and mothers for that matter, where there’s a breakup and one poisons the children against the other … That’s what has happened here and it’s really sad situation and that’s where we are in life”, rather than that he hadn’t bothered seeing them for several years.

That was just nasty - and typical of Danczuk - but then came the dishonesty: on the claim that Ms Houlihan was applying for a job, he said “the idea she came to me inquiring about a job just isn’t true”, and has Tweeted “There was never a job, that’s a complete fabrication to justify the story”. But, as a look at the w4mpjobs site shows, there was indeed a job advertised the day before Ms Houlihan first contacted him.

Danczuk then dug himself in a little deeper by calling the story “a tabloid construct”, while at the same time, as Zelo Street can reveal, he has been setting up an interview for the Murdoch Sun with the paper’s alleged “Westminster Correspondent”, Master Harry Cole. This will feature in tomorrow’s edition of the paper - yet another part of the Danczuk pre-emptive fightback, just in case the party throws him out. Tabloid construct, indeed.

Rochdale’s MP (for the time being) then pulled another whopper, saying his over-claiming of expenses was an “honest mistake”, going on to assert “the important point is IPSA now accepts these rules around accommodation and around children aren’t fit for purpose and they are talking about revising them”. That drew a stinging rebuke from IPSA.

“IPSA does not accept that the rules around accommodation and around children aren’t fit for purpose … We have not committed to changing any part of the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses, including any rules on dependents”, they told.

And so it was that Simon Danczuk’s great media initiative took him one step forward, only to see it also take him several steps back as it was subjected to a reality check. With this kind of dishonesty and unpleasantness, there can only be one result. Bye bye Simon.