David Maddox: Clearing out the dead wood

It seems that the expenses saga, at least for the Tories, has become a convenient excuse to break the vice like grip that a group of the old buffers had on safe seats.

Douglas Hogg and his moat is a classic example while this morning's victim Sir Peter Viggers (pictured) and his £2,000 duck house and massive gardening bill is another.

Sir Peter is the MP for Gosport and a former banker who is not short of a bob or two. I knew him well when I was covering politics in Portsmouth and found him a very decent and amiable chap.

However, his hopes of a high flying political career ended in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher decided he was too wet for her tastes and since then he has been trying to find a role for himself on the back benches.

His one last chance to make a name for himself was when he ran Douglas Hurd's appallingly hopeless leadership campaign a then that was it.

It apparently took just two minutes for David Cameron to tell poor old Viggers that his career as an MP was over.

But it is interesting those without a future like Viggers and Hogg are given short shrift while Alan Duncan who is part of the front bench team was able to get away with a lame apology for his £7,000 of gardening expenses and a cheque returning the money.

Gosport (majority: 5,730) like Hogg's Sleaford and North Hykeham seat (majority: 12,705) are pretty safe ones.

True the Totnes seat of Anthony Steen, the third to get the boot, is just 1,947, but in the present political climate that's relatively safe.

It means that young hopefuls with a future can break into safe seats and build a career and the hasbeens and neverwases are cleared out. I'm told there will be a much bigger clearout to come.

One young Tory said to me over lunch: "This is basically the best time to be a young Conservative and would-be candidate looking for a seat for generations."