The recommendations for reform of MPs’ expenses were hardly radical. They would have kept their circa £23,000 of expenses for a second home in London - and won greater public respect - in return for taking a few blows such as tougher auditing, a halving of the allowance for those in greater London and the end of free furniture and new kitchens.

For a majority to reject the proposals yesterday was the equivalent of a giant V-sign at the media and - much more importantly - the voters.

Much has already been made of the fact that 33 ministers voted against reform. (Including Caroline Flint, Andy Burnham, Jacqui Smith, Paul Murphy and Shaun Woodward). While the Tory frontbench, and all Liberal Democrats, supported change.

An equally fascinating fact is how many cabinet ministers stayed away in the knowledge that the proposals were doomed.

Take a bow: Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, James Purnell, Alan Johnson, Ed Balls, Hazel Blears, David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander, Geoff Hoon, Hilary Benn, Ruth Kelly and John Hutton. So much for setting an example.

In fact, the only cabinet members who supported the measures (designed to save the reputation of the House of Commons, bear in mind - the words of Nick Harvey MP, not mine) were these seven: Ed Balls, James Purnell, Des Browne, Yvette Cooper, John Denham, Jack Straw and Harriet Harman.

The prime minister today professed disappointment that the move towards greater austerity had been defeated. Come off it.

UPDATE:

Sorry, Des Browne supported reform. I forgot he was still in the cabinet. James Purnell and Ed Balls did as well. Apologies.

A tennis match with Tony Blair, the former prime minister, is among the auction lots to be sold at a Labour fund-raising dinner next month.The event, which is hoping to raise £500,000 from table places alone - with 500 tickets at £1,000 apiece - as well as more money through the auction.

Among the prizes are lunch with Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, and a day out at a racing circuit with Lord Paul Drayson, the pharmaceuticals millionaire.

The event comes as Labour struggles to reschedule some of its £18m of outstanding debts, prompting fears over its financial stability.

The auctioneers will be Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair’s former press chief, and Richard Caborn, former sports minister.

But what will it do for the party’s reputation if the event is not full?

It was striking that the event has been press-released and publicised. In the old days, there was no need.

A Labour bod has been in touch to say the event has been publicised to enable people - such as City folk - to bid in advance for the prizes. FT readers, that includes you.

Gordon Brown announced today that no ministers would take a pay rise this year. Pour encourager les autres, etc, etc.

The government has also rejected Sir John Baker’s recommendation of a 4.6 per cent pay rise for all MPs this year. They will get to vote on this on July 3.

How will the vote go? The Tories are urging all their rank and file to reject the rise, which is far above inflation and sends out all the wrong signals to public sector workers.

Labour is likely to whip its payroll (about 140 ministers etc) and use a “one-line whip” on everyone else.

Given the public mood about a] the economy and b] “fat-cat MPs” I’d be amazed if the 4.6 per cent rise sees the light of day.

 Incidentally…

Sir John raised the prospect of Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland MPs being paid less than their English counterparts - because of devolution.

“All MPs are paid exactly the same and it is a deep article of faith of MPs that that should be the case,” he said. “I have always taken the view that as and when we see a complete package of constitutional reform, looking at the House of Lords as well, I think that question will come back on the table and will need addressing then.”

The Commitee for Standards in Public Life, the Commons watchdog, doesn’t seem to think so.

Today it showed its thinly disguised disdain for the members estimate committee, chaired by Speaker Michael Martin, which is reviewing expenses and perks and is due to report in the summer.

The standards committee issued a statement of principles which - it suggests - should “govern Parliament’s review of MPs’ allowances”.

It the outcome of the current review fails to command public confidence, it says, then the committee “is prepared to undertake its own independent review of the issues involved”.

Some speculation over the weekend about Sir Richard Caring, owner of The Ivy, Annabel’s and Le Caprice. The perma-tanned millionaire has given a constituency donation to Michael Gove, Tory shadow schools spokesman. He is an obvious target for Conservative fund-raisers.

Caring - a friend of Sir Philip Green - is still awaiting the repayment of a £2m loan due from the Labour party, borrowed when Tony Blair was in charge.

What about the other millionaires who bailed out Labour over three years ago? 

For example, it will be interesting to see whether Andrew Rosenfeld, who made a fortune in the property business, will be seduced by the resurgent Tories.

After all, Rosenfeld - who lent £1m to Labour before the 2005 election - is hardly a natural bedfellow of Britain’s supposedly left-wing party.  In 2001 the c0-founder of Minerva, a property developer, was so in with the Tory crowd that he was interviewed for the post of Conservative Party treasurer. For him to switch sides again would not exactly be out of character.

Incidentally, Rosenfeld is one of the millionaires currently negotiating a block deal with Labour to delay the repayment of more than £10m of loans falling due within two years. If the talks were going well we would have heard something by now; surely?

The strapline is deliberately provocative. I’m sure you can think of many good reasons.

But there is little doubt that the Tories’ fund-raising attempts are going more smoothly than Labour’s.

 In Q4 of 2007, the Conservatives raised £11.3m and Labour £5.9m.

Today the Q1 figures for 2008 came through.

At first sight the Tories don’t seem so far ahead; at £4.2m compared to Labour’s £3m. But this disguises a weird anomaly. Boris Johnson’s campaign to be London mayor - which raised nearly £1.5m - is excluded from the Tory figures. Money for Ken Livingstone, by contrast, is included within the Labour total.

We won’t know how much Ken raised for a few more weeks. But for a true like-for-like the number should be subtracted from the £3m tally.

Jimmy Cayne, the cigar-chomping, bridge & golf loving boss of Bear Sterns, had a pay packet of $34m last year.

The US bank, which was worth $140bn last summer, has just been bought by JP Morgan for $236m in a desperate rescue mission.

British MPs are getting a lot of stick right now for their remuneration. By my rough calculation you could employ 300 of them for the price of one Mr Cayne (pictured below).

That isn’t going to avert the mother of all rows, however, when MPs’ pay comes to a head in July.

We revealed in Saturday’s paper that members may be asked to vote on a 50 per cent pay rise which would take their salaries to £94,000 in return for foresaking their expenses.

In case you missed the story, here it is.

We called Goldman Sachs on Wednesday (when the political donation figures came out for the end of 2007)  to ask if the Michael Sherwood who gave the Tories £8,500 in November was the same Michael Sherwood who is European co-chief executive of the ubiquitous US bank. The answer was no.

They’ve called back to admit they were wrong. It was the very same Mr Sherwood, said a spokesman from the bank. But the money was paid for tickets to a Tory event by Mr Sherwood and his wife and should have been recorded as £4,250 each. As a result the banker should not have ended up on the Electoral Commission website, which records donations of  £5,001 and over. (Although the spokesman did not know if he paid for both tickets, in which case the figure should be in the public eye.)

Goldman has been advising the government on its options for a private sale of Northern Rock, although Mr Sherwood was not directly involved in the negotiations. “He is politically non-aligned,” said the bank.

And just in case you missed it in our story last week, another interesting new Tory donor was Hugh Scott-Barrett, finance director of the unsuccessful JC Flower bid for Northern Rock. The former ABN Amro executive gave £33,500 to the Conservatives at about the time Flowers withdrew from its bid talks.

*

Incidentally the spokesman has just come back with a further clarification of the facts. It transpires that the Sherwoods paid £10,000 for the two tickets but £1,500 of this went to the two meals while only the remainder was an actual donation. That seems like an expensive feast by any standards.