Press Vendetta or Public Anger

Today Maria Miller has resigned from her role as Culture Secretary, after coming under fire over her expenses, and profit made from the sale of her controversial second home. Bromsgrove MP Sajid Javid has replaced her.

Over 180,000 people had signed an online petition, which called for Mrs Miller to 'Either pay back £45,000 in fraudulent expense claims or resign.' A poll taken at the weekend showed that 82% of voters thought she should resign from her role in the Commons. Despite this, Prime Minister David Cameron continued to offer his "warm support".

This all relates back to when Miller claimed second home allowances of £90,718 between 2005 and 2009. The parliamentary commissioner for standards perceived this to have been a £45,000 over-claim, and recommended this was repaid. However, MPs on the Commons Committee for Standards over-ruled this.

Earlier this year, she sold the Wimbledon property at the centre of her expenses scandal, for a profit of more than £1 million.

However, despite these clear grounds for a public outcry, MPs believe this is backlash from the media, for trying to push through press regulation.

The BBC reported on 4 April that: "Most Conservative MPs believe the backlash in the newspapers against Maria Miller is prompted by her attitude to press regulation after the Leveson report, and hope she will ride out the storm. One MP said this was an attempt at "payback" by the press."

The Conservative's attempt to downplay this as little more than point scoring, was perhaps their only chance to save Maria Miller's job. However, the media were only dealing with fact, and the public anger and sense of injustice was very real. The number of people signing the petition, is proof of how strongly the public feel on this issue.

Ever since 2009, abuse of expenses has proved to be a lethal issue for the career of an MP. Despite Miller's 30-second apology, it was not enough to save her job. The longer she hung on, the more damaging it seemed to be for both her and her party. The row over her expenses seemed sure to carry on, and would have continued to distract from the work she did.

Plus, the revelation that her special adviser tried to threaten a journalist investigating her expenses, further fuels the row. This can be seen to be damaging to her work on press regulation.

Maria Miller ended her resignation letter to David Cameron by saying she owes her family "a great deal". However, there was no mention of the taxpayer.