The True Significance of the Parliamentary Expenses Imbroglio
Civitas, 26 May 2009
Every day for the past several weeks has brought fresh disclosures about the scale of free-loading in which our law-makers at Westminster have seemingly been happy to indulge or at least to condone.
At this late stage of the unfolding saga, I have no wish to add my own voice to the many who have expressed their disgust, anger and dismay at just how far up the greasy pole at Westminster the rot would appear to have ascended.
Like guilty schoolboys caught scrumping in a neighbour’s garden, MPs from all shades of the political spectrum are now busy clamouring over each other to express contrition for what for so long they have all acquiesced in, as well as to suggest how Parliament can be made to clean up its act.
Some, like Labour’s Alan Johnson, have chosen the moment to dust down and re-cycle proposals for electoral reform that had long been gathering dust deep in the archives of Westminster. In their case, however, any new-found enthusiasm for Parliamentary reform seems to be more a case of jockeying for position in the race to succeed Gordon Brown as next Labour leader than any genuine concern to make Parliament more accountable or representative.
It seems that, in the case of all current Westminster MPs who will not choose the next general election as an occasion to step down from Parliament, it will be business as usual after the next general election, but just without the expenses fiddling that used to go on there in the good old, bad old days.
Moreover, despite all current the media huffing and puffing of the last few weeks, it seems that they will be allowed to. For after all, is there not a country whose affairs badly need running and isn’t that what the Parliament at Westminster is there to do?
The trouble is that it is no longer clear that that is what Parliament is there for any more. So much sovereignty has been ceded to Brussels these past decades it is no longer clear exactly what role the Westminster Parliament any longer has.
Could that be why, until the current imbroglio over MPs expenses, public interest in Parliamentary politics had long been waning?
The great British public are no fools when it comes to politics. As Parliament’s power has waned, so too has their interest in what goes on there. Meanwhile, public cynicism with politics has grown apace, as the unaccountable system of law-making from Brussels has steadily replaced the former Parliamentary system. For the public now feels entirely impotent in terms of its influence on the law-making process.
Current public anger with the political class is likely to deliver some interesting results in the up-coming elections for the European Parliament. However much steam they will allow the public to let off through engaging in unconventional voting behaviour, it seems that public interest in politics and respect for politicians will not be able to be restored until the current democratic deficit is made good by a full return of sovereignty to the Westminster Parliament.
When MPs are known to have a true role to play in determining the country’s affairs, then maybe once again the public will begin to take them seriously and MPs can start to re-gain self-respect, the only truly effective safeguard there is against a willingness to engage in corrupt practice.
In watching the increasing furore over the expenses scandal, I felt somewhat lonely in a sentiment similar to that expressed here: Namely, that the odd grand claimed for polishing non-existent brass was indeed evil, but perhaps behaviour subsumed in a grander arrogance.
Given these people are foremost politicians, it has been far more pernicious, corrupt and more worthy of revolution – to me at least- that the de-facto belief of these people has become a sense of immunity from representing voters’ political beliefs; seeing office as the opportunity to act out narrow, oft-flawed personal pet ideologies and agendas instead. Therefore, on matters spanning crime, policing, immigration, education etc, the public opinion has been ignored – or ever treated contemptuously – by our rulers. The vacuous, oft-politically-correct guff that accompanies such behaviour has been the pretence of some higher argument.
To me therefore, the assumptions which allow politicians to put one’s hand in the public purse and take a elicit gratuity or two is only a sub-set of this meta-arrogance. Political office exists for self-propagation; decisions exist as opportunities for alliance building; needy causes exist as opportunities to demonstrate levels of personal virtue which win one further corporate opportunities.
So, why at present do we not – in mass – vote for those “common sense” parties that put national values and sentiments first? A couple of reasons would be, (1) a fundamental lack of trust in their competence, (2) an unpleasant connotation of voting for nationalists, the strength of which depends on which nationalists you vote for.
That said, as ages pass and stigmas fade, I wonder if there will at some point be a tipping point, where these reasons are no longer there.
Interesting site, but much advertisments on him. Shall read as subscription, rss.