The Times Online reports that the Mother of Parliaments is losing its most ancient of privileges, the right to run its own affairs, to the Mother of All Scandals.
Parliament was forced to surrender its ancient right to run its own affairs on a momentous day in which the Speaker, Michael Martin, paid for the scandal over MPs’ expenses with his job.
The Prime Minister announced that the financial affairs of MPs would be taken over by independent regulators. The Commons Fees Office, which approved the expenses claims that have brought the political system into gross disrepute, will be abolished.
Gordon Brown said that Westminster would no longer operate like a gentlemen’s club, making its own rules, and said that the moves would change centuries of history for Parliament.
The British blog Samizdata argues that politicians have finally constituted themselves as a separate class from the people they purport to serve and this time they’ve been caught after a heist in full view of the cameras, divvying up the loot. Now they’re paying the price, and about time, too.
This whole saga demonstrates the truth of the thesis that politicians increasingly have come to regard their own interests as set apart from the country as a whole. It adds to the notion, put forward by Sean Gabb, of an “Enemy Class” that is quite consciously at odds with the more conservative (small – c) values of the country. Of course, there has always been an element of this – it is naive to imagine that Parliament ever quite met some Greek ideal – but it is now in a particularly bad way.
Let’s hope Mr Martin sees sense and takes the proverbial bottle of whiskey and the loaded revolver into his study. He will be the first Speaker to be ejected from his role in more than 300 years. Not a record to be proud of.
As an aside, it surprises me still how little this whole saga is registering in the foreign media. Anyone got any examples of US, French, German etc coverage of this? It might be nice if even Instapundit mentioned it.
If the British scandal has been missed the reason is probably because the US political class is riveting attention on itself. Instapundit calls its readers attention to Las Vegas, where it is not OK for ordinary people to vacation (shame, shame, hiss) but OK for Barack Obama to hold a political fundraiser in.
NEVADA GOVERNOR CRITICIZES OBAMA’S “RECKLESS COMMENTS:”
The cancelled conventions and meetings have cost the Las Vegas economy over $100-million, not including gaming revenue.
“I am disappointed at the hypocrisy shown by this Administration,” Gibbons said, “President Obama is coming to Las Vegas later this month for a political fundraiser, but he will not help the struggling families in Las Vegas and Nevada who are out of work because of his reckless comments.” Governor Gibbons noted, “President Obama is coming to Las Vegas to raise campaign cash for Senator Harry Reid, apparently our money is good enough for the President, but our tourism, jobs, and economic future are not.” Gibbons added, “This is politics, pure and simple, President Obama stood for change, but all he has done is brought negative economic change to Nevada.”
Hmm. I wonder how this will impact Harry Reid’s re-election campaign?
Same dog, different collar. As Tolstoy once said in Anna Karenina (or did he?) ‘Politicians are all alike; hence every unhappy nation is unhappy in its own way’. Or words to that effect. And maybe that’s not just cheap psychoanalysis. The system is lunatic in a very literal way. The Daily Mail reports that MPs are asking for funds to pay shrinks after having been stressed out after being caught with their hands in the cookie jar. We live in a very caring civilization.
A psychiatrist has been made available to counsel cheating MPs who are ‘stressed’ by the expenses scandal.
The therapist has been retained on-call because of concerns that some politicians are close to mental breakdowns following scrutiny of their claims, the Mail understands. At least half a dozen MPs have been reported to the police following allegations that they have committed crimes by fiddling their taxpayer-funded allowances. The Mail reported this month that three unnamed backbenchers were said to have been placed on ‘suicide watch’ by Labour whips.
The psychiatrist, paid from taxpayers’ money, will be on hand to counsel MPs struggling to cope after details of their excesses were revealed, sources say.
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To paraprase: “Politicians, can’t live with them…can’t live without them (well, someone has to do it…)”
I think the fate of the New Labor, which was for Hope and Change long before it became fashionable in the US, is a preview into how things will end for all systems that are founded on fantasy and spin. Things break down slowly at first, then at an increasing rate. Finally things begin to collapse out of sheer ridiculousness. In 1936, as Britain approached the crisis living in a fantasy world, Winston Churchill described the comical fecklessness of it all.
Maybe history never repeats itself, but it always threatens to. When politicians begin to believe that spin can conceal folly forever, they really do go off an edge.
Willie G:
Remembering Mark Twain’s comment about the republic only being safe when Congress is not in session, and remembering what Congress passed without reading during the early days of this session, I’m going to suggest that we can indeed live without them. And should. F
Greetings:
Just when I had convinced myself that nobody reads Josef Conrad’s “Lord Jim” anymore someone has a personal honor flashback and steps up to take responsibility in the real sense of the word and not what we have come to know as “taking responsibility” (and nothing else) in the 21st Century.
Now, if the Speaker of the House of Commons would be so kind as to send his copy to the political rulers of the State of California, perhaps a trend would develop.
F: No argument. It just seems we’re stuck with the government we have, not the government we’d like to have.
The purpose of the law is to create a downside risk to lawlessness – there is no longer a downside risk to political stupidity, hence we have more of it.
Reid Botches Three statements in One Appearance
8 ball off the House Bank,
and into the Commons Pocket.
It serves to weaken Mr. Brown as well. Last PM questions session was a bit rowdier than the usual fair, even for the British. It seemed to be, while listening to the Constant calls for “Ordah, Ordah”, inevitable. Always the inevitable question, who will watch the watchmen.
Methinks that when the media, especially the entertainment wing, begins to pick up on the sheer stupidity of it, the jig will indeed be up. The powers that be will not be able to stand up to the steady diet of ridicule that they richly deserve. Change will come quickly then.
Tommy – I think Lou Dobbs gets it. The rest of the media are a bunch of narcissistic, fawning @$$hatts. Fox included.
Let me try to fine-tune the point Willie G seemed to make:
The purpose of the law is to create a downside risk to lawlessness. But today, for cabinet secretaries, members of congress and the president, there is no risk to breaking the law–their fellow conspirators will close ranks around them and defeat any attempt to punish even the most egregious violations.
They can buy their own whiskey, I’ll lend them my revolver. Bullets are on me.
Sounds about right jak. The government used to represent the people. Then somebody got a bright idea. “Why not run government like a business?” It made sense, private business was demonstrably more efficient than government. But a little problem crept in, government, though a bit more efficient became more centered on profitability and growth. Next there was a growing competition between bureaucracies. But in the end the bureaucracies followed the Arab model of cooperation; Me against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, etc. They fight over power but they will crush us to maintain their power. There is not an agency that can’t in the end crush all citizens or ruin this country on their own. The EPA is doing a pretty good job of it but another will usurp them to destroy what is left of America.
I wish I could say there was some possibility that the Conservative Party in the UK might in office begin to dismantle the active, interventionist administrative (‘nanny’) state, but they won’t. All of them see their careers and pensions over the long term as being dependent on the duopolistic ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee’ alternation in power between themselves and the Labour Party. Meddle with that and their futures become uncertain, uncertain means uncomfortable, and uncomfortable means bad. This is their bedrock political commitment.
It is a fact of life that most voters will let the established political class confiscate much of their income and direct many of their activities, as long as they can get on with their private lives at least half the time.
What stings them into occasional action has usually less to do with yet another imposition on them domestically than with a series of humiliations coming from outside. What motivated the voters to support Margaret Thatcher’s genuine attempts to roll back the state were the perception that countries like Italy were unexpectedly overtaking the UK economically, plus Argentina’s belief that it could conquer a British overseas territory with impunity. Very shortly after those specific issues were addressed Thatcher was discarded by the electorate just as Winston Churchill was at the end of WWII.
11B40 – I much doubt that the House of Commons Speaker would do anything about that. For one, I doubt that he has a copy; Gorbals Mick is the stupidest and worst-educated individual ever to have held high office in the UK in at least a century. (John Prescott is a close second.) For another, he is part of the problem not the solution; he spent a great deal of effort (and a great deal of taxpayers’ money) doing his damnedest to keep MP’s expenses secret, and has extensively stuck his nose in the trough himself. For yet another, he shouldn’t be in office in the first place; his election broke the unspoken rule, in force for at least a century, that the Speaker is alternately chosen from the ranks of the two major parties in turn – and he shows his pro-Labour bias (for which, of course, he was chosen) with just about every decision he makes.
I have seen speculation, with which I agree, that this mess might actually strengthen parliamentary democracy in the UK. For far too long, the majority of both major parties have been sheep being herded through the voting lobbies by the party Whips – one of whose major holds on their flock was their knowledge of just who (just about everyone, in fact) was cheating the system within the letter, but definitely not the spirit, of the rules. Removing this might just encourage independent thinking among MPs.
Of course, one way of clearing the air of the noisome stink that currently fills it would be to hold an immediate election and let the public kick out the worst offenders. Ain’t gonna happen, of course. Why? Because the current incumbent would lose, and lose by a landslide – and he, the Opposition, the media and just about everyone else knows it. The welfare of the country be damned.
The whole business of second homes in London could be met by the Government buying a block of flats (of which there are many going begging) and allowing those MPs needing accommodation in London to live in them at a subsidised rent. That isn’t going to happen either. It would make it far too difficult for MPs to find a way of cheating the new system in its turn.
@Fletcher: “… Ihave seen speculation, with which I agree, that this mess might actually strengthen parliamentary democracy in the UK. …”
Not unless the meaningful governing powers are taken back from Brussels and returned to the national parliament.
11. jak:
They can buy their own whiskey, I’ll lend them my revolver. Bullets are on me.
Heck, I’ll buy the whiskey if I think for a second they really mean to do it!
Frank – Well, yes. Maybe the current foul-up will get UKIP a few seats next time, and do some good that way too.
The next thing, in my opinion, that the Telegraph ought to turn its guns on is MEP expenses; the fraud going on there makes UK Parliament look honest.
“It is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it” – Douglas Adams.
I work hard to resist the temptation to believe that any sweeping action would solve all our problems with one or other aspect of government, like the fair tax, term limits, etc.
However, I am coming more and more keenly aware that new energy needs to be injected into the push for term limits. No, it will not keep us from lurching over the precipice, but perhaps it will buy us a little time to realize there is, in fact, a precipice at all.
Urban B:
Term limits, without more fundamental correction, will only allow more people to dip their nose in the trough.
The basic problem is Washington DC vs the people, and the vast overreach of the federal government. Unless and until the states reclaim the powers granted them by the Constitution, anything else we might do is just a band-aid. The 17th amendment threw a huge monkey wrench into the checks and balances provided by the Founders, leaving the states with no representation of their interests in Congress.
If we are not ready to support the states in pushing back as hard as it takes, whatever it takes, then I don’t see our republic surviving.
Jack, the 17th Amendment didn’t happen for no good reason. The ideal of the Founders of the Senators representing the interests of their states was in practise not what occured late 19th century/early 20th century. Picked by the states’ legislators the US Senators had become creatures of the special interests that controlled the state legislators. Which is why cries for reform and the need for the popular election of the US Senator began and reached a point where the 17th Amendment can into being. Pretty darn tough to amend US Constitution. Generally never happens unless there is overwhelming consensus to make it so. Such is the case with the 17th Amendment.
On another note, California voters gave their legislators and Governor the proverbial back of the hand, overwhelming defeating ballot measures backed with the full force of the state’s political class. Now the real fun brings as the voters have spoken with a resounding NO to new taxes and borrowing. The paring knife is about to cut into the budget and it will be great sport to see what sacred cow gets gored first. Perhaps a lot more was brewing than just tea at all those Tea Parties that the media and politicians did their best to ignore.
Many of the MPs have failed to notice that the satchel of goodies they have tried to escape with had a dye pack inside. Now nightly there is a parade of baby blue pols on TV denying they did anything wrong and if the colour is off write to the BBC.