‘Why are they picking on me?’
So, much too late Sir Thomas Legg’s report into MPs’ expenses is released, and it’s far gentler than it would have been had it been written by the average tax payer.
Still, it points out that the nation’s lawmakers abused the system, wrote the rules to benefit themselves, intimidated the civil servants they hired to run the lavish expenses system they created, and, in general, behaved like tinpot dictators in their own third-world government.
And we let them get away with it.
With typical stiff-upper-understatement Sir Thomas writes of a ‘flawed’ system, in which MPs could submit expenses with no receipts or underlying evidence, and receive thousands of pounds without question. A system in which the taxpayer became the Bank of the British Parliament, and a very generous bank at that.
A system in which MPs allowed themselves more in expenses each year than the average British worker earns in wages.
Of the three MPs and one lord now facing criminal charges, The Centrist’s favourite was MP Jim Devine, who bewailed his innocence and said with bewilderment, ‘I don’t understand why I was picked on.’
If it ain’t fixed…
What Sir Thomas didn’t say in his report is that this flawed system cannot be fixed. It cannot be fixed because the people who made this flawed system still run the flawed system and still benefit from the flawed system.
And never in the history of mankind has somebody who benefits from a system altered it in a way that made sure they could never benefit from it again.
So the problem is not the expenses system. The problem is the entire governmental system of this nation.
Britain has no true balance of powers. And that is where it all went wrong, and where it will always go wrong.
Who is going to overlook a revamp of MPs expenses to make sure that MPs follow the same rules the rest of us do?
The unelected lords? The Prime Minister (who is the head of the party in power)? The still shaky legged and fawn-like Supreme Court (also made up entirely of lords)?
When the people’s representatives are grifting the system, who protects the people’s treasury?
One nation, under the thumb
The British parliamentary system is designed to give one party power over all elements of government in every inch of this nation. From London to the Outer Hebrides, from a tiny town in Surrey to central Liverpool to rural Yorkshire, with minor exceptions of rebellion easily quashed or out-manoeuvred, whichever party is in power holds all of the cards.
They are judge, jury and executioner on all issues.
The SNP has a bit of power in Scotland, but if the party in charge in Westminster turned off the cash flow, they wouldn’t last five weeks. So they only rebel so much.
A conservative council in the southeast will talk a good game, but they still must meet targets set by the party in power in London, and when their conservative constituents aren’t looking, they all quietly step to it.
Absolute power, absolutely
The question is, what can we do?
How do we get ourselves as taxpayers in the position to redesign this government so that one house of Parliament really does balance the other? So that the Supreme Court is supremely independent and can act as a counterweight to the government in charge? So that there is an executive branch independent of the parliamentary and judicial branch to provide a third balance in a delicate triptych of power?
Given what such an elegant system would do to the British tradition of ‘to the victor goes the spoils’, The Centrist does not believe that any political power with any chance of ever being elected would ever agree to enact such a system.
They would be too unwilling to give up the tantalising possibility of absolute power, should they win an election.
Absolute power with all that such power implies. With all the damage it could do to their immortal soul… and how much fun would that be along the way?
If they won’t do it, and we, the taxpayer can’t make them, what will happen?
Get to work, Dimblebore — you and all of your ink-stained friends
Well, this is where the media comes in.
This is where the Fourth Estate gets off its Docklands barstool and pulls its own weight for a change. This is where the media learns there’s more to a job at a national newspaper than good Christmas parties and junkets to Thailand.
There’s a price to pay.
It’s time they put their necks on the line and took real chances in the names of the people they write for. It’s time they started educating and protecting, and quit pandering to the lowest common denominator among their readers.
The press should begin a national discussion about the British governmental system. What works and what doesn’t. And how it can be adapted to the age in which we live.
How to extricate the royal family from its historical role completely.
How to ensure a balance of powers within Parliament to prevent corruption and to protect the people from their duly elected MPs.
In order to make Britain a healthy, empowered democracy.
It’s time.
The best little whorehouse in Britain
Let’s take a break from busting the government-sponsored myths about swine flu, and watch Parliament head out for its covetable 82-day summer holiday. Shall we wave a fond farewell to them as they duck into their Jags, gun the engines and roar off to (one of) their homes?
It’s almost impossible to write a post that conveys their cowardice and corruption, and my own contempt for the self-protective reform legislation they came up with just before running away – running, as all cowards do.
But then, I’m hardly surprised. We are asking them to reform themselves. And that never works.
I mean, think about it. What if you had a really good deal – I mean a really sweet deal – at work. Let’s say you made around 70K and up, your work week was about three days, your expenses added 25K to your pay free and clear, and those expenses needed to be approved only by you, your annual holiday allotment was in excess of three months, you were massaged by a subservient and docile staff paid for by somebody else, you were protected from your bosses completely, except for one day every five years or so.
And then some do-gooder shows up and says, ’This is wrong. And you have to change it. Nobody can make you change it, but it is immoral and irresponsible of you not to change it so you must change it and give yourself less – less freedom and less money.’
Would you? Honestly?
Well, neither will they.
Britain has a whorehouse in it
So here we are at a spectacular impasse, in which our elected government has so abused this country’s ancient and veneered political system that the vast majority of people in the country look at them as no better – and possibly worse – than criminals. Their approval ratings are uniformly low, regardless of which party they’re in.
There would have been a revolution in France already over this, had it happened there. If this had happened in America, MPs would need armed guards to protect them from their constituents. In the Ukraine the nation’s entire population would be out in the streets every night, holding candles, singing songs, bringing the economy to a halt.
But here? Well, it’s been a very British revolution so far. Isolated shouts during BBC’s Question Time have been the only evidence of the simmering outrage. That, and so many MPs losing their seats in by-elections.
Lord have mercy on our souls
I believe the country is furious over this huge con job in which we were all the victims and our own governmental representatives were the thieves. But it’s a quiet kind of fury that often expresses itself in increasing political apathy, a belief that each politician is as bad as the other, and comments like ‘I couldn’t vote for any of them, so I think I’ll stop voting.’
There is nothing worse for a democracy than a population losing its faith. Personally, I’d rather see people setting themselves on fire in the streets of Westminster than see them shrug and walk away.
So, before you all give up on the democratic system, remember: you are not alone. Politicians – whether they are elected fairly and honestly or seize the role as dictators – are prone to believing themselves invincible, and taking more than their share. This might have been the biggest scandal I’ve ever seen in politics, but it is not an unusual kind of scandal, when you think about it. A bit of petty stealing. Padding the old nest. It’s a time-honoured tradition.
Politicians will always treat you with contempt. But they do it at their peril. Remember: you have all the power. You cannot fire them now, but, working together, we can eventually fire them all. And soon.
Even better: you can remember who they are.
Remember the MPs with two, or even three houses paid for by you, while you struggle to make your mortgage.
Remember the MPs who bought porn and charged it to you.
Remember the MPs who had you pay to clear their yards, or their moats, even while you broke your back to clear your own.
Remember who they are. And treat them with the contempt they deserve.
Those duplicitous, thieving MPs may have slipped away for now, but they have to come back sometime, and when they do, as they say in Texas, you need to open up a can of whup-ass on them that they’re unlikely to ever forget. In the voting booth.
They’re still stupid
Back in the 1990s, I came across an article in Spin magazine with the best lede I’d ever read.
The article was about prisons in the deep South in America reintroducing the concept of chain gangs as additional punishment and humiliation. Groups of prisoners chained together wearing comedy striped pajamas were forced to clean litter and break rocks on public roads.
The writer (whose name sadly eludes me) wrote that the use of the chain gangs was a message from the South to the rest of the country. And that message was: ‘We’re still here. We’re still stupid. Fuck you.’
Chaos theory
Watching the selection of John Bercow as Speaker of Parliament yesterday reminded me of that fantastic introduction to an article about ignorance, ineptitude, petty governmental ladder climbing, and the kind of tin-pot-dictator-envy that seems to be a bizarre hallmark of our modern democracy.
As I listened to duplicitous Labour MPs lying shockingly to the cameras and the voters of Britain, smirking as they did so (seriously, why does the Labour party allow Diane Abbott to ever go on television when she’s such a good advertisement for any other political party?), I actually felt nauseous.
After the last few months, how can it be that they’re not taking any of this seriously? How foolish are they?
Parliament is regarded with contempt by a vast majority of the country at this point. Those who work in government are ashamed to admit that to those who do not. I have never in all of my life seen a western government held in such low regard by its citizenry. I cannot imagine how they expect to lead a country that increasingly refuses to follow.
And if they cannot lead, then there is no legitimate government, and that – as anybody who remembers the 1970s will tell you – means chaos.
But otherwise, everything’s fine
The idea that, after the last few weeks, Labour would be so callous as to choose a speaker solely because he would upset the Conservatives is breathtaking.
At a time when Parliament is this close to not existing as we have known it, they’re still playing games of British bulldog with our government.
Let’s just reassess where we are right now. We are engaged in two wars – neither of which we show signs of winning. North Korea is perfecting its nuclear catapult. Iran is enraging extremists Muslim groups – who already weren’t too fond of us – against us. We are in the midst of the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression – and despite what the Prime Minister might say we as a nation are culpable in that crisis. Every single member of Parliament has been in some way tarnished by a corruption scandal on a scale none of us has ever witnessed in our lives. And throughout it all the Prime Minister has appeared to be out of his depth, terrified and at sea.
Nightmare
This is a nightmare situation. And the election of the Speaker could have been a first step towards waking us up from this horrible dream.
Instead, the selection of John Bercow for petty political purposes perpetuates the horror. And the smiling lies of the Labour and (some) Lib Dem MPs on the news last night means that they either do not understand or do not care how angry we are, and how sad, and how tremendously awful this situation is.
After hundreds of years of democracy, through wars and deprivation, from Cromwell to now, how is it possible that this feckless lot have managed to undo so much good, and leave us in such a desperate situation?
But they have, haven’t they? And the message Labour and Lib Dem MPs sent to voters last night was the same one those southern prison wardens sent to America 15 years ago.
‘We’re still here. We’re still stupid. Fuck you.’
Where to start?
Well. That was all a bit unexpected, wasn’t it?
I mean, there we were, happily watching our economy crumble, our housing bubble burst, and our country stumble scarily, when all of a sudden Parliament imploded.
Let’s take a minute, shall we? Because this is big, people. In our lives, we may never face anything more important for our country than what we’re looking at right now. What we have here is your basic constitutional crisis. A government in freefall. A parliamentary system that has just proven it fundamentally does not work in modern times. And all right smack-dab in the middle of global economic crisis the likes of which few if any of us have never seen.
Great. I was hoping to spend the summer lying in the sun reading smutty novels, and now I’m going to have to spend it playing Jefferson to your Franklin.
What now?
Let’s approach this pragmatically. There’s a lot to be done, and a relatively short time span in which to do it. So here are some steps to get us started.
Step One: Don’t trust your government
Look, it’s nothing personal. I know these guys, and they seem nice. But they have nothing to gain from a constitutional convention, and everything to lose from what is best for the nation right now.
It would be great to think that they would put patriotism ahead of their party and do what’s best for the country but they’re politicians.
So that’s not going to happen.
From this moment forward, take it as given that every word they say is a lie. They’re well-intended lies, and in their minds ‘white’ lies told for the good of… well, themselves. But lies nonetheless.
So when Alastair Darling says the recession will be over by Christmas… (Why?? Why did he say ‘Christmas’? Of all the loaded phrases he could have chosen. I mean, seriously.)
Well, you know what to think.
Step Two: Don’t trust the other political parties either
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing lots of Conservative banners about in my neighbourhood. And UKIP has big signs and billboards up out in the countryside. And my more liberal friends are all planning to vote Lib-Dem to teach Labour a lesson.
It would be great to think we could just vote for another political party and they’ll swoop in and fix this situation and we can all get back to our jobs and busy lives; problem solved. But it’s not going to work that way this time.
Whichever political party wins at the next election will promptly find itself in the position Labour is in now, with nothing to gain from fixing this broken system.
Here’s why: The British parliamentary system was designed for a closely divided house, a powerful House of Lords and strong monarchy. None of which exists anymore.
In the modern politically divided democratic age this antiquated system gives absolute power to any winner with a strong majority. Given the mood swings of the public, and the fact that so many of you, like me, are independent centrists who vote for whichever party you think is right on this occasion and for these times, strong majorities will keep happening.
Labour – with a huge majority – has had absolute power for 12 years. If the Conservatives sweep to power with a landslide in the next election, they will have that same absolute power. The opposition is neutered by its minority position, and the party in power legally controls all the branches of government.
Absolute power. Absolute corruption. They go together like a horse and carriage.
It might not rhyme, but it’s truer than any couplet.
Step Three: Demand an election
This government has no credibility. They’re going to tell you they need to stay in power to ‘fix’ things. Would you let the fox ‘fix’ the hen house?
Just how stupid do they think we are?
If they refuse to call an election, we’re going to have to be rather firm, I’m afraid. We will have to march, and there will need to be a bit of civil unrest. It could all get a bit heated. But this is how it works. If they won’t jump, we will have to push.
This is an unelected government, and I don’ t know about you, but when an unelected government pushes me around, or treats me like I’m an idiot, it makes me very, very irritable.
The election is just a house-cleaning, though. It’s not a full solution.
Step four: Demand a constitutional convention
Now we will have to take a look Parliament, and the way three branches of government are essentially one big undemocratic tree trunk.
This convention cannot be the usual suspects (get thee behind me, Hazel Blears). It needs to be a mixture of academics, ordinary citizens, and a few politicians. I can see Simon Schama on this committee (how wonderful would that be?) and Sir David Attenborough. No actors, please. Or artists or poets (I beg you). A good mix of politically engaged citizens, politically independent scholars, and a handful of politicians who have proven themselves not to be completely useless.
The process must be open. They should blog and tweet about their discussions and disagreements. They should be given no more than four months to do the work, and whatever they come up with should fit on the front and back of an A3 sheet of paper.
Less is more, when it comes to constitutions. All we really need from them is:
- a basic outline of a new Parliament structure with a real balance of powers
- a bill of fundamental citizens’ rights (not to be confused with human rights)
- a brief explanation of what we can expect from our government
The rest we can build over time.
