Frances Curran and John McAllion
Public outrage at greedy MPs holes Westminster ship
by John McAllion
The ongoing crisis over MP’s expenses has unexpectedly holed the British ship of state below the water line.
Suddenly, the Mother of all Parliaments faces a collapse of political authority without parallel in its modern history. The first Speaker forced to resign in disgrace in 300 years has quickly been followed by the first Lords to be suspended for corruption in 300 years.
Public outrage over MP’s greed and dishonesty has already ended the political careers of members on all sides of the Houses of Parliament and will continue its cull of the green benches all the way to the next general election.
The public’s determination to make the honourable swindlers pay has sparked the worst constitutional crisis since popular rebellion forced the corrupt Parliament of 1832 to concede the first measure of parliamentary reform since Magna Carta.
To make matters worse the dignity of the most expensive club in London has been held up to international ridicule by the spectacle of politicians robbing the taxpayer blind.
Expenses designed to meet costs “wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred” in performing parliamentary duties have been abused to fund extravagant lifestyles that range from duck houses and castle moats to tennis courts and piano tuners.
Members who had happily milked the public purse behind the veil of parliamentary privilege now stand naked and drenched in hoots of public derision before the court of public opinion.
In the space of a few weeks, the Daily Telegraph’s serialisation of individual members’ misdemeanours has undermined and discredited not just the indefensible allowances system but the ancient edifice of Westminster government itself.
Until the current storm broke, Britain’s political commentariat had been absorbed by the electoral prospects for the two big parties and their respective leaders. Now they obsess on whether “the system” itself can survive the fury of voters disgusted by all of Westminster’s political parties.
What one commentator described as “the full boxed set of trendy parliamentary reform” has been pushed forward as the means of saving Britain’s ancient system of government.
Proportional representation in the Commons, democratic elections in the Lords, compulsory voting, a written constitution, an English Parliament, fixed term parliaments, the transfer of power from the executive to the legislature – they have all been promoted as a means of re-storing the people’s confidence in their system of government.
The panic spreading across Britain’s political elite is palpable.
Where initially the media and press had fanned the people’s anger while calling for a purge of the guilty grasping politicians, gradually it began to dawn that the flames of the people’s rage were threatening to engulf the whole of Britain’s elite system of government.
Abruptly, the London based quality press started to carry editorials calling for an end to the hysterical witch hunting of MPs, for a sense of perspective and for the rebuilding of trust in our parliamentary democracy.
Politicians, journalists and churchmen collectively began to talk up “our democratic system” and to warn of the dire consequences that would flow from a people’s rebellion against it.
The BNP bogey man was rolled out to frighten voters back to their old
allegiance to the parties anchored in the safe mainstream waters of Westminster
politics.
The people were reminded of how lucky they were to live under a political
dispensation that had delivered stability and that had made Britain the
envy of lesser nations historically destabilised by revolution and coup
d’états.
One Tory-supporting columnist warned against “habitual malcontents” who use grievance-mongering to advance agendas for constitutional change. He was particularly scathing about “leftist grievance-exploiters” whom he accused of stirring up the people in a last-ditch attempt to scupper an inevitable Tory victory at the next election.
He reminded his readers of the wise words of the Royalist Lord Falkland on the eve of the English Civil War: “when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”
Here is the authentic voice of a British state that is conservative to its core.
The unwritten constitution that has preserved the elite theory of the Crown-in-Parliament for more than 300 years has always had its critics among the many who were excluded from the centre of power in the palace of Westminster.
Its unique genius has been its ability to withstand those criticisms by suborning and recruiting the critics into its own ranks. Too many of the radicals who condemned the system from the outside were always too ready to join its ranks and to enjoy all the privileges and perks that came with membership of the club, whether as part of Her Majesty’s official opposition or government.
The challenge of breaking up Britain has therefore never been easy.
British democracy is effectively restricted to just two parties capable of winning an election. A deformed form of voting enables either of these parties to win substantial majorities on a minority of votes cast and to establish elective dictatorships. This duopoly of power ensures that they can together set the parameters for political debate and action.
Between them they have delivered a Britain locked into the USA’s neo-liberal world order. Under “our democracy” our rulers have no need to listen to “our” opposition to privatisation, deregulation, free markets or militarism.
“Our democracy” ensures that as long as they can fool some of the people all of the time, they can also ignore most of the people all of the time.
The current disenchantment with Westminster and all its works opens up a unique opportunity of breaking the centuries-long grip of conservatism on the politics of this island.
Suddenly there is political space for the ideas that have long been frozen out by the narrowly-based British establishment – republicanism, common ownership of the means of production and exchange, popular sovereignty, a bill of rights and much more.
No mainstream party will touch any of these core ideas for a genuinely democratic revolution. Their priority will be to see off the people’s anger through minor concessions that give the appearance of change while preserving the Westminster system essentially intact.
In every election in the period ahead the stakes could not be higher.
Either the demand for change will be seen off by the British establishment parties closing ranks and saving the system. Or parties like the SSP will help to build the momentum for change until it is unstoppable and the system is broken.
To do that we need to convince many more people that when change is necessary, it is necessary to change.