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fpbMost of you may have heard that Britain is in the midst of the worst political scandal since Lloyd George - worse in some ways, since L-G only destroyed his own party, whereas the current scandal is an equal opportunity destroyer. The majority of MPs of all parties are involved.
However, the MPs seem determined to turn the scandal into a catastrophe. First they made a mockery of the publication of their expenses register - which had made all the damage in the first place - by publishing a version so covered in black ink that most pages were unreadable. Then they were forced by Press and public opinion to get rid of the disastrous Speaker of the House, Michael Martin, who had been a prime mover in the scandal and threatened those who exposed it. Forced to do that, they proceeded to elect the worst possible successor.
The best candidate was the Tory former minister Ann Widdicombe. A woman of spectacular ugliness and considerable political experience, a formidable public speaker, often wrong-headed but never mean, she is regarded even by her opponents as being honest as the day is long; and the scandal has actually proved that - not one paperclip of her expenses was questionable. She also "has a life", being a well-revieved novelist on the side. She will not stand at the next election, but that was actually a point in her favour: being beholden to no-one, she would perform her duties without fear and favour, and really push for reform. She was eliminated in the first round. An equally fearless and high-minded Labour candidate, Frank Field, was not even allowed to compete
Of the remainder, the only presentable option was one Sir George Young, a Tory baronet with a nice smile, unimpeachable honesty, and a lengthy political experience. Although far from a reformer - he is one of those people who are so happy with their own life that they cannot imagine why people should want to change the world - he could be presented as a choice for plain dealing and open government.
So who did the elected representatives of the British people elect as their own leader? One John Bercow, whose expenses page as published was full of black ink; who was hated, nay, loathed, by every other member of his own Tory party, as a slippery, untrustworthy opportunist; who has moved from the extreme right to the extreme left of the party in a few years without ever losing the ability to be loathsome; who insulted his own constituents in writing when they disagreed with him; who has authored a Bill that would have criminalized any opposition to abortion. I have hated the man since the Major years. He is detestable privately and detestable in public; detestable in his principles and in his behaviour; detestable inside, detestable outside. It is doubtful that of all the six hundred and forty Members of the British House of Commons, one could be found who was more wholly repulsive.
His own party certainly must have rejected him. He was known from the beginning to be the choice of the Labour leadership, under the usual miserable calculation of electing one Tory that would embarrass all other Tories; and he was railroaded by the Labour whips, in spite of the fact that the election of the Speaker was supposed to be free to the point of using a secret ballot.
This is a spectacular example of the clunky, rhino-hided insensitivity and blindess of Gordon Brown's management. It takes a kind of reverse political genius to blow the public and the media such an enormous, wet, smelly fart of a rapsberry when your own future is already very deservedly in question. As a matter of fact, this whole crisis is largely of Gordon Brown's making; every step of his way from the moment he forced his way to Number Ten without a popular mandate has insured that it would happen. He is one of those men who could turn ten thousand friends into sworn enemies, one by one. Suspicious, rancorous, unpleasant in his presence and habits, a bully and a coward, wholly incapable to forget any imagined slight, he is as bad a material for a politician as could very well be imagined. His reason to oppose the pleasant Sir George Young as Speaker? That he is "a Tory toff" and "a member of the Establishment". Thus speaketh, if you please, the head of the country's government and a man who has been at the top of his party since his twenties. You would think he were still a grumpy student radical on an inadequate cheque, rehearsing his disappointments in his beer.
Beyond that, it shows complete folly from all sides. It is my opinion that a general election is necessary now. Brown, with the cowardice of the most stereotypical bully, is drawing the process on as long as he can, in the hope that some miracle - perhaps the salvation of the world of which he has spoken in one debate on the economy - could come along and change the position he has made for himself. But the Labour Party is letting him do it, and the other parties are allowing him to go on.
In my view, this is going to be disastrous, not only for Labour, but for all three established parties. An immediate election would probably have mauled Labour and not done much for any of the other, but would have left the political landscape fairly recognizable. What will happen now is that all the groups that have something to gain from the collapse of the leading three parties will have one year to organize, prepare for the vote, and campaign. The result, I suspect, will be disaster for all three leading parties, and probably an unmanageable Parliament with six or seven party groups represented, no majority, and huge problems in forming any sort of government. The leading party may well end up being UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, a one-issue party with little by way of a policy, dubious membership - a couple of its members have caused scandal even in the scandal-ridden European Parliament - and a tendency to fall apart into rancorous internal feuds. Then there are the Greens, of whom the less said, the better. Then there is the increasingly efficient and successful electoral machine created by Nick Griffin's BNP. And a couple of other parties are pushing at the door: the English Democrats, asking for a separate English parliament and government, who have got hundreds of thousands of voters in the last national and European elections, and have a mayor in the former Labour stronghold of Doncaster; and the Christian Party, an Evangelical creation that I suspect does not agree with my view of Christianity. Altogether, the alternatives do not look all that appetizing either.
The whole system is rotten to its foundation, and the election of John Bercow shows that it is unreformable from inside. Perhaps it will take the chaos of a masterless and majority-less Parliament to force serious reforms; but the next few years promise to be disastrous.
However, the MPs seem determined to turn the scandal into a catastrophe. First they made a mockery of the publication of their expenses register - which had made all the damage in the first place - by publishing a version so covered in black ink that most pages were unreadable. Then they were forced by Press and public opinion to get rid of the disastrous Speaker of the House, Michael Martin, who had been a prime mover in the scandal and threatened those who exposed it. Forced to do that, they proceeded to elect the worst possible successor.
The best candidate was the Tory former minister Ann Widdicombe. A woman of spectacular ugliness and considerable political experience, a formidable public speaker, often wrong-headed but never mean, she is regarded even by her opponents as being honest as the day is long; and the scandal has actually proved that - not one paperclip of her expenses was questionable. She also "has a life", being a well-revieved novelist on the side. She will not stand at the next election, but that was actually a point in her favour: being beholden to no-one, she would perform her duties without fear and favour, and really push for reform. She was eliminated in the first round. An equally fearless and high-minded Labour candidate, Frank Field, was not even allowed to compete
Of the remainder, the only presentable option was one Sir George Young, a Tory baronet with a nice smile, unimpeachable honesty, and a lengthy political experience. Although far from a reformer - he is one of those people who are so happy with their own life that they cannot imagine why people should want to change the world - he could be presented as a choice for plain dealing and open government.
So who did the elected representatives of the British people elect as their own leader? One John Bercow, whose expenses page as published was full of black ink; who was hated, nay, loathed, by every other member of his own Tory party, as a slippery, untrustworthy opportunist; who has moved from the extreme right to the extreme left of the party in a few years without ever losing the ability to be loathsome; who insulted his own constituents in writing when they disagreed with him; who has authored a Bill that would have criminalized any opposition to abortion. I have hated the man since the Major years. He is detestable privately and detestable in public; detestable in his principles and in his behaviour; detestable inside, detestable outside. It is doubtful that of all the six hundred and forty Members of the British House of Commons, one could be found who was more wholly repulsive.
His own party certainly must have rejected him. He was known from the beginning to be the choice of the Labour leadership, under the usual miserable calculation of electing one Tory that would embarrass all other Tories; and he was railroaded by the Labour whips, in spite of the fact that the election of the Speaker was supposed to be free to the point of using a secret ballot.
This is a spectacular example of the clunky, rhino-hided insensitivity and blindess of Gordon Brown's management. It takes a kind of reverse political genius to blow the public and the media such an enormous, wet, smelly fart of a rapsberry when your own future is already very deservedly in question. As a matter of fact, this whole crisis is largely of Gordon Brown's making; every step of his way from the moment he forced his way to Number Ten without a popular mandate has insured that it would happen. He is one of those men who could turn ten thousand friends into sworn enemies, one by one. Suspicious, rancorous, unpleasant in his presence and habits, a bully and a coward, wholly incapable to forget any imagined slight, he is as bad a material for a politician as could very well be imagined. His reason to oppose the pleasant Sir George Young as Speaker? That he is "a Tory toff" and "a member of the Establishment". Thus speaketh, if you please, the head of the country's government and a man who has been at the top of his party since his twenties. You would think he were still a grumpy student radical on an inadequate cheque, rehearsing his disappointments in his beer.
Beyond that, it shows complete folly from all sides. It is my opinion that a general election is necessary now. Brown, with the cowardice of the most stereotypical bully, is drawing the process on as long as he can, in the hope that some miracle - perhaps the salvation of the world of which he has spoken in one debate on the economy - could come along and change the position he has made for himself. But the Labour Party is letting him do it, and the other parties are allowing him to go on.
In my view, this is going to be disastrous, not only for Labour, but for all three established parties. An immediate election would probably have mauled Labour and not done much for any of the other, but would have left the political landscape fairly recognizable. What will happen now is that all the groups that have something to gain from the collapse of the leading three parties will have one year to organize, prepare for the vote, and campaign. The result, I suspect, will be disaster for all three leading parties, and probably an unmanageable Parliament with six or seven party groups represented, no majority, and huge problems in forming any sort of government. The leading party may well end up being UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, a one-issue party with little by way of a policy, dubious membership - a couple of its members have caused scandal even in the scandal-ridden European Parliament - and a tendency to fall apart into rancorous internal feuds. Then there are the Greens, of whom the less said, the better. Then there is the increasingly efficient and successful electoral machine created by Nick Griffin's BNP. And a couple of other parties are pushing at the door: the English Democrats, asking for a separate English parliament and government, who have got hundreds of thousands of voters in the last national and European elections, and have a mayor in the former Labour stronghold of Doncaster; and the Christian Party, an Evangelical creation that I suspect does not agree with my view of Christianity. Altogether, the alternatives do not look all that appetizing either.
The whole system is rotten to its foundation, and the election of John Bercow shows that it is unreformable from inside. Perhaps it will take the chaos of a masterless and majority-less Parliament to force serious reforms; but the next few years promise to be disastrous.
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-23 05:28 am (UTC)As an outsider looking in, I thought Gordon Brown's succession to Tony Blair was, for lack of a better term, "strange". Of course in the media in this country it was heralded as the best thing to be done because, well, apparently Tony Blair promised Brown he could be in charge when he was done. Or something to that effect. The British public were drawn to be behind it all the way, to the lowliest of the low to the great barons of industry.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-23 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-23 07:08 am (UTC)Thus, Labour have managed to get a 'government man' into the position of speaker in the guise of a tory.
While having little in common with the politics of Ms Widdicombe I tend to agree that her brand of ruthless honesty is exactly what is needed now.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-23 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-23 09:11 am (UTC)