Reform Parliament: Corruption Education

The political process provides outstanding object lessons for youth in what can best be described as corruption education.

So let’s congratulate David Chaytor, Eliot Morley, and Jim Devine. Although all three of them are well blessed with handsome salaries, and therefore should not be eligible for legal aid when accused of fiddling expenses, this noble trio has managed to manipulate the system so that when they come to trial, their luxurious legal fees will be paid by us, the British citizen body. If the case goes to Appeal, it may apparently cost us £1 million pounds.

The first lesson in corruption education gained from observing this piece of relatively petty chicanery is the obvious one. In politics, it pays to be a bit dishonest. Think back over history, most ‘great’ leaders have been rogues and cheats for much of their time in power.

But the important lesson is a subtler one. Reform Parliament is the shout. Too many MPs have cheated on expenses making us, the taxpayers fund their duck houses and second home furnishings, and so on. So – reform Parliament. Everyone says their piece, and a few MPs are sacked. Then there’s a General Election; new MPs arrive in the House of Commons, and most of the silly things done in Parliament for the last few hundred years will continue to be done by the next Parliament.

The real lesson of this sorry episode is that the forthcoming election will be argued on trivialities. Of course Britain’s enormous debt is not triviality. But the politicians of all parties have made it very clear to us that they have no idea whatsoever as to how to diminish the debt. So if we are thinking about how to reduce Britain’s deficit we might as well vote by spinning a coin as by listening to Messrs Darling and Osborne
There are questions, serious, important, questions, which the forthcoming election
should decide:
1. Should we withdraw from Afghanistan?
2. Should we now decide not to replace Trident nuclear missile system?
3. How can we most quickly and efficiently produce electricity for all the nation’s needs without using fossil fuels?
4. How can we turn Britain into a democracy, ie stop Britain being ruled by a political party elected by a small proportion of the nation’s citizens?

Reform Parliament? We may have to scrap it and start again from scratch.