Winners Or Losers?
Nadine Dorries MP has been right in the past to campaign for measures such as a reduction in the legal abortion limit and selective education.
For having the audacity to stand up for her beliefs and probably those of millions more then she has come under intense and personal criticism from the Left – and for this at least she deserves acknowledgement.
Yet, I do find her rather annoying. Despite her brave, if at times ignorant, stand on traditionalist issues such as abortion, at times she lacks a sense of credibility. Perhaps the attacks by the Left really are hitting home, or perhaps it is because when she gets things wrong it is arguably in spectacular fashion. Who knows?
On her blog last night, Ms Dorries did nothing at all to alleviate these concerns of mine. Quite openly she cited ‘rumours’ from a close yet unnamed source who suggested that the MPs expenses scandal may have been created and exploited by the apparently ‘fiercely eurosceptic’ Barclay Brothers, who have since 2004 been the multi-billionaire owners of the Telegraph newspaper group.
Nadine went on to declare that she agreed with her source who said the Barclay Brothers wish to destabilise Parliament and allow anti-EU parties to gain votes at the European elections because the Conservative Party are not ‘eurosceptic’ enough. Yet, if she really believed the Barclay Brothers were conspiring against MPs then she should have said so rather than using weasel words.
What’s more, the recent MP allowances scandal is collectively the responsibility of all Members of Parliament. Nobody forced MPs to claim their allowance in full. So when Labour MP, Stephen Pound, claimed that Parliamentary staff ‘used to ring people and say you’re under claiming this month’, and that, ‘in reality they were helping us over the cliff’, this was still absolutely no excuse.
Furthermore, of course the Conservative Party is not eurosceptic enough – but then, these days, euroscepticism doesn’t mean anything anymore anyway. You either leave the EU or remain in it and run by it – there is no in between. However, whether that is the view of the Barclay Brothers is debatable. They have never done much to give me the impression they favour EU withdrawal.
However, there is indeed deception at work, and like Ms Dorries I do not find it particularly unlikely that:
This is all a power game … the British public are being worked like puppets by two very powerful men. Whipped up into a frenzy to achieve exactly what they want.
As I did previously remark, something similar happened in 1997 when the media collectively grouped together to help remove the Conservative administration under John Major. Something similar is beginning to happen again, the result of which will mean that important political issues won’t be discussed (or even aired) and as a consequence no honest political choice will be given to the electorate come the General Election next year.
Despite Cameron and the Conservative Party being equally guilty and complicit in the recent expenses scandal (manufactured or otherwise), the media has sought to portray the Conservative Party as setting the agenda on Parliamentary expenses (which it has not done). This is so that the furore may be used as a mechanism to allow the Conservatives back into office without proper scrutiny of their policies or those of Government.
We are entering very dangerous territory and our entire British political system faces an enormous challenge. Under the cover of darkness that this scandal has cast across Westminster and engulfed the media, our Government, with the willing compliance of the opposition, are seeking to force through yet further radical constitutional reform. Melanie Phillips in the Spectator argues:
The last thing that should happen is for Parliament to be made even weaker. Yet MPs are apparently themselves doing just that by agreeing to have their financial arrangements removed from Parliamentary control and given to an outside body. But this undermines a key principle of our Parliamentary democracy that Parliament is sovereign and no-one tells it what to do.
As Dr Richard North had previously remarked – this scandal is a symptom, not the cause of our wider problem. That problem is the constitutional crisis we are now facing which has been mainly brought about by successive Governments and Parliaments who have helped to whittle away our democratic powers and right to self-government. The result has been a public left bewildered and angered by handsome perks for MPs who are not doing their job.
In this way, Nadine Dorries redeemed herself this morning when she rightly remarked that the real fault lies with successive Governments and their Prime Ministers, who have never had the courage publicly to address the issue of MPs’ salaries and their worth. The currently proposed reforms will go no way towards assessing that worth either. One or two MPs might ceremonially be thrown under the bus by their leaders to save the rest, but, fundamentally, nothing much will change at all.
We cannot continue to blithely ignore the overriding issue of sovereignty. Unless our Parliament as an institution is rebuilt and strengthened against the power of Government then it shall remain meaningless and verbose, and these types of financial and political scandal will only perpetuate.
