[Edited Post] David Pryce-Jones wrote the following summary of the debacle shaking England. Though he posted it a few days ago, he covers the ground so well I thought it worth reproducing. An update follows his post:
In the name of God, go’
The mood in Britain is unlike anything I have experienced. The electorate is enraged by the conduct of its representatives. Some members of parliament daren’t show their face, a former Labour foreign secretary has been booed by a television audience, and a Conservative member has had a brick heaved through her office window. It is all about expenses, fraudulent claims, tax evasion, making private fortunes by looting the public purse. Worse still, much of it
has been legitimate, within what
MPs are calling “the system,” and that is what is provoking the
revulsion and rage.
It turns out that the Blair-Brown Labour
government could not bring itself to raise salaries for MPs, but
instead set up “the system” of allowances that were privileged and kept
secret. An MP could claim thousands of pounds more or less on his own
say-so, with shaky receipts for dubious expenditure, and the result is
that some have built property portfolios worth a million pounds or
more. Some of the claimants were already rich in their own right,
others used to be poor. All but a handful have been shamelessly greedy,
and brought disgrace upon themselves and Westminster. The spectacle of
them pretending that “the system” is to blame, or that they made
accounting mistakes and are offering now to return ill-gotten gains has
added elements of farce.
Supervising this milking of “the
system” was Michael Martin, the Speaker. In the early days of Tony
Blair, this man was press-ganged into a job for which he was unfit. An
old hardline socialist and trade-union man, he saw himself as defender
of entitlements rather than liberty and proper government. He put in
outrageous claims for himself and his wife. He did his very best to
suppress information about the embezzling and spivery going on under
him, in the classic manner of a trade unionist getting whatever he
could for his comrades. Someone leaked the facts and figures to the Daily Telegraph,
which has been publishing them for the past fortnight. Demonstrating
folly and arrogance, Speaker Martin tried to cover up, seeking to set
the police on whoever leaked rather than on malefactors. He has
personally insulted the handful of MPs who had the courage to criticize
him. The Telegraph exposes MPs who have claimed a range of
things from porn videos, bath plugs, and dog food up to horse manure,
building work to eliminate dry rot from a home, and clearing the moat
of a stately manor house. The revelations have been appalling. People
ordinarily do not live like this.
Yesterday a motion of
no-confidence in the speaker came before the house. A number of MPs
called for his resignation. One of them likened the moment to the
debate in 1940 when Leo Amery borrowed Cromwell’s rebuke to
parliamentarians, “In the name of God, go,” and so got rid of Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain. Speaker Martin gave an evidently
insincere apology, fluffed his words, couldn’t read his statement, and
had to refer to his clerk about procedure. The media of course had a
field day.
Today Speaker Martin resigned in a speech lasting
half a minute and without apology, forced out as he should have been
long ago. The last speaker to suffer this indignity was Sir John
Trevor, in 1695, for taking bribes. Prime Minister Gordon Brown knew
the outline of the MPs’ misdemeanours if not the details, and if the
speaker implicates him the scandal may not stop at this point. The
Mother of Parliaments has had to endure a lot in its history, but
previous rogues like Charles James Fox or Horatio Bottomley at least
had a certain style. This lot are just tawdry.
Update 5/25/09 - John O'Sullivan updates the story with his article today, "The Mother of All British Scandals. In addition to listing petty charges MPs made, there is this:
The worst claims bordered on the fraudulent -- and some stepped over that border. One MP claimed mortgage-interest payments of about $17,000 on a house that had no mortgage. Another took $55,000 in expenses on a necessary "second home" near Parliament, when his primary home was only a few hundred yards away.
Many MPs "flipped" -- i.e., changed their homes from primary to secondary in order to receive second-home allowances. One MP flipped three times and got more than $150,000 of public money.
O'Sullivan says further:
What MPs haven't yet faced up to is that the voters want more than reform; they want the wholesale sacking of MPs found with their hands in the till -- and prison for those in up to their armpits.
If the main party leaders, Labor's Brown and the Conservative Party's David Cameron, don't respond to this bitter public mood by forcing many resignations, the voters will either vote for other parties or for independent "reformers" -- or not vote at all. So the party leaders will respond.
The result will be parties with many new MPs -- almost new parties, in fact -- committed to reforming not only Parliament but also the wider political system. In the least worst system of government, scandal equals reform.