Capitol Capers in the Silly Season

Actor Brian Cox is in the news: he called for Parliament to be sited in a provincial city, such as Wolverhampton. A staunch Labour supporter on the soft left of the party, he makes the reasonable point that the costs of London and its associated lifestyle led inevitably to the expenses scandal. 

This of course got all the local papers going, as well as the region's politicians, never averse to a bit of free publicity earned by spouting some patriotic cant:

Mr McFadden, Labour MP for Wolverhampton South East, said: “I think it’s a great idea. We have plenty of areas in need of regeneration and I am sure all the MPs would get a warm welcome.” 

Wolverhampton North East MP Miss Reynolds added: “If there was a serious proposal on the table to move Parliament outside of London, I can think of no better place than Wolverhampton.

Nauseating enough, but not nearly as bad as (of course) multimillionaire property speculator and MP by 619 votes Mr Paul Uppal:

I think the idea of Parliament moving to Wolverhampton would be very welcome. It would make the whole place less London-centric and introduce more Black Country traditional values. I’ve always tried to bring Wolverhampton common sense into Westminster, if that could be reversed too by Westminster coming into Wolverhampton I think everyone would benefit.”

McFadden's point is simply economic, while Emma Reynolds avoids any substance at all. Both efforts are less appalling than Uppal's lazy attempt to ingratiate himself with the locals. What are 'Black Country traditional values' and 'Wolverhampton common sense'? A strong case could be made for them being old-line socialism. There's also a streak of racial prejudice: Paul's predecessor was Enoch Powell. They're just empty phrases, the usual cant of the professional politician. It's a bit cheeky of Uppal to appropriate the city's supposed values: he doesn't even live in his own constituency and can't vote for himself. Could he point to a single example of 'Wolverhampton common sense'? His voting record is of 100% loyalty to the party line. He voted to cut benefits for disabled children, to abolish the Educational Maintenance Allowance, to privatise the postal service and to triple student tuition fees.

In this company, Brian Cox looks like an intellectual giant. Whether he knows it or not, he's echoing the sentiments of the Syndicalist movement of the 1910-20s. Particularly strong in the South Wales coalfields, the Syndicalists believed that their political and union representatives were bound to lose touch with the rank-and-file: once dressed up in sharp suits and drinking sherry with the enemy in negotiations, they'd become part of a political class. Here's what the 1912 manifesto The Miners' Next Step has to say

‘All leaders become corrupt, in spite of their own good intentions…They… become “gentlemen”, they become MPs and have considerable social prestige because of this power.’ 

The leadership then starts to see the rank-and-file as a mass to be controlled for his/her own prestige, rather than as a set of independent thinkers. The syndicalists' solution was to dissolve the state and employers in favour of workers' control of their own industries, negotiating directly with the workers controlling other sectors of the economy.

Cox is nearly there. He sees London as the Great Maw, sucking in innocent politicians and turning them into self-interested cogs in a self-perpetuating machine. This isn't necessarily a leftwing or progressive position of course: plenty of rural Tories – especially those calling themselves the Turnip Taliban – see the city as a site of moral degradation. This is a long-running cultural theme too, hence the juxtapositions of bucolic idyll and urban corruption in Shakespeare and a host of poets' work.

As usual, I'm way ahead of Cox, McFadden, Reynolds et al.. When the Supreme Court was founded in 2005 by separating its functions from the House of Lords, I saw an opportunity. I wrote to my New Labour MP observing that it had no need to be in London. Justice – being an abstract concept – could be served anywhere, and locating the court away from the symbolic and actual centres of power in London would be a good way to communicate the separation of powers (even though Blair's cancellation of investigations into BAe/Saudi arms corruption proves that there is no actual separation of powers). Furthermore, perhaps judges and lawyers conducting their affairs away from the cosy confines of central London, gentlemen's clubs and Establishment haunts might inform their perception of life as it's lived by the rest of us.

JB Priestley said something similar in English Journey. Visiting West Bromwich (which makes Wolverhampton look like Manhattan's Upper West Side), he wrote about the degrading squalor of one street he called Rusty Lane. Despairing of the division between rulers and ruled, he says this:

There ought to be no more of those lunches and dinners, at which political and financial gentlemen congratulate one another, until something is done about Rusty Lane, West Bromwich.

The truth is, of course, that the political classes, particularly those on the Conservative side, either never see such places or blame the inhabitants. As Boris Johnson recently said, wealth is the natural product of genetic superiority: poverty must therefore be the inevitable result of congenital inferiority.  There's no solution to that.

Finally, the establishment of a major state institution in a poor city like Wolverhampton or Stoke would be good for the local economy.  It wouldn't just be judges appearing from the train station: lawyers, administrators, civil servants would all settle locally. I pointed out the Irish government's decentralisation strategy (now sadly ended) and suggested that the UK should try the same thing.

Rob Marris replied to me with good humour. Nice try, he basically said, but no chance. He didn't go into any detail, but we all know that the UK's political class considers that it deserves certain associated rewards: Gothic architecture, agreeable accommodation, high security and little contact with the conditions the rest of endure unless under strictly controlled circumstances.

I would support moving Parliament to Wolverhampton, Stoke or any other deprived area. I would fund MPs at exactly the same level our poorest citizens are expected to survive. They could lodge in private rented accommodation and have to prove that they were working hard enough to claim these perks. They should not only see but experience the lives of the hardest-pressed citizens. I would make our representatives much more insecure and end their culture of entitlement. Proportional representation would end the blight of safe seats and key marginals. Second jobs and directorships would be banned and our political representatives would be encouraged to rediscover the privilege of serving the citizens, not 'leading' us like cattle.

But let's not kid ourselves. Britain's political class is a centralist as France's. They're too habituated to moving in a closed physical and social circle. This is just a silly-season story out of season, an opportunity for local big-wigs to get on their high horses and into their local rags. It's a bit of a laugh then our lords and masters will retreat behind their blast walls and smoked glass and we'll forget there was ever another political possibility.

Keeping the bastards honest

I have a cunning plan…

Students have had massive debts imposed on them, justified by the claim that only those earning £21,000 p.a. (£5000 below the median wage) will pay back their loans. Thus, they'll work hard and enter high-paying jobs. I've ranted about the evils of this system before, so I won't go into it again. Let's just accept this argument at face value.

MPs' salaries were introduced in the early twentieth-century to make it possible for poor people to represent us. They're paid £65,000 per year, and receive generous housing and expenses allowances. Many of them retain other jobs too, amazingly: in law, directorships and so on. Afterwards, large numbers of them trade on their parliamentary and governmental experience by taking well-paid jobs in the City, in lobbying and so on. This of course leads to corruption and self-enrichment.

So how about abolishing parliamentary salaries entirely? Instead, offer MPs loans, just like the students. If an MP chooses not to join company boards or sell her inside knowledge to lobbyists, they don't pay the loans back. But if they use their public service as a springboard to riches, power and influence, they naturally owe their newfound wealth to us, and have to pay back their loans.

What do you think?

Support Your Local Communist

Meanwhile, over in Greece, we have the fascinating sight of the Parliament building being protected from anarchist rioters by… the Greek Communist Party (KKE). In a scenario worthy of Ken McLeod's Scottish Trotskyist science fiction, the tired old arguments usually held in tiny meeting halls and smelly pubs are being fought out on the street.

The basic argument is between the KKE's call for a massive, peaceful demonstration of working-class resistance, and the anarchists' attempt to smash the state on the spot. Most communists believe in government as the peoples' tool (though some assume that the state will 'wither away' as industry-blocs learn to cooperate): anarchists believe that states are automatically oppressive, and that humanity is naturally inclined to altruism and cooperation. Isn't that sweet? Unfortunately, the anarchists seem to reach for this paradise through smashing the place up, which their 19th-century leaders always admitted was a weak point in the plan.

Which leads us to one supposedly revolutionary group - one which fought heroically first against the Nazis and then against the British/US-supported regime - defending the institutions of a morally, politically and financially bankrupt state against those who should be their allies but can't help making all revolutionaries look like spoiled children. Still, at least it's clear that the capitalists don't even get a look-in: their ideology is utterly discredited.

We got democracy from the Greeks - let's hope we learn the next phase from them too.

(Post title echoes that magnificent Western, Support Your Local Gunfighter).

Carter-Ruck are back, back, BACK!

Less than a week after trying to ban any reporting of a parliamentary question about their client Trafigura's poisoning of 30,000 Ivorians, they've written to every MP and peer claiming that as the matter is 'sub judice', MPs can't have a debate about the affair!

Er… does that mean that nobody - MP or not - can talk about any matter that's moving through the courts? Can our elected representatives not choose to discuss whatever's important to this country? Not according to Carter-Ruck.

Luckily, the Speaker's pretty clear:

"It is not sub judice under the house's rules ... There is no question of our own proceedings being in any way inhibited."

Which is élite-speak for 'go fuck yourselves'.

What I don't quite get is why Trafigura think this is good for their company? Perhaps as esssentially very bad men engaged in a filthy business, public opinion doesn't matter, but they aren't making any friends - and the Tory MPs who'll (unfortunately) be in government soon take affronts to Parliamentary authority very seriously indeed.

Kafka, Carter-Ruck and Trafigura

I posted earlier about The Guardian being banned from reporting that an MP it couldn't name was asking a parliamentary question it couldn't repeat, at a time it couldn't mention, despite a constitutional ruling that newspapers could repeat anything said in Parliament (MPs are exempt from libel laws by Parliamentary Privilege, so that they can name and shame wrongdoers). In the comments section, Ewar and I posted the Twitter/blog rumours that the MP was Paul Farrelly (good Labour guy from Newcastle-under-Lyme) and the question concerned Trafigura, a toxic waste company which doesn't want any more attention devoted to its payment of lots of money to the 30,000 Africans it poisoned by dumping toxic waste in Ivory Coast.

This case raises a serious question of freedom of speech. There's no point an MP raising a point if his constituents and other citizens can't hear about it and discuss it. Lawyers shouldn't be able to use Britain's awful libel laws to silence any criticism of their clients.

The Guardian has now presumably won a court hearing, as it's identifying the matter in the 'breaking news' ticker. More background here.

Update: The Guardian's full story here.

Kafka: alive, well and living in London

Newspapers have had the right to print anything said in Parliament since 1688. MPs have used this to circumvent libel laws and identify bad guys by naming them in speeches/questions in Parliament, which the papers then print.

Until now. How's this for a blanket ban on free speech? Essentially, the Guardian can only report that something might be said. Nothing about the subject, the speaker, the time…

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

I'd love to know what the subject is.

Public relations victory of the week

After one Tory MEP told Americans that the NHS is shit (clue: it isn't), and another millionaire MP told someone on film that MPs were treated 'like shit' and lived on 'rations', here's another headache for millionaire man of the people David Cameron: his rich South Staffordshire MP, Patrick Cormack, has called for MPs to be paid £130,000.

This is the man who, rumour has it, is so safe in bourgeois South Staffs that his canvassing consists of leading a cart horse festooned with posters along the high street. He is also a useless, smug, arrogant, bumptious Bufton Tufton.

His colleague Douglas Hogg, of moat-cleaning-at-taxpayers'-expense fame, wants MPs to earn £100,000 + expenses because

the current MPs' salary was "so low in absolute and relative terms" that members of the professional and business classes would be deterred from entering parliament.

MPs earn £64,000 plus expenses.

The average wage in the UK is £23,000.

Any sign of white smoke?

Every other blogger in the world is endorsing a candidate for speaker, so I thought I should too. Surprisingly, it finds me in agreement not only with the Daily Wail, but with Britain's most evil, ill-informed, stupid, reactionary journalist, Melanie Phillips. (Don't follow that link - it leads you into a weird world in which everybody you know is a degenerate, evil, terrorist-loving, immoral, hate-filled scumbag, in her eyes. She doesn't know anything about science either, which doesn't stop her writing about it at length to the detriment of public health and understanding).

Yes, we both support Ann Widdecombe, Phillips' favourite Tory MP and Mail colleague. Not, however, for the same reasons. Phillips wants a vicious, evil troll in the Speaker's chair because she agrees with her views (AW doesn't accept climate change, instituted the manacling of prisoners who were giving birth, but does oppose hunting). I want her to become Speaker because they aren't allowed to utter a batsqueak about their own views and preferences. They put on a wig and do a lot of ceremonial nonsense. So by electing Widdecombe Speaker (ironically), MPs could achieve blissful silence from that ranting, intolerant corner. The world would be a better place.

Alternatively, there are two Sir Alan's standing (Lord and Haslehurst).

Uneasy Lies The Wig

Today we learn the answer to the question that's been on all our lips: which superannuated pompous idiot wants to stop representing their constituents and instead slip on wigs, gaiters, stockings etc. and spend their declining years weakly insisting on 'order' amongst 'Right Honourable Gentlemen'?

The live (though barely) blog will help sustain enthusiasm for an election with all the transparency and user-friendliness as those we've recently seen in North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe. Result around 10 p.m.!

You literally couldn't make it up (unless you were very cynical indeed)

I've always thought of Blair as a grasping, hypocritical, lying, ideology-free, sanctimonious turd of a human being, so it's no surprise to learn that he's a thief too. It's the small things which reveal a man's character. What other word can describe a millionaire who claims £7000 from the taxpayer to do up one of his houses two days before resigning as an MP and departing public life?

Likewise, how do we trust Gideon George Osborne. Not only is his idea of fun watching his own speeches on DVD: he charges us for them. Even more revealingly, the subject of his performance is Value for Taxpayers' Money. Laugh? I almost wept.

What a Burke

If you bright young things can wade through Edmund Burke's prose, this is his advice on how our elected representatives should relate to us - as cited over at Slugger O'Toole:

it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living

Community payback

Steve Bell really is the new Gillray or Cruikshank. Today he imagines our leaders treating themselves as they treat poor people who nick another £10 from the social security…

Seumas Milne nails these bastards completely.

I buried this suggestion in an earlier post. Here's the version I just sent as a letter to the Guardian:

I have a solution for housing MPs which will reduce the opportunity for sleaze and produce social benefits.

Each MP will be loaned a council flat in London as their second home, preferably in the worst-built, highest-crime, least-maintained estate available. They will be offered the same facility in their constituency, though if they already own a home there, moving will not be required. Once the flat is furnished (and maintained) at reasonable expense, no further money will be provided. Living amongst the poorest citizens will keep the MP honest, remind them of their vocation, dissuade them from acquiring expensive white goods, encourage them to consider the most pressing social issues, and will surely lead rapidly to pressure on local authorities and agencies to improve living conditions for the people we consign to such places.

Ocean's Thirteen? Twice??

I wrote to my MP, Rob Marris, a couple of weeks ago. It's a harmless hobby, and makes me feel temporarily good about our democratic process. I specifically asked him to discuss MPs expenses and housing with the government and party hierarchy. I didn't say that they were all corrupt, or should sleep in cardboard boxes, but I did point out that the system was flawed and that ministers taking advantage of loopholes encourages everyone to believe that all politicians are on the take. I also warned against the dangers of developing a class of professional politicians who've never held any other kind of job. Rob Marris, who is too rightwing for me as a loyal New Labour member, but is honest, thoughtful and hard-working (for which he deserves re-election), sent me this reply. It's not exciting, but it's sensible.

Dear Aidan,

Thank you for your e-mail dated 6 April 2009.

Some of the expenses claims made by MP's from all parties seem pretty strange.

It will not surprise you to hear that I support the general proposition that MP's from outside London should not be out of pocket because, on average, we have to spend 2 or 3 nights a week, for about 35 weeks a year, sleeping in London. For the last 25 years, I have lived in the same house in Penn Fields. I do not live in London. I do not wish to live in London. However, I do have to sleep there, because of my work. That is why I claim (about half of) the London accommodation allowance.

I have spent most of my working life in the private sector, where my away-from-home expenses were reimbursed by the partnership for whom I worked.

However, the whole system of MP's additional accommodation expenses needs to be radically overhauled. It seems to me that there are two possibilities;

1. Set an appropriate amount, and include it in MP's basic, taxable pay;

or

2. Set an appropriate flat, daily rate, not taxed, for each overnight in Westminster, away from home.

In either case, the 'appropriate amount' should be set by an independent, outside body, reviewed annually.

If an MP wishes to live higher off the hog than either of those amounts would permit, then it is up to the MP to do so, paying for the excess living from his or her salary. Conversely, if the MP wants to sleep under a bridge, then they can do so!

There are about 650 MP's. Some of them may well be 'on the make'. However, a number of the rest of us are certainly not, given that we took a pay cut to become an MP!

I am surprised at reports of some individuals claiming a London living allowance, whilst being provided with a grace and favour residence. As you say, Ministerial careers can be short lived. It seems to me there is a simple way forward: get rid of the grace and favour residencies (except for the Prime Minister).

We bought our house to live in, not as a piggy bank. Those who did otherwise are now paying the price. So are the rest of us, with the toxic debt of defaulting mortgages. I confess we did extend the mortgage once, but that was to invest in bricks and mortar, and we quickly paid it off.

There is a political class. Whether, as is suggested, it is separated from the interests and lives of the citizens is perhaps not for me, as an MP, to judge. However, the upper echelons of the 3 main political parties are increasing [ly?] filled with individuals who have not had for any real length of time, what I think most of my constituents would regard as a proper job, before entering Parliament at a relatively young age. In any individual case, it may well be explicable. However, as the body politic, particularly Parliament, becomes increasingly filled with people in that position, and the upper echelons disproportionately so, one does have to question the balance.

You asked me to relay your thoughts to party leadership. I have certainly done so, as regards MP's London expenses, and as regards the backgrounds of those who are increasingly dominating our politics.

Yours sincerely,

Rob.

I think that's pretty fair. MPs need somewhere to live in their consituencies and a base in London (except for the London MPs who seem to think that two or even three London homes is acceptable). A flat rate would be easy to administer and fair. So well done Rob! It's a bit cheeky to point out that he's taken a pay cut to become an MP: for the vast majority of us, an MPs salary would be a massive increase, and if it's true that most MPs suffer financially from being elected, it justifies my point that there is a professional political class which is divorced from society - made up of rich people.

Update: Gordon Brown has proposed a similar scheme.