Here we go again: another round of the Great Parliamentary Rip-Off debate. Point your fingers. Chuck your ordure. Wheel out the tumbrils. Demand, oh so shrilly, a Public Enquiry (it keeps the pot boiling). And don’t forget, above all, to look to partisan advantage.
Les tricoteuses, reading and urged on by the effusions of The Sun, wait at the base of the guillotine for the main act. Yet, ultimately, the politicians, acting according to their nature, are not solely to blame. In any event, it was (apologies for another Malcolmian cliché) ever thus:
But ’tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round.
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
It’s our fault …
We put them there. We vote (or don’t vote at all) for them in our own image. What we collectively want is the easy life, the quick fix, the hand-out, the bit-on-the-side, the back-hander, the cash in an envelope that avoids putting it through the books. In our lives, as well as in Parliament, we only feel affronted by it when, by proxy, our own mendacities, our own mediocrities are revealed, publicised and denounced.
… guided by the media
We are assisted in our hypocrisy by a whole media circus, all involved in the same stunts.
Take (oh, please do! As far away as possible!) the Murdoch lie-machine. Driven by the gelt-lust, the aim is to dislodge the BBC from its pinnacle, to clear the way for Sky to be the Master of the Universe. Any number of stories are concocted and amplified to that end. Politicians (of all parties) are prepared to be suborned to this end for a few passing puffs of publicity, a few crumbs from the Dirty Digger’s table.
The Sunday Times has been to the fore in the excoriation of political misdeeds: scandal sells newsprint. Yet, cue — again — Chris Mullin:
Wednesday, 13 November [2002]
Dave Triesman recounted an illuminating little exchange that he had recently with the editor of the Sunday Times, John Witherow. David had been complaining about that paper’s unrelentingly hostile coverage of the government and all its works. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ Witherow replied. ‘We treated the Tories the same way.’
‘What are your values?’ asked Dave, ‘What do you stand for?’
To which Witherow shamelessly replied, ‘The bottom line.’
That doesn’t excuse the BBC, either. The BBC has its charter, which includes a “mission statement“:
The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—
(a) sustaining citizenship and civil society …
For the hierarchs that noble aim starts around a quarter of a million a year, plus expenses. It may not match the trouserings in the higher echelons of the London press (let alone the squillions tractored home by top Sky executives), but Joan and Joe Soap see it as their money, accountable to them through the licence fee.
There is an alternative
We could actually vote ideologically. Admittedly, that involves education and self-education, and — most taxing of all — thinking. Whatever our persuasion, Left, Right or Centre, we could put “give” a higher priority than “take”.
So many of us consider we are “good judges of character”, then put our X against the name of a known rogue: “Ah, he’s a real card, he is!” There is a glaring example. Andrew Gilligan, egged on by Veronica Wadley of the Evening Standard (then in the Daily Mail fold), manufactured serial Lee Jasper allegations (subsequently all rejected in a blitz of investigations). That did for Ken Livingstone. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson rose steadily to the top of the cess-pit. Michael Howard, after all, sacked Johnson from the Tory Front, not for his shameless extra-marital shaggings and amorality, but for bare-faced lying.
That episode should inform us of something about “honesty”, misrepresentation and how we chose to be represented.
Come the General Election, a number of heads will roll. Even among their party colleagues and supporters, some will go unlamented, unregretted. Malcolm remembers, from being there, watching the screens reporting results with like-minded souls. A Labour loss might be met by groans among the generality. In a corner there will be a group of like-minded souls, purists perhaps, who note the name of the evicted MP, mutter “Another Labour gain”, raising glasses to a socialist victory. Malcolm is prepared to venture similar things happen in other parties.
Down with the Cynical Opportunist Party!
Back in the early ’60s, when he was emerging from the jobbing-reporter chrysalis, National-Treasure Michael Frayn wrote columns for the Guardian and the Observer.
There are several anthologies of Frayn’s columns. Clive James is a fan:
The focal point of his journalism was his “Miscellany” column for the Guardian: a stream of comic invention unmatched since Beachcomber, whom he admired, and, later, selected and edited. Frayn’s own three main collections of columns were The Day of the Dog (1962), The Book of Fub (1963) and At Bay in Gear Street (1967). Frayn fans who own those volumes in paperback generally try to get hold of two copies of each, in case the first one gets read to pieces by borrowers.
Failing those, there’s over a hundred of examples in the Methuen anthology.
Clive James’s site provides links to nine classics, including The Europaean, the Supranational Anthem of the European Economic Community:
Der lustige Frog mit den leerende Wop,
Der boomende Belge mit den kraftige Kraut,
Sie bringen opp all naastie Tariffs zum Stop,
Und werken den Kommon Millenium aut!
None of the nine are specifically UK political.One of Frayn’s memorable inventions was the Rt Hon Christopher Smoothe, Minister for Chance and Speculation. Fortunately, elsewhere Google points us to a 1962 gem on the Guardian archive: the televised parliament gameshow —
THE SPEAKER: Hi folks! Welcome to another edition of TV Parliament, the party game programme for the family. Remember – the side that gets the highest rating wins the debate, and the Member who is elected most pleasing TV personality by the audience gets a luxury holiday …
Indeed: something with which, from today’s headlines, we are instantly familiar. It concludes with:
THE SPEAKER: Do you want to quit, Christopher, or will you go on to the 64,000 question?
Mr SMOOTHE: I’ll … I’ll go on.
Mr GEORGE SNUGG (Isle of Dogs, Lab): Will the Minister give the House the names of the first six kings after William the Conqueror?
Mr SMOOTHE: I am looking into that question … and it would wrong to anticipate my findings.
THE SPEAKER: That’s the correct answer!
(Wild applause.)
We’re nearly half-a-century, eleven or so General Elections, and ten changes of Prime Minister on. Not a lot seems to have changed.
Or perhaps it has …
Not even his fertile imagination could conceive both major parties headed, now or recently, by the heir to Frayn’s other creation, the PR man Rollo Swavely.
Indeed, the best government that can be bought.
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