William Hill, the betting firm, is offering 5/2 odds that Gordon Brown leaves the office of Prime Minister this year. I guess if you want to finesse it, it would be worth knowing what are the odds that he has gone by the end of the party conference season in the autumn (ie, by the end of September in Labour’s case).
Dozens of MPs, such as from Labour and Conservative, could be de-selected by their own local party members over expense abuses that have come to light; it is likely that the issue will be one of the very top questions that a voter will have of a candidate who is up for re-election, whenever the polls are held. As far as I know, my local Pimlico MP, Mark Field, is a good guy in this expenses issue, but I’ll have to check. Here’s some data on him at the “They Work for You” website, an invaluable resource. Mr Field, is, by the way, sound as they come in opposing ID cards.
As a side-issue, I hope, as Guido says, that Douglas Carswell gets re-elected for his East Anglian seat with a good majority. He’s been one of the undoubted good guys of this whole sorry process, not something you will usually read at Samizdata. Here is Mr Carswell’s blog.
And thanks Samizdata readers! It turns out that there has been a fair amount of foreign coverage of this saga. The reports generally do not address what is the 800 lb gorilla in the drawing room: the fact that Parliament is as ineffectual as it is in large part due to the transfer of great powers to the EU. And the expenses of European MPs in Strasbourg will no doubt make for fascinating reading.
Well, I’ve stated my view already but I’ll state it again. I’ve no doubt that Mr Carswell is a sound bloke and means well, but his role in this has been one of useful idiocy. As could be said of the howling mob in the “right wing” i.e. anti-left blogosphere.
My question: if Brown does resign, who would replace him as PM? From my side of The Pond, the likely candidates do not inspire confidence.
Or is there someone decent among the embers of Labour whom I’ve missed?
WTF? So if Douglas Carswell calls for certain crooks and buffoons to be sacked or resign, that makes him a useful idiot? I don’t see him or others like him buying into some Quisling Right agenda or being unwitting tools of said, given his own rather sharp euroscepticism.
There’s just no pleasing some people.
Sigh, I didn’t say that he was part of some “quisling right”. I don’t even believe Gabb’s analysis of the “quisling right” because although I like a lot of Gabb’s analysis, he has this mistaken idea that the “right” is supposed to be libertarian and that conservatives and libertarians are all part of the same thing; so he gets annoyed when conservatives aren’t libertarians and thinks they’re guilty of betrayal. But since conservatives aren’t libertarians; they’re authoritarian statists with a different agenda to the Left, he’s mistaken.
What Carswell has done- and I wish I’d written more about this before the fact; in fact I planned an article for the LA blog (since David Davis has been foolish enough to offer to publish my deranged mitherings) warning what was going to happen as a result of all this, but being busy drawing rude pictures I didn’t have the time to write it, so can now only really be wise after the fact- has been to play a major part in the subjection of the Commons to direct rule by the Enemy Class, specifically, as I would have predicted, its subjection to this new EC quango.
Anyone with an understanding of the EC ought to have predicted this. This is how they work. Any crisis will be used to further their interests. They cause an economic crash, it’s proof of the need for “more regulation”. And so on.
“The Right” have taken this minor thing- a few MPs fiddling their expenses- and turned it into a very big thing. And what has the EC done? Taken it as proof that parliament can’t be trusted and must be subject to “independent” (i.e. EC) external regulation. This is a further strengthening of the Enemy Class and a further step down the road to serfdom. It was entirely predictable.
But the right- not the quisling right, but perhaps “the Stupid Right”- have played useful idiots, so eager to kneecap a couple of the MPs we don’t like that they’ve opened the door to this new worsening, delivering parliament into the lap of the Enemy. Carswell has done his bit, destroying the office of Speaker. You think anyone’s going to be listening to him and reading The Plan in the corridors of power? Like hell they are. This is a win for Them and a lose for Us.
People need to get their heads around actually considering the damned consequences. What will actually happen. They have power. We do not. This must always be remembered.
That is an even odder assertion. I don’t see why Mr Carswell is making things worse by demanding that a bent, Glasgow machine politician should be kicked out of the job and be replaced by someone rather more able to uphold parliamentary authority.
I also do not see how the Enemy Class can profit from having large numbers of complacent, sitting MPs given the bum’s rush by their constituents at the next election; nor do I see how it is good for the EC to have so many voters regarding much of the EC in contempt. This whole saga is terrible for the EC if those who understand the dynamics play it right.
what would you have Mr Carswell and the other honest MPs do? Nothing?
Never mind the gorilla in the room, there is a school of blue whales in the fish tank in the corner.
This galere of rogues has presided over the destruction of this country. The debt issue alone is enough to qualify many of them for a slow and painful death.
That the thick British public is angry at them for the vanishingly small (in terms of public expenditure) sums they have pilfered rather than the destruction by debt and corrupting welfare dependency shows that very little will change with the new faces after the election.
The EU qualifies as only a gorilla, because a single act of parliament put through in a day could remove us from its clutches.
In my view, the blue whales include at least: public debt, loss of liberty, the enemy class’ ideological dominance of all areas of public policy, loss of economic base outside financial services and the iatrogenic welfare system.
Johnathan, I can’t reply more fully without merely repeating what I already posted. I’ve made my point clearly enough already, I think.
Sorry Ian, but you say you have made your point clearly, but your point is bunk. Sorry to be blunt, but there you are.
The speaker was a corrupt twat. He had to be removed. To suggest that said twat should be allowed to preside over a shameful abuse of taxpayer’s money because to do anything else would be to further the interests of the enemy class is daft. That is not so. A Speaker will be elected by secret ballot; with any luck, the scrutinising powers of parliament will be increased, and the accountability of the MPs in that place will be increased.
That is a loss for the EC.
You sound like a Marxist: if X goes wrong, it is a win for the EC; if it is reformed or changed, it is a win for the EC.
(This, incidentally, is yet another demonstration of the limitations of class analysis.)
Yes, Johnathan, the point I am making is that at this stage of the game; when they are in control of the culture, everything is a win for them. They make it that way.
Take the recent financial crash. They caused it. Who got the blame? “Greedy speculators et al”. The FSA (and other regulators) presided over the crash. Result? Calls for more regulation and powers to the regulator.
So, two points here, to spell things out more clearly. Firstly, whatever the disaster, it will be used to justify more powers to the Enemy. If you don’t think there’s an Enemy Class, fair enough, but I’m not alone in stating the blitheringly obvious that that group of people who sidle from quango to faux charity to corporatist business are a definable class. It’s called “the political class”. You may have heard of it. You, and others, need to get beyond “A therefore B”. You think you’ll get B. You don’t. You get C, D and E. You have to say not “If we do A, B will happen” but, “if we do A, what will actually happen?” There is a difference.
An example I used over at DK- suppose you campaign to end the BBC licence fee. You think, “if the licence fee is ended, the BBC will be ended”. But that isn’t what will happen. If you gain enough traction, the Enemy will lead the debate with “then how should the BBC be funded?” and come up with something worse which deeper entrenches the BBC, such as an ISP tax. Ending the BBC will not be on the table. That might be what you want, but you won’t get it. So be careful what you campaign for.
The second point, and this is going to seem rather rude, but you’re used to that from me by now I guess, is that you’ve been duped. You’ve been had. You’ve been led by the nose by a publicity campaign. You’ve been told to be furious and outraged by Lord Nob spending £2000 on his moat and Lord Torking Downe spending £500 on his aboretum and, as part of the mob, you are dutifully furious and, just as required, are yelling “something must be done!” and not caring enough about what the something will be.
This is how they manage things. They engineer consent and, in this case, engineer contempt. Who gives a flying fuck about the Speaker of the Commons? REally. I’ll bet until this week 95% of the population couldn’t even have named him. But now, this dull functionary in tights, and the trivial matter of a few grand on expenses, has become the Biggest Thing Evar. And that has been used to justify something very real- an end to parliamentary sovereignty. This is immensely important. And you’re squealing and cheering because this man you’ve been induced to hate has been cast down as a sacrifice.
Now you might say, “I is a libertarian, I don’t want parliament to be sovereign”, and I agree with that. But again, reducing the power of the Government- or rather, of the Governance, is no more on the table than abolishing the BBC. Instead, reducing the sovereignty of parliament- sacrosanct until now, based on the principle that there is no higher power (cept Mrs Queen)- means that that sovereignty will not be returned to the people, but will be handed to unaccountable, unelected governance- Enemy Class apparatchiks.
This is an appalling precedent. Of course in the long term libertarians want to reduce parliamenteray soveriegnty by handing it back to the people. But we can’t have that at the moment. So the best we can hope for is to keep it in the government, because that is the opposite of what the EC want. They want it out of government, and in their institutions. They’ve just made another major leap forward. They have just gained (or will gain, when this power transfer goes through) power over MPs; over parliament itself. If you can’t see why that is a very Bad Thing, I really would suggest that you sit back and think very hard before telling me I’m talking cobblers again.
Having read that again it has occurred to me that you may be unaware of what has been agreed by all parties- that the Speaker is to be depowered and his powers transferred to a quango. You are aware of that?
May I applaud Ian B’s last, succinct, analysis of the state we are in?
It’s refreshing to see such a cogent analysis even if the conclusions are grim.
OTOH, it’s not too hard to envisage the English (yes, I’m afraid that I do mean the English) leading a successful surge back from the brink. Easier than imagining the Americans managing the same trick (fervently though I hope that they do).
Ian B the only objective should be hasten the whole thing crash not let it drag on.
I have to agree with Otto that the Government has wasted our money on such a collossal scale that it dwarfs the cost of the expenses scandal. However the expenses scandal puts to bed any notion that the Government, though incompetent, mean well and have the country’s best interests at heart. It is quite clear that they depise us and only want to control us and steal our money. Now that the truth is out, despite their best efforts to conceal it, their pathetic attempts to convince us that they are on our side and worthy of re-election are quite nauseating.
Gordon Brown was heard on a radio clip saying that he couldn’t call an election because it would result in a Conservative government which would be incompetent. Every day he sounds more like a crazed dictator.
I’m as concerned as you about transfer of powers to the EU – heck, yet again I spent the day in Brussels for my lobbying job, because that’s where the power is. But I really can’t see the EU’s role in the expenses saga: in all honesty, this problem was home-grown (except, possibly, for the Christopher Booker argument that when Parliament gives up its power the only thing left for MPs to do is to scam the system).
There was one thing that really shocked me, and as a professional lobbyist I’m both more knowledgeable and more cynical than the average citizen, if not the average Samizdatista on this. It wasn’t the embezzlement. It was the Q&A between David Davis and the Speaker:
Douglas Carsland: There’s been a motion of No Confidence in you, Mr Speaker. Can we have a debate on it?
Speaker: It’s not a substantive motion, so no.
David Davis Is there any procedure for back benchers to put down a substantive motion, and if so how?
Speaker:No, that’s a matter for the government.
Obviously, I knew back benchers had very little power, and only the tiniest hope of creating law themselves. But the solemn and formal public assertion. by the empowered decision-maker, that back benchers have no power to put down a substantive motion at all is utterly shocking. Surely, this is an admission that “lobby fodder” is not a description of the practical situation into which ambitious and unprincipled backbenchers choose to confine themselves, but is actually also the formal limit of their power.
This is shocking to me because, though a libertarian, I am a bit of a constitutional conservative. I have – perhaps now I should say “had” – a fond belief that however much Parliament has given up its rights and powers, our elected tribunes are still capable of reclaiming that authority if faced with a crisis that shakes them up enough to want to do it. But this was clearly such a crisis, and established authority – in the form of Speaker Martin – announced that the people’s tribune’s had no power to unseat him without the government’s permission, despite the established constitution rule that the Speaker is subject to the Commons, not to the Executive.
Power wrongly delegated is disappointing. Power wrongly transferred is something worse. The Q&A above asserts, in time of crisis, that Parliament has no power to reclaim the right to entertain any substantive motion without the permission of the Executive. That is worse than disappointing. It is the very definition of an “Elective Dictatorship”.
It should not be allowed to stand.
And that is the nub of the issue. By drawing attention to this matter, and by insisting that one of the prime culprits – Michael Martin – is replaced, folk like Douglas Carswell have done Parliament a favour. And yet IanB, who seems to have let his EC theorising get the better of him, seems to be saying that this is all encouraging the forces of darkness. How is that, Ian? Are you saying that the Telegraph, or this MP, or other whistle-blowers, should have kept quiet? Should MPs have been allowed to go on shafting the taxpayer over their expenses so that the EC would not be strengthened?
This is dumb logic. As I said, if you buy the idea that the EC will be strengthened whatever happens, then reformers and whistle-blowers are damned either way. But I think that is rubbish. It is not at all clear to me that the EC has been aided by the response to this scandal; we are likely to embark on a period of quite sharp retrenchment in public spending over the next few years. The corruption and venality of politicians will make it very much harder for certain political groups to bleat about “cuts”; in fact “cuts” are likely to prove quite popular with the public.
And I get the impression that quite a lot of the public are getting fed up with the Topsy-like growth of the NeuArbeit client state. Scandals such as recent events serve to help put the skids under this.
Johnathan, if you’re going to keep slagging me off, at least have the decency to actually read what I wrote and answer it.
IanB, I did read your argument and as a result, I disputed it.
It is utterly ridiculous to argue that somehow, an MP who calls for the removal of a bent Speaker of the House of Commons is playing into the hands of some, as yet ill-defined class of persons such as “enemy class” of tranzis, or whatever.
I do not see how removing bent MPs for fiddling expenses is undermining the sovereignty of parliament. And it is far from obvious that a quango organisation will have any credibility since such an organisation will be appointed by the government that sits in Parliament. Ultimately, the only way that the public will be satisfied is if the politicians concerned are thrown out, if there are measures to make it easier to recall MPs, etc. You simply haven’t made the case to say that the power of unelected bureaucrats has been aided by this process. And again, you haven’t answered the point as what you would have done differently, if you had the power to do so.
I am not slagging you off; you should be able to tell the difference between abuse and when someone is genuinely having an argument and disagreeing with you. As I am in this specific case. The “useful idiot” theory does not convince me.
The new quango/regime undermines the sovereignty of parliament. In fact, it abolishes. The “bent MPs” narrative is what justifies that.
It will have credibility because it is an “independent regulator”, which are always assumed to be beyond question.
PARLIAMENT IS TO BE SUBJECT TO A QUANGO! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TYPE THIS?
Ah yes, “something must be done”. The one size fits all justification. How about, “a few MPs fiddling their expenses is no big deal, maybe nothing much needed to be done beyond a few slapped wrists”?
And if you imagine that the electorate are happy with that, then you have been smoking something illegal.
I certainly don’t want to see a dumb quango stuffed with the usual suspects and of course remember what happened to Elizabeth Filkin, who tried to enforce standards, and was put under intolerable pressure and had to stand down. It is unlikely that an “independent” body that is set up – assuming that it is – will have any credibility unless it is elected or staffed by people clearly separate from the EC that you speak about.
If my wife, who runs her own business, fiddles the accounts, she could go to jail. How do you think it plays in the press and among the public to see members of the House of Commons taking the piss in this way? Surely, that demonstrates the double-standards between we great unwashed and the EC, of which MPs are prime examples of the latter.
Forget this stuff about “new rules” and new powers for executive agencies.
Just stop paying M.P.s – they can not be “watchdogs” over the government if they depend on the government for their income (or at least it becomes very hard).
“If the party leadership turns against me I will lose my seat – and my family will suffer”.
In the end even politicians who did not care about money at first start to think likke that.
“You would say these things Paul you are rich”.
In case anyone thinks that, actually I am poor – very poor, dirt poor.
As well as being a local councillor (three thousand or so a year – and yes it does make me think twice about being too critical of some things in public) I sell tickets from a small glass box at amusment park.
Try being in such a box for ten or more hours – not as student holiday thing, but as a middle aged man who knows he has no future.
No one (no one) has a right to lecture me about compassion towards the poor.