My House Point's column from today's Liberal Democrat News. It is one of those slightly preachy ones where I try to point a moral.
Youtube has the video of Eric Pickles on Question Time. The rough, tough, gruff trope is stolen from In the Red by the late Mark Tavener, an early stalwart of the Liberal Revue.
Pickled logic
The worrying feature of the scandal over MPs’ allowances is not that voters no longer trust MPs. It’s that MPs no longer trust the voters.
It was easy to laugh at Eric Pickles’ performance on Question Time last week. The wonder that spread over his face when he announced he sometimes has to start work as early as 9.30 was comic gold. And his insistence that Westminster “runs like clockwork” looked pretty silly a few days later when a guest at his reception was tear-gassed and arrested by the rozzers.
But what was really noteworthy about that performance was the way Pickles assumed that he would not be able to convince the audience he was entitled to a second home in London. “I am never going to satisfy you folks,” he said, “because I am an MP and therefore guilty."
Granted, it would have been a hard task. His Brentwood constituency is only 37 miles from London. When I catch an early morning train the 83 miles from Market Harborough to London it can be hard to find a seat. It is full of people whose employers wouldn’t dream of paying for a second home for them in the capital.
Pickles was made chairman of the Conservative Party to be the voice of Northern common sense among the Southern smoothies. Pickles’ own website quotes Peter Hetherington of the Guardian as calling him a “bluff diamond”. Hetherington might have added that he is rough, tough and gruff.
But on Question Time he’d had enough and was in a huff.
Pickles has been doing himself well, but he is far from the worst offender. (It is pleasing, incidentally, to see how sensibly Lib Dem MPs have conducted themselves.) So if he is not prepared to mount a reasoned defence of his conduct, what hope is there for the rest of them?
This mutual distrust between politicians and voters is bad for democracy. The hollowed out political system it has created invites in a populist “anti-politics” candidate like Berlusconi. And there are nastier forces than that in the wings too.
The answer is for MPs to curb their "go out boys and spend it" mentality. Then they might feel able to treat voters like adults.
It's worth mentioning that Eric Pickles must go an awful long way round to make it 37 miles from Brentwood to Westminster - especially as the Inland Revenue will only tolerate the shortest route for claiming expenses. What really hacks me off is that he can claim travelling expenses from home to work at all when he gets paid to ahve a second home. No-one else can without their being taxed to the hilt on home to work travel and indeed as far as I know no public sector employer pays these expenses at all. On top of that he gets paid what amounts to the average wage for the rest of us suckers to have a second home when he could (expletive deleted) well commute like his constituents.
ReplyDeleteWhen aerosols like Eric Pickles get trebly privileged - all their expenses tax free, home to work travel and a second home allowance, that's what makes even cynics like me, who've seen most abuses, see red. It's this overprivilege coupled with their greed that is beyond disgusting.