Anatomy of scandal: the bigger picture
Our politics are going through turbulent times, but we need to lift our heads and see beyond the next day's headlines
What day is it? Thursday. OK. In the news you will find the he-said-she-said storm in a mug of tea which is the investigation of Sue Gray: the Conservatives say that the former civil servant has betrayed her profession’s impartiality by parleying with the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer; the Labour Party accuses the government of blaming Gray for the downfall of Boris Johnson. I wrote about Gray yesterday and warned that we shouldn’t end up banning civil servants from taking political jobs after their time in Whitehall. The issue does raise some serious questions about the Civil Service Code and how senior officials maintain impartiality in a sharply political world, but, in the global sweep of history, this is not a major scandal nor will it be much remembered in 10 or 15 years’ time.
If procedural irregularities in Whitehall aren’t to your taste, there is more. Last week the chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, resigned after an inquiry found that he had failed to disclose during the application process that he had made introductions which led to Boris Johnson securing a loan of £800,000 (we still don’t know from whom). It raised questions not only about Sharp’s appointment but about our whole system of public appointments, as I also wrote. Again, not an earth-shattering brouhaha but it reflects badly on Boris Johnson—in a shock development—and makes our public life look a little shop-soiled and in need of reform.
It hardly ends there. We could look at the extended performance art which has been the career of Matt Hancock, or the resignation of Dominic Raab, the deputy prime minister, amid accusations of bullying staff, or any item on the lengthy charge sheet of Boris Johnson. Do you prefer a Labour scandal? A fortnight ago, Diane Abbott, veteran MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, who was once shadow home secretary, wrote to The Observer protesting that racism suffered by black people was of a different order from that to which Jewish people or redheads (seriously) were subject. Given the problems the Labour Party has had with anti-semitism, this was a reputational disaster and Abbott had the whip suspended. As things stand, she will not be able to stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election. If you want something from north of the border, the SNP is currently mired in accusations of financial and procedural wrongdoing which are lapping over the sides of their ship of state.
Here is not the place to debate the merits and scale of these scandals. The point is that they exist and are ongoing. We are, certainly, in a difficult time: the government has been in power for 13 years, is struggling badly in the polls and election defeat next year looks like a strong possibility. As those who remember the mid-1990s will attest, a heavy sense of fatigue, carelessness and fatalism can settle over late-term governments. The level of political debate drops, MPs become drawn into childish tit-for-tat arguments and it is extremely difficult to generate a sense of optimism about anything. We expose our the worst angels of our nature, and sink into the comfort of cynicism, detachment and nihilism. We all know the tropes: all politicians are the same; they’re all chasing self-interest; they have no vision; we’re in an inescapable downward spiral and the only option is the enjoy the ride in a jaded, sneering way.
The government has not helped itself. Four prime ministers in seven years, a huge financial lurch during the brief reign of our shortest-serving premier ever, a succession of ministerial resignations and virtually a revolving door on some departments: perhaps the laurels should go to Michelle Donelan, now on maternity leave from her post as secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, who, last summer, managed to be education secretary for 36 hours (but still has her official portrait in the department’s headquarters in Great Smith Street). Our senses are blunted now, and we are impossible to surprise, but not yet, it seems, to disappoint. As things stand, it doesn’t bode well for the forthcoming general election campaign.
(Any MPs reading this who are leaving the House or fear they might be ejected might want to look at my thoughts for Spear’s about what they can offer the private sector. Everyone needs to make a living, and remember: after Derek Conway lost his Shrewsbury and Atcham seat in 1997, he found a berth as chief executive of Cats Protection.)
One shouldn’t succumb utterly to defeatism and despair. Although there was much made of the UK’s tumble in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index this year, it was a fall from 11th to 18th; it is still no cause for celebration, but hardly banana republic territory. Despite the weeping and rending of clothes of some of the political classes, our institutions, while dented and scuffed, have not collapsed. Boris Johnson’s attempt to prorogue Parliament for an unusually long period in 2019 was declared illegal by the Supreme Court—a conclusion with which I disagreed but obviously accept as valid—and reversed, and Parliament was recalled. When there were social gatherings in Downing Street which breached the Covid-19 lockdown regulations, there was an internal investigation which concluded that the prime minister had acted illegally and he and his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, were issued with fixed-penalty notices by the Metropolitan Police; it was a major contributing factor to Johnson’s departure from office last summer.
We are emphatically not a fascist or authoritarian state, we still have free and fair elections, we have a media which hardly holds back from criticising our political masters, and we are, baruch HaShem, free from the kind of politics the US has which requires many millions of dollars even to participate. Anyone eligible can become a candidate at a general election for a deposit of £500, and it is illegal to spend more than £8,700 plus 6p per registered elector in a borough constituency (burgh in Scotland) and 9p per registered elector in a county constituency. As Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party demonstrated in 1997, unlimited wealth cannot buy you into a competitive electoral position. Our Ministerial Code is not as fully enforced as one might wish, but it exists and is in the public consciousness—ironically thanks in no small part to Boris Johnson’s premiership—as is the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament and its supporting superstructure which claimed the political scalp of former cabinet minister Owen Paterson and may yet bring Johnson himself low. I’m not saying that everything in the garden is rosy, but we are not at our democracy’s breaking point just yet.
Besides, there is, I think, a wider context which some people are missing. Perhaps some will think I’m being hyperbolic, or some might not want to follow the chain of logic to its ultimate conclusion, because it is alarming and disheartening. But I want to go back to 2009, a painful time for many people, and the scandal over MPs’ expenses which The Daily Telegraph exposed through skilful use of freedom of information requests and good investigative journalism by Heather Brooke.
Let me be quite clear. While there were innocent people and minor infractions caught up in the scandal, the widespread wrongdoing by far too many MPs was and remains indefensible. In the end, five Members of Parliament and two peers went to prison, the decision to prosecute being taken, ironically, by the then-director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC. And the House of Commons as a body responded to the matter very badly, both in terms of acceptance of wrongdoing and of defending itself where that was legitimate (as I wrote last year). It led to the retirement of a great number of MPs, and the fall of a bad and incompetent speaker, Michael Martin, to be replaced by a reformist but ultimately malign one, John Bercow. The internal processes of the House of Commons were improved considerably and the legislature is a better, cleaner, more effective place for it, however painful the transition.
Here’s the headline: the House of Commons has not regained the reputation it held before the expenses scandal, and it probably never will.
Yes, I mean “never”. Let me qualify that. First, there never was a golden age when the House of Commons was put on a pedestal or held at the pinnacle of public esteem, assumed by voters to be populated by high-minded and honest representatives who never had a base thought nor did a base thing. Anyone who tries to convince you that such halcyon days existed is either misinformed or disingenuous.
Secondly, I know what I’m talking about. I was working in the Commons in 2009, as a clerk in the Public Bill Office which deals with the passage of legislation and is open, as all the procedural offices are, to all MPs to seek advice, guidance and help. (I sat at the junior end of a long office on the third floor and so, as my predecessors had traditionally been, was known as “bottom boy”: I doubt that this sobriquet is still in use.) As a result, I saw MPs of all parties on a daily basis, backbenchers, whips, opposition frontbenchers and, very occasionally, ministers, so I was in a good place to judge the mood inside the House. And every night when I left to go home, I went out of the bubble of the Parliamentary Estate into the real world, and I saw how the reputation of my workplace was regarded by ordinary people. I tell this story often, but a senior colleague sighed one afternoon and said, “You know, I used to be proud to work in this place. Now I tell people I play the piano in a brothel.” He was joking but not joking in a characteristically English way.
This is not an invitation to shower me with sympathy. I knew the dangers when I signed on. But it is nevertheless true that when I told people where I worked, the reaction was always the same in kind, if not in degree: a dose of withering cynicism and a sense of hopelessness. They’re all the same, aren’t they? It’s all about money. Do you want a receipt for that? I suppose it’s all on expenses, ho ho ho. I would smile with what I hoped was a sense of—what? Guilt? Culpability? Despair? Throughout my career there were times when I was mistaken for a Member—I don’t know if it was height, or bearing, or clothes—but at the height of the expenses scandal, I made very sure to clarify at the beginning that I was a member of staff, a lowly functionary, and someone with no control over the payment of money to MPs. And of course I consumed, as I still do, news like a starving man presented with a magnificent feast, and I could see what was happening. I saw journalists around the place, though I tended to keep my distance, and I heard what they were saying and being told; and of course MPs would tell me in conversation about the feedback from their constituents. It was not positive.
(One thing I’d like to clear up, because it comes up three times out of four when I talk about expenses: the duck house. It became a symbol of the outrageousness of the claims which MPs were making, because it was so outlandish and funny. Unfortunately, as is so often the way in politics, the reality is not quite as good as the legend. The Member who claimed for it was the late Sir Peter Viggers, Conservative MP for Gosport in Hampshire from 1974 to 2010. As a Reservist and MP for a constituency with strong military presence, he was a defence specialist, and spent many years on the Defence Committee and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly; a dedicated constituency Member, he could be a bit stiff and aware of his own dignity, but was not without humour, and once self-deprecatingly described himself as a “has-been”, having had a short ministerial career at the Northern Ireland Office under Thatcher. But I digress. The point is that his claim of £1,645 for a “pond feature”, the notorious duck house, was actually refused by the Fees Office and he was not reimbursed. No public money contributed to the wretched item, and there were other MPs who submitted successful claims for less defensible items and services. But the duck house stuck in the public imagination, and became poor Sir Peter’s legacy. He died, of the horrible affliction of motor neurone disease, three years ago.)
The expenses scandal was damaging for a number of reasons. The scale of it was hugely damaging; dozens of MPs had embarrassing or shameful claims exposed, and, as I said above, five went to prison; they came from all parties; it seemed to the public (accurately) that the laxness of the Fees Office had been an accepted part of parliamentary culture; some Members reacted with self-pity, feeling themselves under unwarranted attack; and the House as an institution failed to realise the scale of public anger and the appalling optics of the whole affair, appearing defensive and secretive, and had no able champion to sort the real outrages from the myths and the half-truths.
Michael Martin had always been a pretty useless speaker, procedurally adrift, suspicious of officials and regarding himself first and foremost as a shop steward to defend MPs’ rights and privileges; and as his career came to an end (although he was still elevated to the Lords, unlike his successor) his relationship with the clerk of the House, Sir Malcolm Jack, fell apart openly, and he was poorly served by some colleagues like Jim Sheridan and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock who, absurdly suggested that animus towards the speaker was fuelled by anti-Catholic prejudice. The extent to which he failed to grasp the implications of the scandal was demonstrated by an interview he gave to Lord Hattersley for The Observer not long after he resigned.
The incompetent reaction of the House, both as an institution and as individual Members of Parliament, simply potentiated public anger. And in some ways, the details of the scandal were horribly relatable: the public could see quotidian household items and services for which they budgeted on a monthly basis, and see MPs having them provided at public cost. Every time you bought a piece of furniture, or paid for a satellite television subscription, or had your garden cleared, you were reminded that there were elected representatives, people who posed as your servants, having not a financial care for the selfsame items and services. I cannot think of a more effective and insidious way to create a divide between MPs and their electorates.
It was also—see above—the end of a long administration. Sir Tony Blair had, with some reluctance, stepped down as prime minister in 2007, after a decade in office, and his long-term heir, Gordon Brown, had succeeded him unopposed. But Brown’s government had not turned out happily: he seemed to arrive in the office he had craved so much for so long without significant plans, and when he decided not to hold an election in the autumn of 2007, an election I have little doubt he would have won, the shine disappeared from his leadership. After that, not much went right for him. He seemed cautious and timid, and the Labour Party, tired and fractious, started to fight among its own members, not so much over ideological differences but matters of personality and character. As Speaker Martin was floundering and then quitting, the government was having a near-existential crisis; the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the communities and local government secretary, Hazel Blears, resigned because of public criticism of their expenses, after which James Purnell resigned from the Department of Work and Pensions, openly calling for Brown to step down. The weather became warmer towards the end of June, and the Palace of Westminster struggles with cooling. People were sticky and uncomfortable. It was a sour and ugly time.
The precipitous fall from grace which the House suffered in 2009 must inform everything we think and do. We can never—and again, I do mean never—assume that politicians will have the benefit of the doubt. Fewer than 150 of the current 650 MPs were in the House at the time of the expenses scandal, but in that respect the Commons is not like the philosopher’s axe: no matter how many Members come and go, no matter how much the House is renewed in terms of personnel, we have to regard the Commons as an institution. (As it happens, in legal terms, the House of Commons is not a body corporate, and it has no collective existence; the Parliamentary Corporate Bodies Act 1992 designated the clerk of the House as the Corporate Officer for the Commons, and it is he (it has never yet been she) who can enter into contracts or own land, and he who is responsible for suits against the House. This last point was put to me pleadingly very shortly after I joined by the then-clerk, Roger Sands.)
This doesn’t mean that making politics better is entirely hopeless. We need desperately to restore trust in our public institutions, a point the leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt, expressed with feeling in March, and the events of the past few years have not helped the situation. The attitude of Boris Johnson in particular towards matters of truth and lies, and general probity in public life, has undermined a number of institutions and inspired the kind of despair articulated by journalist Ian Dunt in his book How Westminster Works… And Why It Doesn’t, and my former colleague Dr Hannah White in Held in Contempt: What’s Wrong With The House of Commons. I don’t fully share their estimation of the Commons, but I certainly endorse the idea that reform and renewal are starting from a miserably low base.
If I can offer any glimmer of light, it is this: realism is an uncomfortable and painful journey but a strangely reassuring destination. Once you are there, you confront the worst and at least have seen the nature of the beast. Yes, people dislike politicians. A YouGov poll conducted last year showed that three-quarters of people regard politics negatively and roughly the same proportion thought that “Partygate” had damaged the wider political system. About half thought our current politicians were less honest, less likely to act in the public interest and less likely to make the country better than their predecessors, and almost none thought they were more so.
For what it’s worth, I think people are wrong: I think the basic honesty and probity of our political leaders has improved over the last 10 or 15 years, I think most MPs, based on the observation of 11 years working in the House, are essentially well-intentioned and doing their best, and I think few people become MPs for personal enrichment. It is not an especially well-paid position and it is a grindingly hard existence of long hours, wildly unreasonable expectations and next to no public esteem. There are easier ways to become rich if you have half a brain. But you can’t argue with the public, or at least it is a fool’s errand, and we must accept their opinions and work with them.
There is a lot to do. To describe it as an uphill task is a masterpiece of understatement. But it is the worst abdication of responsibility to shrug hopelessly and refuse to try. It may well be a journey of a thousand steps, tiny measures which gradually make our politics better, cleaner and more effective, and no politician should expect extensive thanks. It is not the way to build a legacy. But there are options. In my piece for The i Paper on Richard Sharp’s resignation, I suggested some modest ways that public appointments could be improved; there are some changes which could be made to the House of Commons which will improve its power and functions somewhere down the line (though these may not be the ones which a lot of the commentariat tend to advance, as I am something of a contrarian in this matter); there are ways we could improve and streamline Whitehall and the civil service; and we could begin to change the way we talk about politics, how politicians speak and act and how communication flows (in both directions) between the elected and the electors. It is not an impossible task, but it will not win elections on its own, or earn you the approving roar of the crowd. Anyone who fancies himself a reformer must be prepared to work in the shadows and work thanklessly. But at least, if we fully absorb the lessons of 2009, we will be prepared for that. You see? Realism doesn’t hurt so much when you get there.
A duck house scandal would be light relief here in The *** We seem to be living in The Last Days of The Roman Empire, complete with recruting advertisments for the armed forces in drag. Nero had nothing on this fiasco that is playing out. All we lack is a small violin, they set fire to the cities last year.