We need a remedy proportionate to the virulence of the disease. This isn't about Labour corruption any more, or about voters abandoning traditional parties, or about which MPs will survive the next election. It's about the authority of our system of government. People are not angry with individual MPs. They blame "the whole lot of them". If, as a country, we give up on parliamentary rule, the alternatives are terrifying. It's not the publication of MPs' receipts that has delegitimised the House of Commons. The expenses row is a symptom; the virus itself is complex, protean and deadly. Its infection has debilitated Parliament, transferring its prerogatives to quangoes, judges and Eurocrats, demeaning its Members and depreciating the ballot box. People no longer regard MPs as champions of Ben Brogan and Rob Colvile have been posting old quotations that seem eerily apt to our present discontents. Political corruption is not a new phenomenon and, as you'd expect, there are apposite remarks on the subject by Plato, Thomas Jefferson and others. Still, if only for the sake of balance, consider what we stand to lose. This affair has now gone beyond sleaze or election results or individual resignations. Nothing less than the legitimacy of our way of government is at stake. Before you dismiss parliamentary rule with a contemptuous sneer, ponder the words below by Enoch Powell. No country in the world is so bound up with the story of its legislature. If the authority of Parliament itself were to be a casualty of the current row, we should have snapped a link that attached us What are the odds of being pestered by a Euro-candidate between now and polling day? If every candidate were to spend every day from now to 4 June doing nothing except going from door to door, I'd reckon them at slightly less than one in 200. In practice, under this ludicrous Blair-imposed regional list system, almost all the candidates know in advance whether they're going to be elected, so the chances are lower still. Then again, the stangest things happen when you're canvassing. I am now spending every day touring my vast Home Countries region, driving from village to flush May village, crumpling leaflets through stubborn letter-boxes, scrunching up long gravel drives (these last tend, for some reason, to have LibDems at the end of them). Last night I was in Tonbridge. This morning
Monday, 11 May 2009
Daniel Hannan
Posted on May 11, 2009 at 11:46:00
Posted on May 10, 2009 at 20:01:00
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Posted on May 9, 2009 at 17:45:00
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