Norman Tebbit rightly calls on the "arrogant and greedy" Maria Miller to resign.
More than that, she ought to be prosecuted.
But please, please, please can we not have the second General Election in a row to be about parliamentary expenses, the second "Tory sleaze" General Election in one generation?
These things are important.
But policy and policy's underlying philosophy are more important.
The coincidence of corruption with policy and with policy's underlying philosophy, as in the privatisation of the National Health Service and as in the privatisation of the Royal Mail, is even more important again.
Primarily, let us talk about that.
More than that, she ought to be prosecuted.
But please, please, please can we not have the second General Election in a row to be about parliamentary expenses, the second "Tory sleaze" General Election in one generation?
These things are important.
But policy and policy's underlying philosophy are more important.
The coincidence of corruption with policy and with policy's underlying philosophy, as in the privatisation of the National Health Service and as in the privatisation of the Royal Mail, is even more important again.
Primarily, let us talk about that.
On the day that Peter Hitchens column praises Nigel Farage in glowing terms he would never use about the Labour, Tory or Lib Dem leaders, David Davis writes in the Mail on Sunday why Britain should quit the EU now.
ReplyDeleteThe ex Tory chairman is indeed as Peter Hitchens once wrote "the most distinguished moral and social conservative in Parliament".
Well done Mr Davis on praising UKIP.
The Right has offered the only consistent opposition to the EU and all it's works ever since "applause for Delors" at the 1988 Bournemouth TUC Conference.
Indeed. General Elections should never be about sleaze purely because sleaze (like marital infidelity) is a general human failing not a party-political issue. The 2009 expenses scandal was a cross-party crime against the taxpayer. One of many.
ReplyDeleteOnto real political philosophy,
Peter Hitchens, (who plainly knows there's only one paleocon party in Britain) today praises Nigel Farage in terms it is impossible to imagine him using about Cameron, Miliband or Clegg.
Hitchens: ""Nigel the peacemaker:
Interesting that Nigel Farage, pictured right, easily won the EU debate against Nick Clegg, despite several attempts to smear him. I’m familiar with most of these smears, especially the ‘living in the past’ one, always used by people who have run out of arguments.
But in many ways the most interesting thing was that Mr Farage’s opposition to foreign wars didn’t cost him any support, and may have gained him some.
What a good thing that patriotism is no longer linked with mindless support for the drums of war. It’s the liberals who do that now.""
Indeed.
And "what a good thing" that we can all see, loud and clear, who the real patriotic party is-and who the pro-EU Establishment cowards are.
It doesn't come any sleazier than UKIP, the very last party to be in any position to make capital, so to speak, out of anyone else's dodgy expenses claims and the like. The party, moreover, of Neil Hamilton.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Right's opposition to the EU, don't make me laugh. Farage and his ilk manage it up to a point because they are politically illiterate, and just blokes from the pub. But you wouldn't want a country run by blokes from the pub.
The only intellectually serious opposition comes, as it always has come, from the Left.
But the people involved would rarely pass muster as stand-up comedians or reality television stars, so you are not allowed to know about them.
Instead, you have to make do with Nigel Farage.
Or, at best, with David Davis, whose conversion to such a position is if anything even more recent than John Redwood's or Peter Lilley's.
Or Norman Tebbit's. He was Chairman of the Conservative Party at the time of the biggest act of federalisation ever, which was so large that it could never be equalled.
And which was opposed by every Labour MP, without exception.
I remember you in the run up to the last election, before you were struck down again, going out of your tree as people tried to get you to join Jury Team or otherwise go on about the expenses scandal. You couldn't get through to them, you had no interest in running as an anti-politician and actually wanted to talk about policy. Looks like we are in for a second round of all that garbage. You must be nearly glad you are now even iller than you were then.
ReplyDeleteWe are if Miller does not go.
ReplyDeleteRemember, most people who are paid (paid a small fortune, in fact) to report on politics have absolutely no interest in the subject, and are militantly hostile to anyone who has.
There are 650 MPs, but how many of them have you ever seen on television or heard on the radio? Never mind anyone from local government.
The media will literally ask comedians about politics before they ask almost any elected politician.
The political opinions of celebrities are treated with a deference of which elected politicians cannot begin to dream.
The only thing that I found comparably irritating last time was the bellyaching, including on the local news, of the old Derwentside hands about the all-women shortlist, but the complete unwillingness to do anything about it.
Someone like Alex Watson could easily have persuaded their old ally, Watts Stelling, to stand aside, and would then just as easily have been the First Past The Post among those who had voted at all.
Even without Watts's endorsement, Alex, in particular, could have pulled that off.
Still, the AWS gave us Pat in the end, so it did work out all right. But even so. That was their one chance of an MP, and they blew it.
She won't be prosecuted. They only do that to Labour people.
ReplyDeleteVery true, all the way back to Poulson.
ReplyDeleteIf Alex had become our Independent/local party MP in 2010, he would have retired in 2015 aged over 70. We all know who his preferred successor in his late thirties would have been.
ReplyDeleteIs that the Pat who took a 50% pay cut to be able to turn up to Militant Tendency funerals and tweet about them as the MP for the seat you were told you could never have because you were too posh and left-wing? Nowhere near as posh and left-wing as her.
ReplyDelete