Have you ever laid awake at night worrying about the expenses claims of politicians?
Apparently everyone in England has, because there is such a feeding frenzy about the fact that some politicians have been fiddling theirs. If you’re a journalist this sort of thing is gold-dust – politicians on the fiddle, an opportunity to whip up a sense of corruption at the heart of British politics, and the opportunity to feign disgust on behalf of the electorate.
The latest casualty is the speaker of the commons Michael Martin (pictured above) – the bloke who basically chides MPs when they speak out of turn in the chamber, and is the ultimate icon for political pomposity. They’ll hire a new one, and nothing will actually change. If a politician goes to prison for fraud over this, a new one will come up in their place.
If you’ve been laying awake at night worrying about the expenses claims of the speaker of the house of commons there can only be three reasons. You are Michael Martin. Or you are his wife. Or you are clinically insane.
I agree with Stephen Fry, who has courted controversy by going against the journalistic line…
“Let’s not confuse what politicians get really wrong – things like wars, things where people die – with the rather tedious bourgeois obsession with whether or not they’ve charged for their wisteria. It’s not that important. It really isn’t. It isn’t what we’re fighting for. It isn’t what voting is about. And the idea that ‘oh we’ve all lost faith in politics, because’… it’s nonsense. It’s a journalistic made-up frenzy.”
There’ll be a lot of journos mumbling about ‘Fry getting his’ and plotting the demise of the greatest living Englishman after that. How dare he piss on their scoop!
But he’s right. Whatever politicians do with their expenses, the issues actually don’t change at all. The story has as much relevance to actual political issues as the plotline on the feeblest daytime soap opera.
What will happen is a general reshuffle as some politicians are picked off and destroyed, while others seize the chance to make political capital from the fallout. A tightening of the rules on expenses may be a good thing, and perhaps a debate about the general level of pay of MPs. It’s a subject about as close to my heart as Pluto.
Does that really help you sleep at night?
