MPs’ expenses – did it have to be this bad?

June 1, 2009 by
Filed under: Politics 

I thought I would share an argument I have now had with quite a few people. In it I say it would have been possible to frame the MPs’ expenses saga to make its impact more manageable. Just about everyone I have spoken to disagrees, maintaining that the expenses claims were so intrinsically awful they were bound to be lead to this seemingly endless crisis.

I have said in past posts how I would have advised framing the issue. Something like this:

‘The vast majority of MPs are hard working and public spirited. Most MPs have seen their workload, especially in their constituencies, increase greatly over recent decades – for example, MPs today get four or five times as much correspondence as twenty years ago. Today’s MPs – many more of them women – also take their family responsibilities more seriously which makes living in two places harder to do

‘ But nearly all of us in Westminster have been responsible for allowing a rotten system to develop to deal with the gap between what MPs think they deserve and need to do the job today and what the public and media are willing to tolerate. For that the public deserves an apology from us all. The system has to change and we have to have an honest and open conversation about how we can recruit and retain good quality politicians while recognising politics is something people do to make the world a better place not to become rich.

‘ If any MP has broken the law they will be subject to that law. But it is pointless getting into an argument about whether a duck pond is more or less immoral than a plasma screen TV, whether those who take every penny of their entitlement are better or worse than those who claimed less but for items that seem silly or self indulgent, whether we can ever know the motives of those who may have had reasons for changing the designation of their house but also gained from so doing. Every MP will have to accept the judgement on their actions of their local parties and local constituents – that is democracy’

As I predicted, the Brown and Cameron tactic of selectively dumping on those colleagues whom the Telegraph or the public deem to be the worst offenders may work in the short term but it quickly runs into problems. Whoever Brown reshuffles at the weekend, he is certain to come under the attack that he has used the saga to get rid of dispensable ministers but has turned a blind eye to the misdemeanours of his allies. The apparent intention of Number Ten to brief that the forthcoming election results are ‘a defeat for democracy not for the Labour Party’ will be seen for the opportunism it is.

This is a mess. It has many twists to come and the political leaders are now victims to the next round of revelations (or more precisely the way the Telegraph and the broadcast media choose to spin the next set of revelations). I believe it could have been handled better and diffused more quickly but perhaps, in this, I am alone.

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14 Comments on MPs’ expenses – did it have to be this bad?

  1. William Shaw on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 1:45 pm

    2. At a time when there are real issues to be debated in the run up to elections, the fact that this has now dominated the news for, what, almost four weeks now, is becoming very, very tiresome.

    The odd thing though is that despite rumours of the decline in the influence of old media, a newspaper with a circulation of around 800,000 and falling has managed to control the national agenda with all the skill of a circus plate-spinner for the best part of a month. And it’s not even the silly season yet.

  2. David Wilcox on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 2:05 pm

    3. Matthew – your reframing appeals to me, but I guess it is difficult to float if the political/PR expectation is that mainstream media will just hammer away at the version that gives them easiest old-style stories. Would any politican dare to make a reasoned case and put it online for a vote, Twitter reaction etc that might offer some test of the media interpretation? Must be some examples of that – anyone got some?

  3. Beth on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 2:24 pm

    4. I agree but like you, haven’t found many allies. In general, people and the media seem too quick to judge and castigate people and not willing enough to see them in the context that makes their behaviour understandable, if not defensible. This applies as much to discourses and coverage of benefit cheats and welfare dependents as it does to MPs and their expenses and the finanaical elite that are blamed for the current crisis. Would be nice to focus efforts on reforming institutional structures and social cultures than casting people out as reprobates.

  4. Susmita on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 2:57 pm

    5. There are a great many things that can be diffused with effective PR and crisis management. This isn’t one of them.

  5. Alan on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 4:23 pm

    6. “‘The vast majority of MPs are hard working and public spirited. Most MPs have seen their workload, especially in their constituencies, increase greatly over recent decades – for example, MPs today get four or five times as much correspondence as twenty years ago. Today’s MPs – many more of them women – also take their family responsibilities more seriously which makes living in two places harder to do”

    MPs are doing less and less of the other side of Parliament – holding Government to account. They choose not to. They choose to hand off our sovereignty to charities, quangos, the EC and a myriad of other unelected bodies.

    Also, MPs are no different to the rest of us – they cannot have it all. Parliament was made ‘family friendly’ but that was just a cover for the Government to take greater control in the running and timetable of Parliament.

    MPs were too stupid to spot this.

  6. matthewtaylor on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 7:09 pm

    7. OK Alan I guess we’ll have to agree to differ. Some things to ponder – select committees have becomes more powerful and better resourced over the years. The PM now has to attend a televised session of questions with committee chairs, on average Labour administrations have suffered more rebellions than previous administrations – just some counter facts for the supine lazy Parliament thesis

  7. matthewtaylor on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 7:09 pm

    8. How did I know you would say this, Ms Angry?

  8. matthewtaylor on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 7:10 pm

    9. Thanks Beth – nice to know I’m not the only big softie out there. How are things at Young?

  9. matthewtaylor on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 7:13 pm

    10. Good point – it takes real leadership to appeal to the electorate over the heads of the mainstream media, who, after all sell indignation. Some MPs have done much better than others in diffusing local anger – maybe they were more popular to start with or maybe they used better communication strategies

  10. matthewtaylor on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 7:14 pm

    11. Yes the Telegraph has certainly proved that stories of the demise of old fashioned media are premature. Mind you paying a few hundred grand for a purloined CD is hardly Bernstein and Woodward

  11. William Shaw on Mon, 1st Jun 2009 10:15 pm

    12. No… definitely not Bernstein and Woodward. Maybe part of the problem is that the old media are generating so few “real” stories of their own these days that a news strand like this can dominate the agenda for weeks without anything to come along and challenge it. We saw that before with the Madeleine McCann story.

  12. James Horn on Tue, 2nd Jun 2009 9:58 am

    13. The Telegraph need to bring it all to a nice big finale with a free DVD of all the expense reports and footage of the resignations.

    Seriously though, the upcoming elections will hopefully give the media something new to talk about…

  13. Peter Kyle on Tue, 2nd Jun 2009 2:32 pm

    14. Your point is proved by a negative – could they have conceivably have handled it any worse?

  14. charlietims on Wed, 3rd Jun 2009 9:36 am

    15. That post is fresh. The whole thing has been handled badly. But the reason why it has been handled badly is the same underlying reason behind the public’s popular disenchantment with politics – the perceived (or real) gutlessness of MPs. There was a classic example of this on the Today this morning (Wednesday) – Harriet Harmen said that Labour has the ideas and the vision for the future to lead Britain (and that the Tories don’t) but without actually saying what the vision is. This inability of politics to provide a coherent vision of the future means that we lurch from one ‘national rage’ to another (10p tax, brand/ross, bankers bonuses, baby p) with politics able to do nothing other than finding a spot in the middle of the bubble of public rage and reflecting it back to us. As a result, when the blunderbuss is pointed at politicians themselves, we shouldn’t be surprised that their only reaction is to reach out and pull the trigger for us. There are probably alot of people out there who want to see MPs line up and fall on their swords, but I bet there are just as many who are crying out for them to go ‘you know what? get the f*@k out my face’ – or something more along the lines you outline. Politicians aren’t being eaten by the press, they’re eating themselves.

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