Why our leaders may be making a bad situation worse

May 22, 2009 by
Filed under: Politics 

As if the daily revelations about MPs expenses weren’t enough, the way Gordon Brown and David Cameron have chosen to handle the affair guarantees it will have many more downhill twists.  Running scared of the media and seeking political advantage, the leaders have tried to appear uncompromising in their condemnation of MPs accused of misdemeanours, and in their determination to act against wrong-doers.

In the face of what feels increasingly like a lynch mob public mentality, perhaps the leaders had no choice. But their tactics have ensured this story will move into a second and equally uncomfortable phase. This is when the Parties have to explain where and why they are drawing the lines between forgivable misjudgements, unforgivable extravagance or downright fiddling.

As we heard on the Today programme this morning, journalists will be on the look out for the line being drawn less on the basis of the acts committed than on the dispensability of the MP.  Moral philosophers may want to think about media training; they will be in great demand to explain why a duck pond is intrinsically more objectionable that a plasma TV or top of the range soft furnishings.

The expenses story was bound to be hugely damaging and to say it could have been handled better is not to suggest it would, or should, have been an easy ride for MPs. But missing has been any narrative through which to confront MPs’ behaviour while resisting the myth that all Parliamentarians are greedy chancers who only ever got into politics to make a fast buck. 

As ‘the only person in Britain still defending MPs’ I have previously offered one way of framing the scandal: over broadly the same period as the expenses system has taken up the slack between politicians’ and the public’s view of what our elected representatives are worth, MPs have seen a significant increase in their constituency workload.  One measure is their expanding mailbag; MPs get three or four times as many letters (or e-mails) now as a generations ago. The expectations we place on MPs, – for example that each of them staff a full time local office and that each returns every week without fail to their constituency (Roy Jenkins used to go once a month to hold a surgery in the station hotel before heading back to town) – have changed without being understood or discussed, just as has the allowances system. We now need an open and thoughtful debate about what we want from MPs and what it is right to pay and reimburse them.

If our leaders had promoted understanding a bit more and condemnation a bit less they might have been able to draw on a distinction recently described by Michael Sandel. The renowned political philosopher was giving the first of his Reith lectures, recorded on Monday night and due for transmission in June.  Sandel is concerned about how we frame public obligations, and particularly the way the criterion of economic efficiency trumps everything. He thinks this risks undermining vital social norms and replacing democratic discourse with crude cost benefit calculation  His lecture cited an example beloved of behavioural economists; the Israeli nursery school which sought to stop parents picking up their children late by fining them. The unintended consequence was that many parents saw the fine as a fee and thus felt justified in coming even later.

The Professor offered his own example of this process. He used, he told us, to think of the extra money he had to pay Blockbusters when he returned DVDs late as a fine and something about which he ought to feel slightly guilty. But both he and the shop now saw the extra change as a fee with his decision to hold the DVD for a few extra days as being morally neutral.

This provides a clue as to why long standing MPs with an unblemished record of public service have come to behave like money-grubbing tricksters. The fatal ambiguity about the second home allowance was whether it was a form of compensation (something to which MPs were entitled as long as they could find some grounds) or an out of pocket expenses system from which people can only claim for clearly legitimate extra costs.

This is not an uncommon ambiguity. Take the provision many organizations have for people to claim lunch when they are out of the office. There is no reason why lunch out of town should cost you more than lunch bought at the sandwich shop round the corner from your workplace. But people claim on the implicit grounds that having your lunch bought is some recompense for the wear and tear of travelling.

Many MPs acted very unwisely. Some may have been deliberately dishonest. But I suspect that most simply made a category error – mistaking a provision for out of pocket expenses for an entitlement to compensation. 

What it was in MPs’ attitudes and the culture of Parliament that allowed this disastrous error of judgement to take place is important. It is a pity we aren’t debating this rather than succumbing to the stupid and dangerous idea that one of the world’s strongest and cleanest democracies (albeit one that could do with some serious reform) is a den of venality and corruption.

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24 Comments on Why our leaders may be making a bad situation worse

  1. Alan on Fri, 22nd May 2009 10:37 am

    2. MPs are doing less and less debating in Parliament. They are doing less and less holding of the Government to account. That is our authority over Government that they have abandoned. All in favour of the marginal issues, political point scoring and handing over enormous amounts of authority to external bodies. This gives them less work to do and any number of handy excuses to hide behind when they are accused of failing us.(Which they are.) Their duty to the nation and to Parliament is getting left by the wayside.

  2. Jon Ingham on Fri, 22nd May 2009 1:54 pm

    3. That’s a big category error, Matthew.

  3. Becca Pyne on Fri, 22nd May 2009 1:59 pm

    4. I am so angry with Nadine Dorries comments about MPs ‘sucide risk’. How are we supposed to have any faith in a governing body made up of people with such weak constiutions that they crack under the pressure of being pulled up over their own shoddy actions.

    What does she know about suicide to band the term around so lightly. If individuals who make up parliament are falling to pieces over this and are so close to ‘sucide’ – any remnants of respect or faith in leadership (or the abiity to cope) I had in them is totally gone.

    Before she declaring such broad statments to public – maybe she should consider the effect they have on those who have mental illness, those actually close to suicide, in prison or other instiutions actually on suicide watch.

    The title of your blog was making a situation worse – I believe the saying is ‘digging your own grave’ – literally?

  4. Susmita on Fri, 22nd May 2009 10:52 pm

    5. I increasingly feel as if you’ve missed the whole point of the problem Matthew – subsequently it’s hard to know where to start in trying to explain it to you! However, regarding your example of claiming for lunch when sent travelling by your firm, it’s the lack of option that causes people to claim for a bought sandwich. It’s not that easy to tote your tupperware and insulated cold bag around along with your suit bag, lap top etc!!

    As for using the allowances system to compensate for extra hours – MPs should have to do as the rest of us do; either argue for a pay rise, or find a way to contain the workload within more acceptable hours. There is no intrinsic difference between claiming for a duck pond, trouser press or plasma TV either!

    I stand by my original comment – I could bill all sorts of things to the RSA as being necessary for me to do my job. Needless to say, I would then purchase all the items separately so that they are under £20 and you won’t need to see a receipt!

  5. TimHood on Sat, 23rd May 2009 8:33 am

    6. There has been a systemic and sustained failure in the corporate governance of Parliament. This worries me far more than duck houses, which at least provide some light relief.

    Systemic because it was widespread and involved poor leadership, poor policy, poor implementation and poor scrutiny (the latter including the media). Sustained because it has been going on for a number of years and problems have been repeatedly flagged and discussed.

    It is one of many recent examples, including banks,social services (Haringey & Baby P) and Stafford General Hospital.

    Normally, when this happens, leaders are the first to be replaced as part of wider reform . But in this case, the leaders are sacking the equivalent of the middle managers, social workers and medical staff who made the most visible mistakes, while refusing to acknowledge real responsibility themselves.

    Why is it that Heads of Banks, Social Services and Hospitals who show poor judgement and leadership are sacked or resign, while the leaders of our political parties who have known about the expenses mess for years are doing the sacking and are being applauded for it?

  6. daniel snell on Sat, 23rd May 2009 9:26 am

    7. Morning Matthew,

    Do you think the Telegraph will splash on Brown/labour just before(perhaps a day or two) the European elections with a really good expenses/allowences story? Watch this space…

    The anger is starting to feel palpable isn’t it, the crowd can be ugly. However, I think the anger is irrational, because honest, open, genuinely engaging political debate that isn’t centrally managed/contolled is dead. The average person has no belief or interst in our plotically machinery.

    Now the hordes have an obvious and easily accessible villan – dirty politicians, caught with their pigs in the trough again, pretending they are not pigs with lots of filth on their snouts! Odd.

    But the underlying, more important conversation is where did we as a society give up on important conversations and personal accounability to a greater and collective good.

    What a strange watershed we have go to.

    Where do we place our childish, and blind hope that someone, somewhere is responsible for us, if not with these paternal guardians?

    No wonder we are all angry.

    What’s really ugly, is most of us would have done and acted in the same way if we were being really honest with ourselves.

    Here’s my post on the subject – http://arrivalworldwide.blogspot.com/2009/05/when-were-forced-to-change.html

  7. Mike on Sat, 23rd May 2009 8:30 pm

    8. Hi, nice posts there :-) thank’s for the interesting information

  8. Cathy Lee on Mon, 25th May 2009 8:52 pm

    9. As an American, I’m shocked to see the number of MPs resigning. Their offences seem venial when compared to some American politicians who regularly bed with lobbyists and provide “consultations” in the private-sector, often inflicting far more insidious damage to the system. The extent to which American senators and reps have gotten “creative” can be recognized through the difficulty Obama encountered in finding various members for his team that could survive the vetting process. Biden was among the few in the senate who actually had a straightforward tax return and joint income of less than $300,000. Daschle had to withdraw his nomination for secretary of health and human services because of his failure to pay taxes and questionable dealings in the private sector (his wife is a lobbyist to boot). If I had to pick between an over-worked politician letting her daughter live in her second-home rent-free and one that rides around in limos while raking in over $5 million from “private consulting fees,” I pick the former.

  9. daniel snell on Mon, 25th May 2009 9:50 pm

    10. Cathy Lee,

    You comment misses a point, we are not trying to compare our political system to yours. God forbid! Our system is going through – thank goodness – a radical (in the British sense) re-adjustment.

    But (all things being equal) it is better and less corupt than yours.

    I certaintly wouldn’t hold up the american potical system as a bench mark. I think ours and yours could both improve – no?

    Daniel

  10. Cathy Lee on Tue, 26th May 2009 8:21 am

    11. Daniel,

    I’m not denying that your MPs did not do anything wrong, nor did I mean to hold the American system as a bench mark. I simply thought the overall mentality would have been a bit less mob-like (in the British sense) and a little more forgiving (although, admittedly, initial reactions of MPs weren’t exactly allaying). Yes, I concur, both systems could use improvement, especially ours!

  11. paul on Tue, 26th May 2009 9:57 am

    12. The most annoying part about the rolling expenses news hiatus is (as always) the almost complete lack of anything remotely resembling a sane dialogue about it. There clearly needs to be some kind of communication between ordinary people and civil society not just MPs. But it appears to be a total nightmare for politicians to maintain a discourse with ordinary people (plural, always inconsistent often reactionary) in a context of rabid and delusional media.
    Moral philosophers like Sandel have much to say about the serious aspects of politics and how a democracy is legitimised through public processes of justification. And politics is a moral category, but it takes up a lot of time, and the people are rarely galvanised by political issues. Sure many are outraged about the current expenses saga, but I wonder if they are really as outraged as the media would like to have us believe. Talk of lynchings is one thing and (most news editors believe) makes for great copy. Actual revolution is something altogether different. The media is beyond responsibility and reform.
    But we can do something about our politicians and our civil society. I’m no fan of John Major, but debate about morality (and I’m not talking about the small change of second home flipping or bourgeois duck houses) should be a consistent and ongoing theme in a healthy democracy. Politicians have been shown either to be afraid of publicly addressing the public with their comparatively paltry remunerative settlement (I’d pay a politician a fair whack for his or her transparent public service. They’re worth a damn sight more than most bankers or newspaper editors).
    But if politicians are unable to enter a dialogue with the public on such basic things as pay and conditions what chance have they got on moral issues proper?

  12. Bernard Mason on Wed, 27th May 2009 12:54 pm

    13. How can politicians have a dialogue with the public, when the media, the channel of communication is their accuser?

    This lunch time I heard a trade’s union official reply to a leading question from a BBC interviewer inviting him to openly criticise the cabinet by saying that he did not want to join a lynch mob. He has since been selectively quoted by them.
    It seems to me that far from being a spontaneous public reaction of the public, it is being whipped up by the media, including the BBC, who are acting like demagogues.

    I expect such behaviour from our press but I am particularly sad to see the BBC fall so low. As with MP’s, I am forced to pay for it and therefore expect it to act responsibly on my behalf by providing me with objective news. At the moment they seem to be a mere channel for whipping up hysteria.

    Even MP’s deserve a fair hearing.

    Where is the rule of law?

  13. Bernard Mason on Wed, 27th May 2009 1:01 pm

    14. A thought has just occurred to me – are the actions of the Telegraph transparent?

  14. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 1:22 pm

    15. Thanks Alan. I have blogged further on this arguing that the big issue is not so much the process but the content of politics. We need to move from an ‘us and them’ way of thinking to an ‘us and us’ way

  15. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 1:25 pm

    16. True a disastrous one. All I am saying is that it is more instructive to see this as a deluded and self indulgent culture than as lots of individual bits of wrong doing.

  16. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 1:26 pm

    17. Thanks ‘Elf’ – I agree that Ms Dorries didn’t do herself or her colleagues any good. I note that every MOP now includes – ‘I am not asking for sympathy’ in their statement of contrition

  17. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 1:29 pm

    18. You are a hard woman Susmita. I agree that MPs should have made the argument for more money rather than misusing the expenses system. The problem is that over the years when they have asked for more money – sometimes on the basis of independent reviews – their leaders have demanded that they desist for fear of the media reaction – which is how the whole second home allowances system was created in the first place..

  18. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 1:34 pm

    19. Fair point Tim. I guess the leaders would argue that it is their job to try to clear up the mess and it is the electorate’s job to choose the leaders they want. But as a wonderful cartoon in the Times today http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/cartoon/ suggests their tough message may become counter productive when they have to draw seemingly arbitrary lines between those accused of misdeeds.

  19. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 1:40 pm

    20. Hi Daniel

    I’ve been lax on reading comments so only just seen this. Of course it absolutely chimes with the subsequent post. Really liked your own post and enjoyed the two links being me and Robespierre!

  20. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 1:41 pm

    21. Thanks Mike – for the comment and the smiley

  21. matthewtaylor on Thu, 28th May 2009 2:51 pm

    22. Thanks for this exchange Cathy and Daniel. The relative merits of American and UK cultures and systems is complex and fascinating. US wins on, for example, Freedom of Information, separation of powers, scrutiny of the executive, independence of politicians from Party control the UK wins on keeping money out of politics (really!), acting on national interests and values rather than parochial interests……

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