Bill Jamieson: Headline-grabbing leaves Tory leader exposed

Published on Thursday 28 May 2009 22:03

IN ONE compelling, dramatic soundbite, Conservative leader David Cameron has served up an object lesson in how to grab the headlines – and lose the plot.

To the cause of rectifying the expenses scandal, he has threatened a vast catapult to hurl boulders at the constitution. In a lofty declaration this week he said "the only one way out of this national crisis we face" is a "massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power".

Suddenly we were into contemplation of major constitutional reforms ranging from fixed-term parliaments through proportional representation to online petitions and reform of the House of Lords – all under that hoary old catch-all justification: "more power to the people".

Why not give us all widescreen TVs and fix our washing machines while he's at it? At least he didn't add that he would "hand back power to elected representatives from unaccountable Brussels bureaucrats". Even for the cloth-eared Cameroons such words would have been pronounced dead on arrival.

Why seek to re-arrange the moon and the stars when the problems we face are so evidently earthbound and the practical solutions to them right in front of our noses? Whatever else this crisis is about, it is not to be solved by fixed-term parliaments, proportional representation or Twittering petitions. Indeed, Cameron missed an opportunity to proclaim two of the most urgent and radical proposals of all: the clapping of a constitutional lid on how much the government can spend on its own affairs; and the enforcement of a tough independent audit right across the machinery of government.

What is the improvement, exactly, that would prevail from the switch to a fixed term parliament? At least under the present arrangement we have the hope that events plus parliamentary pressure could oblige the current government to hold an election in October. The vulnerability of governments to early dismissal is a potent sanction. Under a fixed-term system we could be lumbered with a government totally discredited in its first year but still able to cling on for the full term.

And how does it help, exactly, to bring elected representatives to heel by changing the voting system in favour of party lists of the type being presented to voters in the European elections next week? It reduces individual candidates to a slate, the running order of which is determined by the party machines. Voters cannot pick and choose their candidates. What more Heaven-sent way to preserve a centralised, rotten, hollowed-out and corruption-prone party system?

The central problem now facing the Cameron Conservatives is not the British constitution. It is the damage that the expenses scandal is doing to the credibility of his party. Conservatives have sought to claim competence in handling the public finances at a time of record debt and borrowing. They seek to persuade us that they will bring more disciplined control of government spending on behalf of the taxpayer. But how does that sit with a party where prominent MPs have claimed on the public purse for the upkeep of moats, duck islands and favours to family and friends?

Personal responsibility is, or was, a core theme of the appeal of "conservative" smaller government parties. The appalling stories of expense abuse and feathering of private nests by Conservative MPs is as damaging to the values of their core supporters as it is (for different reasons) to core Labour ones. It suggests a blindness to the concerns of voters as taxpayers, and a failure to see that such a lax expenses system is part and parcel of the bigger problem that we face.

I do not share the view that all politicians are corrupt, or that politicians are by nature more susceptible to corruption than the rest of us.

Place any group of 600 or so people in an environment where the expense regime is lax and poorly policed and it is only a matter of time before yesterday's precedent becomes today's commonplace, where today's adventurous claim becomes tomorrow's right and entitlement. This system of creeping excess bred the very examples that now appal us. The rush by many MPs to pay back their exposed claims speaks to a latent guilt. The denial by others that they have done anything wrong speaks to an erosion both of duty and values. Whatever happened to the setting of personal example?

These are the themes that should be central to the response of the Conservative leader. It's not the constitution that's in crisis but voter confidence in Members of Parliament. Instead, he has soared off into constitutional babble: a classic example of political displacement activity. For all that Mr Cameron may have hit the spot with some commentators for his seeming urgency and decisiveness with his response, it may come on further reflection to highlight a wayward judgment.

This is the same Cameron who committed the Conservatives to maintaining Labour's spending plans for the first years in office, a commitment now abandoned. There is an unnerving faddishness about his style that suggests an ambivalence over core Conservative beliefs.

Shooting the constitution may grab the headlines. But it is no substitute for grasping the seriousness of the fiscal mess we are in and the need to bring government spending to heel.

That, in itself, is a mightily radical ambition. For if we do not undertake it, we will end up with a political culture as arrogant and resistant to reform as the European Union. Marta Andreasen, the former EU chief accountant responsible for the whole EU budget, was harried and hounded out of office. Her devastating book, Brussels Laid Bare, exposes the laxity of a political class that has fallen down on its watchdog role, lulled by generous expenses and the lure of a quiet life. Concern for the proper use of taxpayer funds is pushed well down the list of concerns. Truly, if we do focus tightly on the task in hand, this is the fate that now awaits us.