It's a fine line

Since the election MPs have met just once in the chamber of the House of Commons where they managed to re-elect as speaker of the house John Bercow, a man who less than a year ago was considered by most conservative MPs as wholly unsuitable for the job of leading the clean up parliament.  In contrast most labour MPs considered him totally suitable not for the job of cleaning up Parliament but for the job in their own words, ‘of stuffing it to the conservatives’.  Bercow’s own record in the expenses scandal was far from unblemished having claimed the maximum allowable in second home allowances and then flipped his designated second home in order to avoid capital gains tax.
 
I cannot understand the determination of MPs to do the absolute minimum they can get away with and not an iota more when it comes to cleaning up politics.  It seems to me to be a dangerous game to play with the electorate.
    
The process of swearing in members of parliament is not yet complete and already Labour MP Eric Illsley has been charged with three offences of false accounting over his parliamentary expenses.  A year ago MPs decided first of all to brazen it out – it’s all within the rules- and when that did not work they then chose to do the minimum possible to get away with it – who could ever forget the redacted expense claims.  My own view was that parliament had lost the moral authority to govern and that MP’s should have been man enough to face the electorate; they took the cowards way out and chose not to.  As they hoped the fury of the electorate subsided during the intervening twelve months and probably less than ten casualties at the general election could be put down to the expenses scandal.  Many MP’s took generous pay offs by standing down but inevitably some crooks were re-elected and are still sitting on the green benches.  For that the party leaders must take a considerable portion of the blame.
  
I do not know whether our politicians have done enough to put the matter behind them, only time will tell, but the last two days are a timely reminder that it wasn’t just the abuse of the expenses system that damaged our democracy, it was the way parliament dealt with it.
  
There is a very fine line between doing just enough and doing too little.
Best Wishes
Will