Alan Duncan, treated like a "shit"

Alan Duncan, shadow leader of the Commons, has been forced to apologise following his recent indiscreet remarks about the expenses scandal.

Apparently he feels he’s been “treated like shit” by the public, been “forced to live on rations” since the trough has temporarily been hidden and concludes the “world has gone mad” in response to his gardening claims. The job of the politician has been “nationalised”, he suggests.

The political process owned by the people? It’s an outrage!

Now his remarks have been made public he’s quick to assure us he was only joking.

Oh go on then, I’ll believe him. He has enough problems by the sound of it and I don’t want to pile any more on top by treating him like a “shit”.

In fact I’m not really surprised or even interested by Duncan’s remarks. That most politicians have a general contempt for the public and are averse to accepting responsibility for their actions is the world’s worst kept secret.

I’m a lot more interested in David Cameron’s response after he supposedly gave his deputy a dressing down.

“I spoke to Alan Duncan yesterday and made it clear in no uncertain terms that when it comes to the mess of expenses, the words we use, just as the actions we take, have got to demonstrate completely that we share the public’s real fury at what went on in parliament. Alan made a bad mistake and he has acknowledged that, he has apologised and withdrawn the remarks.”

The expenses scandal is more than a mess. It’s establishment greed and fraud and the perpetrators have been caught red-handed.

What’s happening with the limited number of police investigations into the more excessive individual cases? I haven’t heard anything in the headlines recently.

And if politicians’ words and actions had genuinely reflected the public’s fury at the time they’d have be forced to proclaim themselves a bunch of “shits” and string themselves up from the rather tasteful lampposts along Abingdon Street. We aren’t in this together Dave, dream on.

This scandal has subsided under the tides of more recent news – the death of Michael Jackson, the Iraq Inquiry, escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Are we still okay to assume all the penitence and promises of probing inquiries are holding firm? The bankers were sorry too, if you recall. Who’s sorry now as the bonuses are breaking records again?

Is the expenses scandal dead too and was Dave only miffed because Duncan brought it up at all?

Mick Martin has moved on, but what other meaningful words and actions have transpired that Alan Duncan might refer to when expressing his solidarity with the British public the next time he has a comment to make about corruption in parliament?

He doesn’t have much to go on from what I can see. He’s already done the “sorry” thing. Steal money, get caught, say sorry, maybe give some of it back, walk away. Sorry about that.

Like all the MPs who were terribly confused about what they could or couldn’t claim for as they expertly flipped their expenses from property to property, he’s made a childishly transparent excuse. When in doubt, hold your hands up, lower your head and make an excuse. He says he was only joking, so another tick there.

Obviously he’s not resigning, just like 99% of the politicians who were happy to continue as guardians of the public trust following their liberal abuse of it.

I’m not sure what else he is expected to do. Perhaps Dave could explain more clearly by demonstrating the difference between Duncan’s behaviour and the behaviour of just about every other snout in parliament?

Or maybe he could leave Alan high and dry by actually saying then doing something meaningful to address a scandal that continues to fade into the noise of an ever developing news cycle.

Politicians still don’t get it. Words backed by swift and effective actions were urgently required at the time in order to stabilise the sharp decline in public trust. Giving the appearance of sympathising with the public whilst doing nothing at all just isn’t good enough. What’s more, Cameron knows it but he also knows he’s going to be the beneficiary of a public backlash against one of the most corrupt governments in British history. He’s busy doing nothing because that’s his route to power.

So as with his cowardly dance around the Lisbon Treaty he’s making all the right sounds but remains out of step with the will of the people. And if he’ll compromise his principles to win power you can be sure he’ll do the same to hold onto power.

He’s well qualified for the job of PM then.

• The United Kingdom is a democracy,
• That has a parliament led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and an “opposition” led by “Dave” Cameron,
• And the office of the Prime Minister is the highest in the land,
• And the laws made in parliament are a representation of the will of the public as expressed at the ballot box.

Which makes me wonder why the old sayings, “None of them are any good!”, or, “This lot are as bad as the last lot!”, are as popular today as they have ever been.

Many people I have talked to seem to accept as sound the structure of our society yet they don’t seem very happy with how it currently operates. In political terms they are cynical of it, jaded at the monotonous disappointment that follows every honeymoon period afforded to one government after the next. Brown was prudent and solid enough and the only real choice for the job, the media told us. Things could “only get better” under Blair, if you recall. “Honest” John Major was going to sweep away the harshness of a Thatcherite system that initially excited the average citizen but ended up being despised. Labour before that was too disastrous to contemplate, though the Winter of Discontent might seem small potatoes compared to the global meltdown we could be facing if the media is incorrect in its present prediction of an imminent recovery – as wrong as they were about this crisis happening in the first place, or Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, for example.

“This lot are as bad as the last lot!” Why? Because their diametrically opposed policies are just as hopeless as the other crowd’s? More likely because you can’t tease a cigarette paper between the agendas of either party. Could it be that both parties are so similar that in effect there is only really one party split into two groups? Sounds like a conspiracy theory and we’ve been conditioned to reject anything carrying that label, out of hand. So why was “Dave” Cameron elected as Tory leader? It’s not a secret, they wanted the next Tony Blair. Many Labour backbenchers often wondered why Tony Blair hadn’t selected the Tories as his natural home. And Gordon Brown placed the banks at the heart of his agenda from day one, like any good Tory would do, cutting them loose to build the financial disaster we are currently experiencing. The Tories are selling you their compassion and environmentalism, whilst agreeing to hand unrestrained power to the banks, giving them a free hand whilst claiming to be championing consumer protection. Yes indeed, the differences between the parties that constitute our democracy are there for all to see.

Which brings me to Peter Mandelson. Apparently Gordon Brown, the man in possession of the highest office in the land, only held onto his chair because Mandelson provided him support at a crucial time. When I heard the TV news loops relay these facts I couldn’t help wonder what it means to be “in charge” when a subordinate holds the power to issue a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Of course the electorate in this democracy wasn’t consulted, either at the time when Blair transferred power to Brown under the terms of a pre-arranged deal or more recently when Brown’s fate was in the balance. The media casually explains the government has the right to delay all such consultation with the people, apparently regardless of the circumstances. Those are the rules, and the rules need no further comment.

“Dave” Cameron, meanwhile, has been whispering at the top of his voice and demanding a general election. And, by golly, if there is an election and provided the Irish haven’t re-voted “Yes” and provided the treaty hasn’t already been verified, Cameron will see to it the British people get a say in whether the sovereignty of this nation is handed over to Europe. It’s not as stirring a performance as Elizabeth rousing the troops at Tilbury or Churchill urging us to fight them on the beaches, but at least he made suitable noises during the right scene. If events overtake his desire for a democratic resolution to the European question, as appears inevitable, he can point to his innocence in the whole affair as he reluctantly accepts the will of a few old men in Brussels. Democracy is not perfect then, or even utilised when inconvenient, but if you believe what you read in the press and hang on the words of the news anchors we, the people, are running this show.

To cap it all, I hear Tony Blair is in the frame for the presidency of Europe. And Mandelson has kept Brown in office and so prevented a general election that might have forced Cameron to actually offer a referendum on Europe. Such happy coincidences.

If you have read this far then some of you, at least, will be furiously shaking your heads and muttering, “Yes, I bloody know all that! It’s obvious!” So why does the TV news and the newspapers continue to try to make you believe the exact opposite? Why do they continue to insist we live in a democracy and that Gordon Brown is our leader and that the will of the people is paramount and that our parliament is the ultimate representation of our will?

Whilst this charade goes on we will never get to ask the big questions. The big questions will always be swamped by the trivia. At the heart of it, the politicians work for us, so it is said. Do you believe that? Really? What if it simply isn’t true? What if the facts upon facts upon facts show otherwise?