The MPs expenses scandal - based on nicked data 'obtained' by the Daily Torygraph - has become the talking point of the day. Around Britain people are furious that these same publicly paid MPs, who tell us all to cut back and grandly complain about every minor infringement of benefit claims, have taken expense claim fiddling to a level undreamt off by most of us.
And it's not just a few 'bad eggs' either. Nearly all of them seem to be at it!
What is your tip for the prize of "pettiest abuse of the MPs" expenses allowance? How about the KitKat taken from a hotel mini bar and charged to Muggins the Taxpayer? Or maybe it's the bathplugs? For the weirdest - how about the mole traps? For the most stereotypically Tory? That must be Douglas Hogg who lives in a medieval mansion house with a moat. And of course he charges the serfs for the upkeep of his moat. The prize for the most appropriate? That must be Heathcoat-Amory, another proper Tory MP with a double barrelled name, who charged us for... horse manure. After all, the revolutionary William Morris, in his utopian novel News from Nowhere, observed that in the socialist future, the Palace of Westminster would be used for storing horse manure.
Most shameless is probably Hazel Blears. Photo by velton on flickr. Most shameless is probably Hazel Blears who "flipped" the nominated second home MPs from constituencies outside London are entitled to claim for, no less than three times in a single year! Basically this means getting us to pay for doing up a home and then selling it on free of tax. This is not just taking the mickey out of the taxpayer, it is borderline fraud. Instead of taking on the tax dodgers in the City, she is so lost in admiration for them that she imitates their disgraceful behaviour.
All these people are just spitting in our faces. It may be argued that the sums involved are not huge. That's true. After all the Financial Times reckons the government may have ventured up to £1 trillion on bailing out the banks. Beside that amount, the expense fiddles are small beer. But that's beside the point.
Two thirds of us are on £25,000 or less. 90% of us earn less than £40,000 a year. MPs are on a guaranteed £62,000. Why do they need to fiddle their expenses on top? These are the same MPs who are voting to hound people on incapacity benefit as scroungers.
People will say, "they're all at it." That's true as well. But the scandal is bound to hit New Labour hardest. They've presided over this feeding frenzy for the past twelve years in office. Like the last years of the Tories under Major in the 1990s they are surrounded by a miasma of sleaze and squalor. Labour is at a record low in the polls. Labour, some of us remember, used to be the Party on the moral high ground.
The MPs glibly repeat the formula, "we've behaved according to the rules" - rules, that is, that they made up for themselves. They don't understand the hatred and contempt they generate with their brass neck. It's not just about expense fiddles, of course. The political class is seen to have failed us. We are staring at economic disaster and all they can do is fill their boots.
The expense account fiddle scandal follows the Damian McBride resignation story.McBride was a spin doctor paid by us taxpayers as a civil servant to lurk in the dark and help Gordon Brown traduce and rubbish his colleagues in office. The Blairites squealed and got him the sack. In our view the Blairite sleaze bags and the Brownite slime balls deserve one another. But we deserve something better.
Despite the panic measure of a 50% top rate of tax, New Labour continues its policies of 'neoliberalism lite.'The part-privatisation of Royal Mail, for instance, is politically unpopular and profoundly stupid. It's also completely irrelevant to the present economic situation. The government seems to think that by crawling to the rich they can restore the boom conditions that disappeared in 2007. And that's the root of the problem. The business of government, New Labour thinks, is business. Our politicians it seems are as bent as our business leaders.
New Labour is now so completely discredited that it seems almost inconceivable that they can win the next general election. They face wipe-out at the European and local elections on June 4th. The aftermath is really the last opportunity the plotters have to knife our unelected Prime Minister.
Who out there has "a lean and hungry look?" Harriet Harman? Alan Johnson? It's possible they are less bad-tempered than Brown, less prone to rages and sulks. But politically you can't put a cigarette paper between anyone in the Cabinet. They're all responsible for the present pickle. None of them looks like an election winner. Every one of them has responsibility for the failure of this government. And New Labour as a 'project' has been an absolute, abject failure. That, and the need for socialist policies to dispel the mood of cynicism with politics, is the real lesson of the present sorry situation. Socialist Appeal has always argued that MPs should live on a worker's wage. That would keep them in touch with the problems of ordinary working class people. That would be part of a raft of socialist policies aimed at addressing the real and urgent problems we all face and transforming society in the interests of the working class.
Source: Socialist Appeal