Freewheeling

5 Feb 2010

So, three Labour MPs are to be prosecuted for misuse of the expenses system. As someone who was appreciating the gradual tightening of opinion polls this is something of a disappointment. I was hoping that the fingers of blame would point in many directions, like those of a rugby player who has just been stamped on.

So the moats and duck houses and claims for making petunias look pretty will not be the final image of the “scandal”, but an MP who looks like Ron Perlman playing a village idiot dragged up in court.

I know lots of people are angry about the expenses scandal. And I suppose I understand why it bothers them. MPs' behaviour is mild compared to that in some other democracies, and certainly compared to this country’s past. That is no excuse for it, but are there really no greater issues in life today than whether Brown should pay back £200 on his cleaning bill and whether David Cameron’s flowers really needed a mild form of quantitative easing to smell nice?

In particular it was convenient that the timing of the “scandal” seemed to occupy what should have been the apex of fury and resentment against the bankers and their confederates. This is unfortunate in many ways. Most importantly it gave the bankers the impression that they could carry on as usual. It took an unusual tax from from a Government normally terrified of the T-word to remind the Bankers that British people had been angry with them and their bonuses in the first place. Up until then the trend had seemed to be for it to be business as usual – if business as usual can be classed as a lot of people struggling to pay back enormous debts amid skeleton crew staffing and the constant threat of nationalisation, but still slapping each other on the back with gloves stuffed with £100 notes.

The issue had entirely disappeared from the press, to be replaced by rabid obsession with MPs. One would not like to be cynical – Well, OK, one would – but would the fact that the press is increasingly owned by freewheeling capitalists with more in common with bankers than with the pioneering proprietors of the 19^th century have anything to do with a news narrative that glosses over the massive cost to each and every person in Britain from the shockingly stupid behaviour of the finance sector to concentrate on a 'scandal' that has probably cost each taxpayer the equivalent of one crispy bacon flavoured potato crisp? The phrase “misplaced zeal” was invented for situations such as this.

Personally I'm right there with them – and I'm going to organise a protest outside the House of Commons and demand that we get that crisp back from each and every MP who has abused the system. That will get me about 392 crisps, which would give me a nice lining of fat to survive the next cold spell, but what I'm actually going to do is eat them all, then march over to the City and the entrance of JP Morgan, stick my fingers down my throat and vomit half-digested potato all over their front door step.

If they have one.

Actually they probably don't, but since I'm not really going to do that it doesn't matter.