What Derek Conway means

What Derek Conway did is undisputed. The effect, though, is much harder to assess.

Has he put the nail in the coffin for MPs employing family members (sadly still mostly wives, not husbands)? Has he made it inevitable that MPs will finally have to submit proper receipts like the rest of us for expenses? Will we see an end to the cosy arrangement of MPs setting their own salaries, pensions and expenses? Is he the straw that breaks the camel’s back regarding supremacy of the House of Commons – will MPs now be subject to the same external audit and scrutiny processes as most other employees?

Perhaps the most important effect of Derek Conway (and Peter Hain, and Wendy Alexander, and Peter Mandelson, and Neil Hamilton, and and and – to be honest those are only the first few that spring to mind) could be that we finally wake up to the fact that unless we do something pretty radical, politicians will never be trusted again.

I don’t subscribe to the view that all politicians’ snouts are in the trough – far from it. I would hazard a guess that British politics is, overall, one of the cleaner political systems in the world. But it doesn’t really matter about the comparison with others – what counts is what we think is acceptable. 

There is a disconnect between politicians and people. That’s partly a product of the fact that for years we’ve been professionalising politics – so you go from being a researcher, to working in party headquarters, to working for a think-tank, to being a special adviser to being an MP. Part of the reason that governments get tired is that by the third election victory, all the hungry young things who worked so hard for the first one become MPs and don’t have any new ideas. The creation and self-sustaining of a political class is not good for democracy, for governance or for the country. But part of the reason that this political class is being created is, as I said two weeks ago, that people with flair are unwilling to go into public life. 

If we are serious about getting good people involved, about increasing voters’ stake in society and about removing this haze of suspicion of politicians’ motives, we have got to seriously examine the way that we, as voters, look at politicians as well as require politicians to look at the way they behave.

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