Quick observation on Moatgate and the Meltdown as we enter "day 20". Last week I noted how the Guardian was beginning to set the agenda with its New Politics series whilst the Telegraph seemed behind and hopelessly off the mark seeing a Tory victory at the general election as the solution to the democratic crisis. Today's papers confirmed my suspicion.
The Guardian, of course, had a long contribution by David Cameron to their debate, outlining his programme for a "massive, radical redistribution of power". Now there are many proposals Cameron seems to think are "progressive" (like abolishing the HRA) which I think are profoundly regressive and will do a lot of damage, and, as Anthony points out, he stops short of promising anything that will significantly shift power away from the executive. But at least he recognises the need to think systematically about democracy and power and the relationship between citizens and the state.
Whilst simultaneously lauding Cameron, however, the Telegraph declared that discussion of PR by Cabinet Ministers is "supremely irrelevant" to the crisis and that "it is the quality of the people who represent us at Westminster that matters, not the machinery we use to elect them." Got that?
It is the quality of the people who represent us at Westminster that matters, not the machinery we use to elect them
It would be hard to find a more succint expression of the complacent and now thoroughly discredited tradition of the British political establishment than these 22 words in a Telegraph editorial. Elect some "quality" chaps with "a surer grasp of what is right and what is wrong" and we can stop worrying and let them get on with it, is the message. It's as though process and outcome are entirely unrelated. But voters are awakening to the fact the present system is both corrupt and corrupting and that we can no longer rely on the honest and gentlemanly conduct of our rulers. Research suggesting MPs with higher majorities are more likely to abuse expenses is simply one of the more obvious examples of a link the Telegraph fails to see. If we listen to the Telegraph - or follow Cameron's prescriptions, for that matter, which fail to match the radicalism of his rhetoric - then I have a grim feeling we'll be here again in ten years time, angry and disilussioned, as we wait for the "heir to Cameron" to take his or her turn.
