John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): The stink from the Palace of Westminster that I wrote about recently is spreading! Members of both parliamentary chambers who insist on playing the game according to the rules - and to their own personal advantage - should not be surprised if others are keen to follow their example.
The rule based stance of Sir Fred Goodwin reminds me of the pig clubs that flourished in the last World War. With ministerial encouragement, households collaborated together in the ownership and care of a pig. In a club I knew, the pig was always named Fred. Rather like discretionary contributions to a company pension scheme, waste food donated by each family which owned a share of Fred went to make up the swill that was dumped in his trough. Nobody liked to tell Fred that the deeper he buried his snout the quicker he would be turned into bacon.
The slaughter of Fred by a government approved executioner was quite a ritual. Those that were not squeamish assembled and Fred was formally knighted before, now Sir Fred, his throat was cut and the gore led off to become the foundation of black puddings. I think someone may have told Harriet Harman about this. There is a difference though: the pig club that I knew respected the rule of law with great care and no special rules were made for dealing with the porcine knight.
Talking of government approved executioners, the case of our Fred has thrown up - I wonder what put those two words in my mind - an example of another game that is played in Westminster. Apparently it is absolutely de rigeur to seize any opportunity to embarrass a political opponent, the government or the opposition by putting the worst possible interpretation on facts that emerge and by feeding the willingness of most, if not all, of us to believe in the impurity of our fellows motives.
‘But the government agreed it!' cries George Osborne in the House of Commons ignoring the point that, almost certainly, there was nothing that the government could agree in relation to Sir Fred Goodwin's pension. The plain inference was that Paul Myners, the minister involved, had either missed something or, even worse, had colluded in some sleazy deal that might not get noticed. How unpleasant! What a terrible example to set! And how unfair! I suspect that, like those of us who have worked with Paul Myners, George Osborne knows perfectly well that he is a hard working, upright individual who is careful, socially aware and would never do a deal which gave him a bad conscience at bed time.
To be fair, George Osborne has also been a target in this Westminster game. It may have been unwise of him to be less than careful in his choice of dinner companions whilst on holiday but I found the attempts to make political capital of this in Parliament unedifying and mean. One of my grandchildren, not yet ten, said ‘They don't sound very grown up, big bad grandfather.'
The same point was made by Michelle Obama at the start of the Primaries in the US last year. Interviewed on television she said ‘One trouble with politics in our country is that too many of our politicians see it as a game. And that is wrong.' I could hear ‘Yesss' blowing in the wind from coast to coast. I wish that wind would cross the Atlantic.
