The trouble with David Purdy's argument is that witches didn't exist, and corrupt and fraudulent MPs - and peers, remember, and MEPs on the take - all too clearly do. I personally have become increasingly angry and disgusted by the long trail of revelations of the humiliating depths of greed to which MPs and peers have plunged, the more so when some of the worst perpetrators are -rather were - friends. And everyone I have talked to shares my anger and disgust: politics does now engage people, if not in the way that David Purdy and most MPs wish.
There is an interesting parallel in his and Gerry Hassan's argument. Both are acutely aware of the greater depths of economic crisis and inequality, social disintegration and personal debt in which the nation is sinking, but Hassan links this uncompromisingly with the broken constitutional system and the prevailing neo-liberal political and economic ideology of our ruling class. I think he is right do so. Do MPs really need or deserve higher salaries? Is it possible that the rewards that the people with whom they deal are too high?
What the media have shown is that our elected - and non-elected - legislators have themselves become infected by a variant of swine flu, obviously brought on by contact with an increasingly greedy and remote global business and professional class. Neo-liberalism doesn't just pervert public policy, it corrupts political and personal life as well. Similarly, our political class knows only too well that the governing system feather beds their place, and their parties' place, in Westminster and Whitehall and denies the electorate any real opportunity of change to choose when they vote. The disrespect for ordinary people is palpable. They are not lightly going to share the commanding powers in their grasp with them.
Okay, parties nastier than the Tories and Labour may win seats in the Euro elections. (Maybe too some nicer parties will win seats.) But that is not the real danger that our politics faces. The public service ethos has been hollowed out in Westminster to be replaced by the self-serving individualism of career politicians. However chastened they may be, these are not the right people to restore probity and a sense of public service in our politics. I am currently reading Chris Mullin's diary and I was struck by the thought that his kind of commitment to social justice is that of a near extinct species in Labour's ranks, and what will Labour stand for in the future if it is not to make life better and fairer for ordinary people? Moreover, the current breed will not lightly risk their place in the sun and their leaders will stick with the disproportionate power that is delivered into their hands by a shrunken electorate.
