Another voice
Parliament of brigands
Auberon Waugh
Nothing like enough anger has been gen- erated by the behaviour of MPs in awarding themselves a gigantic pay rise at a time of minimum inflation when they have no excuse except that they want more money. In a way, I suppose, the debate served a useful purpose in illustrating what loathsome, self-important people MPs for the most part are. I have been pointing this out with monotonous punctuality ever since I first started attending debates in the House of Commons over 15 years ago. My impression from various soundings is that whereas most people in this country agree with me, they do not regard it as a par- ticularly important truth. Publicans are for the most part pretty nasty people too, and so, as I have observed, are people who keep sweet-shops. So what?
Yet if it is a truth, as I maintain, that most MPs are deeply unpleasant people, in- spired by self-importance and greed to their calling and sustained in it by the lowest of motives throughout, then it is surely a very important fact of political • life, which should be taken into account in all political discussion. When deciding among ourselves those very few political issues which are likely to affect our own future ar- rangements — whether, for instance, Mr Lawson will remove any of the present punishments for industry or thrift — then the motives of our legislators are an impor- tant matter to be taken into consideration: what is in it for them?
Plainly, they will not have the smallest in- centive to control inflation when their salaries are pegged to those of senior civil servants, themselves pegged to the whole wage structure of the public sector. By de- nying future wage increases in the public sector they will be denying themselves a wage increase, and events have shown they are quite incapable of doing that. But the main objection to this disgusting behaviour of MPs — at any rate among political com- mentators — is that they have given com- fort to those cynics like myself (and 95 per cent of the adult population) who maintain that politicians are all hypocrites after the main chance; in other words, they have Lowered the Tone of Politics. In point of fact, they have done no such thing. Politics has always been a low profession, despite the high and noble noises which politicians like to make to each other and see repeated for them by their sycophants in the press. Their choice this time was between the pleasures of hypocrisy and the urgings of simple greed. We should be grateful for the illumination they have cast on the political scene, not resentful of it.
What was shocking about the debate was not the spectacle of so many creeping Jesuses on the left simpering to each other as they grabbed more money for themselves. That was both entertaining and instructive. The shocking thing was to see so many Conservative MPs whose proper concern should be to make themselves richer by reducing taxes, especially in the higher brackets, deciding instead to award themselves more money from public funds. This is a development which might easily produce something approaching despair among the many millions of people who, like myself, voted Conservative in the general election.
In my own case, I feel that I have been taken for a ride on two counts. My own Member of Parliament is Mr Edward du Cann. It would be idle to pretend that if the Taunton Conservatives had been able to produce some other candidate, I might not have voted with even greater enthusiasm for the alternative. But whatever can be said about Mr du Cann — and much has been said about him — I always thought that he was at least a successful businessman. His parliamentary salary might have added the odd astrakhan collar to his alpaca over- coats, the extra diamond or two to his tie- rings, but it would scarcely be a major item in his domestic budget. I was disconcerted, it is true, by a statement in his manifesto that he would support the death penalty for terrorist murders, but in the last resort I was prepared to reconcile my finely tuned liberal conscience to the prospect of a few Irish psychopaths and murderers taking a short jump if it made me a great deal richer.
But above all I thought he was a good businessman, and sportingly proposed (in the pages of Private Eye) a public subscrip- tion to dissuade him from these homicidal preferences. In the event, the vote was held before my public subscription could get off the ground, and in the Daily Telegraph next day I read that du Cann, having originally threatened to support the hanging of ter- rorists, had in fact voted to hang all the categories on offer.
Damn his slippery ways, I thought. Perhaps he reckons to be able to wriggle out of any noose, like a conger-eel. The next thing I learn is that he is leading a Conser- vative back-bench revolt to grab more tax- payers' money for himself and his slimy companions. Perhaps my mistake was simply to underestimate the greed of the very rich. In that case, my vote may not have been completely wasted, and du Cann will still be agitating on the tax front. But rumour has it that Nigel Lawson is not quite so well off as he used to be when we knew him and may well be another of those wretched placemen living on public funds. The prospects are not good for any reform of the tax system when the greedy brutes can simply vote themselves more money whenever they feel like it. Parliament has already voted itself into forcible possession of half my earned income and much more than half of all other income. What guarantee can there be that the new genera- tion of Conservative politicians will not vote themselves the other half?
The most significant thing about this act of banditry is the contempt for public opi- nion which it displays. Parliament is demonstrating that when it comes to brazen effrontery it has nothing to learn from the nation it leads. One even detects a note of grudging admiration in some of the com- mentary. But the question we must ask ourselves is not whether we, in a position to vote ourselves huge sums of money whenever we felt like it, would not behave exactly as they have done. The question is whether we will let them get away with it at our expense, and how we will stop them.
In equity, I suppose we should admit that a few of these people may be poor and in desperate need of the money. Perhaps Sir Hugh Fraser — a good, brave man, with a magnificent war record, who emerged as another of the leaders of the canaille— is among their number. If so, he has only himself to blame. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1945 and has never lifted a finger to reform the cruel and unnatural system of primogeniture which keeps him in penury. His brother, the 'war-hero' Lord Lovat, has been sitting on 190,000 acres throughout all that time, laughing at him and at all of us.
Other MPs may be in even more desperate straits, but the purpose of this ar- ticle is not to blub about penniless power maniacs. Let them think of other ways of making money without raiding the public purse. My purpose is to inquire whether, in the light of this piratical display of con- tempt for public opinion, traditional no- tions of a sovereign parliament can still ap- ply. It is all very well to say that the sovereign people can vote them out, but the choice is now between rival gangs of bandits.
Last week a Home Office minister in the House of Lords announced that although he and the Government had the greatest possible belief in the freedom of the press (subject to the existing restrictions) it might be necessary, if public disquiet over press behaviour continued, to introduce certain statutory controls. Perhaps this might be seen as a preemptive noise on the subject of public disquiet over the powers of a govern- ment entrusted to greedy and unprincipled hooligans. Of course, this contempt for public opinion might have been admirable in another cause, but on this occasion, I suspect, the politicians have emerged under their true colours. We must not let the public forget it. I am off for a few weeks to brood on ways of making these repulsive people understand how much they are loathed. It is for others to decide what statutory controls must be placed on the, sovereignty of Parliament.
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