Power corrupts

‘If you have one bad copper and 10 coppers who know the one is bad but say and do nothing you have 11 bad coppers.’

said many people when Sarah Everard turned out to have been murdered by a serving policeman called The Rapist by many of his colleagues.

MP Owen Paterson who one of his former colleagues claimed suggested in 2018 that pensioners should be used to pick fruit for less than the minimum wage, was found guilty by the Parliamentary Standards Committee of abusing his position by lobbying for firms that paid him more than his salary as an MP and imposed a 30 day suspension from the commons.

Like bent cops closing ranks to protect a colleague from Internal Affairs, the division that investigates police wrongdoing, Tory MPs lined up to defend him, citing various “weaknesses” of the system that, if their allegations were true – and we have to look at Johnson and the Tories’ record here, could have been fixed easily, and almost all voted to abolish the Standards Committee.

This is like the police abolishing Internal Affairs in response to the discovery of a bent copper.

The ten policemen above who kept silent may have done so for fear of reprisals from colleagues and damage to promotion prospects: some women police who suffered sexual harassment were told their careers would suffer if they complained. The 249 MPs who voted to abolish the Standards Committee may have faced similar pressure from the whips.

It also seems that the rules were changed for the parliamentary vote. Instead of allowing pairing the vote was restricted to those MOs who were in the commons at the time.

At one time a policeman suspected of being bent could resign and still keep their pension. Mr Paterson has now announced his intention to resign. It is unclear whether he will get his parliamentary pension but he will continue to work for the companies that paid him, at least for now.

As a result of a widespread public backlash the UK government has yet again U-turned and decided to hold “cross party talks” on how the Standards committee might be reformed.

This is just an effort to get the same result but spread the blame. It could also be a trap for other parties. If they take part in a committee dominated by Tories they can be smeared by the media as driving the changes, and if they abstain they can be smeared as letting the Tories do what they like.

Looking at the bigger picture, this storm in a teacup could have been avoided if Mr Paterson had simply accepted his suspension. One has to wonder why he protested and whether the entire affair was provoked in order to create an excuse for abolishing the Standards committee and if so what part Mr Paterson played.

But as always stupidity explains a lot more than malice.

Nevertheless the question remains

If you have one bad copper and 10 coppers who know and say and do nothing you have 11 bad coppers.

If you have one MP who violates the code of conduct and 249 who vote to abolish the standards committee what do you have?

The government’s 80 seat majority is much less than the Landslide Thatcher had in the 1980s, but even she would not have dared to use it to damage the reputation of Parliament, neuter independent scrutiny, allow raw sewage.to be dumped in the seas round England and remove the powers of the Electoral Commission.

It is a commonplace now to claim the UK is descending into fascism. It is perhaps equally valid to claim that the UK is turning into a copy of the post stalinist USSR blended with the crime ridden chaos that followed the death of the Soviet Union. Events this week have only served to confirm this impression, especially when the Prime Minister had to be helped up the stairs to the podium at COP26 allegedly because he was drunk: Brezhnev loved a drink or five.

It would appear Britain has been the victim of the Chinese Curse “May you live in interesting times”

Recently the Secretary of State for Westminster in Scotland, Alister “Union” Jack wrote that he did not believe in the four nations of the UK but believed the UK provided “One big nation”. Almost simultaneously a pro union march in Glasgow stipulated only union flags were to be carried: the idea of other flags showing the unity of the four nations within the UK had apparently not occurred to them.

This shows that Unionists are anti-English, anti-Scottish, anti-Welsh and anti-Irish. The recent goings on in Westminster show that the Tories are anti anyone not a millionaire.

At least Scotland, and possibly Wales and Northern Ireland could theoretically escape the Union leaving England (and Cornwall) to stand on their own two feet.