They Think It's All Over.....

Oh, how naive of us to believe that dodgy expenses was the full extent of Political trough-snouting.

No one seems to realise that Politics is the ultimate game of sales - how else can a former PM be suddenly worth an accumulated £20m in just 3 years whilst being a Middle East Envoy. I mean, think about it - it's all about selling your rolodex of contacts, it's all about telling people that you can get things done - why else would someone like Blair be useful to Insurance Companies?

And we thought the Hamiltons' were sleazy. Just look at the crop we have now, not emptying mini bars anymore, the going rate for the likes of Byers and Hewitt, allegedly, is between £3,000 and £5,000 per day. Yes, that's per day.

It puts fiddling expenses into it's correct perspective - it's all just part of the way of making money.

By sheer coincidence I had lunch with a couple of people who are employed in the Lobby Industry and they had no idea this story was about to break. They talked about only the bit of the industry which they see - the endless stream of 'freebies' which MPs regularly and repeatedly partake of which royally look after their holidays and make their schedules less stressful. They believed it was right on the edge, and in some cases, well beyond the boundaries of 'influencing opinion'. The latest revelations remind me of the famous case of John Prescott being taken across the US by private jet and lauded at a ranch owned by the CEO of the lottery co-bidder, who gave him the infamous cowboy suit. Soon after, the same company landed the rights to run the lottery as part of the Camelot consortium and have remained at the heart of the biggest and easiest money making scheme since it's start in 1995.

My lobbyist friends believe that there is growing fear in Westminster and Brussels that there will be a hung Parliament causing at minimum financial inertia where no one can get things agreed and done. They said there is also a growing belief that over half the sitting MPs will lose their seats and be replaced by a new batch of wannabe MPs - the biggest churn of Politicians in ages. It would be a great thing if it happened and we got rid of the stagnant thinking, populist policies and cynical abuse of the system but I think it's naive to think so.

I agree that a huge number of people are really upset about the expenses thing and will clearly be angered about the lobbying scandal too. The belief that constituencies will vote as they should, about the individual candidate, is likely to occur in the extreme situations like Luton South or Bracknell but politicians have thick skins and voters have short memories with a limited capacity to reason. In many areas, the local MP could commit murder but the locals would still vote by Party while many will just look at the value of their staples like beer and fags and vote accordingly.

This year is unusual. We have a sitting Inquiry into the steps that led to a war that cost us billions, led to unnecessary loss of life and has stoked up the rattler's nest of fanaticism to endanger us more. The sitting PM has already admitted he has lied to the Inquiry - God knows that others have. Our economy, that we were led to believe was impregnable, has suffered a worse recession than any of its rich counterparts and our GDP is now lower than that of Italy's. We have a spiralling budget deficit and no plan to tackle it; we have the prospect of more taxes and yet we are already the most taxed British citizens of all time.

The fact we haven't voiced our discord to date is testament that we will revert to type at the General Election. It may get close but the sweet talk of the likes of Mandelson will likely win the day. And before you think I'm too biased, I predict the likes of Nadine Dorries will somehow get voted back in and what about Julie McBride?

It comes to something when we trust the likes of a twice disgraced MP.

Cleaning Up Politics

Cleaning up politics is alleged to be one of Gordon Brown's pledges of the new year - it was a pity he missed the opportunity to fast track legislation in the Queen's Speech to augment this but his latest pledges are seen as the last throw of the dice for his party in the run up to the election.

How bad did politics get?

Well let's not go over old ground but the revelations this year made us all extremely angry at a time when British families were suffering most as a consequence of the credit crunch and recession. It is now alleged that some 6 politicians are under police investigation for suspected fraud, mainly to do with claims on second home allowances for phantom mortgages. To be honest, there should be many more - Tony McNulty and Hazel Blears spring to mind but we get the age-old claim that they did everything within the spirits of the rules at the time, a convenient excuse to hide a flagrant disregard for common decency.

But there is much more at risk than just expense claims. What the whole drama illustrated was the priority of the individuals in politics to look after themselves ahead of acting with true conscience. It makes you wonder what people really thought about major issues like Iraq and Afghanistan but kept quiet as it would upset the gravy train. Surely more individuals other than Clare Short and Robin Cook questioned Tony Blair's decisions, particularly on Iraq? How many were reminded of their 'obligations' to support the party rather than vote with decency in mind?

There are more decisions which could be scrutinised but for many people, trust flew out of the window. How can you back people like Julie McBride when she fails to see that what she did was immoral and should be illegal? We clamp down on benefit fraudsters and tax evaders but these abusers of the taxpayer have played a game with us all forgetting all sense of moral values. Yet it seems that politicians will get away with it; they will sit at the next election and they will likely get voted back in. For those 'Zombie MPs' who have already said they will step down, they hang on for the last milking of the system, the pay off for losing the election - the parliamentary equivalent of the Premier League relegation pay off.

Why do we let disgraced MPs have that opportunity to finally screw us when the very reason they are going is because we have found out that's what they did?

It is at this point that leadership is called into scrutiny. Why have Brown, Cameron and Clegg not acted and simply sacked those individuals who have transgressed and admitted it? Why are they allowed one final shafting of the public when they have been royally doing so for some time?

My point is that if the party leaders cannot see the problem properly, how can we trust anything they do? This is a pretty fundamental issue about trust and they seem to care little about their own sinners, allowing them a final hurrah rather than acting to clean the whole system up and getting rid of the rotten eggs now. Then again, trust is something politicians abuse time and again - they are happy to tell us whopping great lies and justify them later when they manipulate the facts of the time.

It is little wonder that we have them all debating the Green Book, whether they should pay back what was claimed and whether they are bunch of thieving swines. It is in their blood - by definition if you want to be a politician then you are probably not morally strong enough to be one.

It will take far more than talking a pledge to clean up the system - it will take a fundamental overhaul of the political system at all levels of Government. I will bet my tax increases over the next 10 years that it will never happen.