- 18 Mar 2022
Can it really be just three months since Owen Paterson left, in his own words, the “cruel world of politics”?
It’s hard to recall precisely how cruel the world of politics had been to him. One vaguely remembers how he had been paid several hundred grand by a couple of companies, for absolutely no reason beyond his connections in this cruel but also rather lucrative world.
Then, very cruelly indeed, various powerful mates of his, including the prime minister, tried to get him off the hook by taking down Westminster’s standards commissioner, who had had the temerity of actually upholding the standards that the now disgraced Paterson had been unable to keep.
This particular s***show turned out to be the very first show flotilla in a grand s***show carnival which, three months later, now appears to have come to an end without anybody facing any consequences at all.
Paterson’s outrageous behaviour exposed other outrages, like, for example Geoffrey Cox being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to head off to the Virgin Islands to take part in a court case against the British government, of whom the most senior legal adviser had, until shortly before the case began, been Geoffrey Cox.
Things, it was almost but not quite unanimously agreed, had to change. So it will come as a great relief to a very small number of people that things haven’t. It has now been made clear that limiting how much outside work an MP can do, or how much they can get paid, would be “impractical”, so it’s better to just leave things as they are.
Three months ago, when asked about the subject, trade secretary Ann Marie Trevelyan said it would be sad to see second jobs for MPs go, because they bring “an incredible richness” to what they do, which is certainly true in Geoffrey Cox’s case.
Naturally there are complexities. The public don’t seem to mind that a few MPs are A&E doctors, paramedics, GPs, even top level football referees, though they do seem to mind when they are very, very highly paid lawyers, even though very, very highly paid lawyers, providing their legal expertise to the House of Commons at well below their own market rate, might actually be highly beneficial.
But, in the end, none of this matters. It has all simply blown over. In a way, it had blown over already. Who even cared anymore about Geoffrey Cox’s side hustle once the suitcase of wine came along, and the party that wasn’t a party that the prime minister definitely didn’t go to or actually yes he did but he didn’t know it was a party and maybe there was a party in his golden wallpapered flat but that’s probably fine because he was definitely just working next door so what’s the big deal?
There is a growing sense that that has blown over as well. No news, yet, on quite how long it takes for various people to fill in a police questionnaire, or how long it takes for the police to read those questionnaires, when they’ve already explained that they only send them out if they are absolutely certain that the person receiving them is completely bang to rights.
Apparently, no one wants Boris Johnson to resign any more, because there’s a war on, and in times of war, such trivialities as very obviously telling very obvious lies at the despatch box of the House of Commons on multiple occasions just don’t matter.If there’s a war on, clear and obvious resigning matters are not something you resign over. That sort of thing is just not important anymore. There’s a battle going on for the future of the world as we know it.
And as Boris Johnson couldn’t be making any more absolutely clear, there’s absolutely no point standing up and fighting for the values of liberal democracy if you don’t get to completely ignore them when a war comes along at the absolutely perfect moment and you can’t believe your luck.