A bad week for Parliament — but most Members are still Honourable
(Alamy)
The Book of Proverbs may not be much read by politicians or anyone else, but we all know one of its verses: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” — usually abbreviated to: “Pride goes before a fall.” Boris Johnson, who had returned on Tuesday from Glasgow in ebullient mood, is reported to be bemused as well as exasperated by the calamitous handling of the Owen Paterson suspension, which has brought accusations of corruption, public ridicule and now a furious backlash from his own MPs.
With hindsight, Wednesday night’s heavily whipped vote, to back an amendment that would have set aside Paterson’s suspension and set up a new committee to reform the system, may be seen as a turning point in the fortunes of this Government. With hindsight, it can be seen as reckless, misguided and self-destructive. The Opposition was never going to agree to such an obviously partisan proposal that was bound to undermine confidence in Parliament. Nor were more than 50 Conservative MPs who preferred to defy their party rather than their constituents.
As the scale of the débacle became clear, the man at the centre of the maelstrom gave an interview in which he was contumatious rather than contrite. Owen Paterson has earned sympathy for the loss of his wife, Rose, and may genuinely believe that he had done nothing wrong by his lobbying, but this was not the time to say that he would do it all over again. Support for the Shropshire Lad evaporated overnight.
By the time Boris Johnson had slept on it, his mind was resolved. The Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, was ordered to execute one of the fastest U-turns in parliamentary history. Within minutes of the announcement, Paterson had announced his resignation, blaming “the cruel world of politics” and promising to dedicate his life to the prevention of suicide. Cruel, perhaps; ruthless, certainly. With opinion polls in free fall and his own survival at stake, the PM had no choice. Defenestrating a well-liked former Cabinet minister will not endear him to his MPs. But Boris Johnson knows his Machiavelli: for the Prince, it is better to be feared than loved.
This is not, of course, the end of the affair. There will now be a by-election in North Shropshire, where Paterson (a native of Whitchurch) had built up his majority from 2,195 in 1997 to 22,949 in 2019, fully 62 per cent of the vote. Labour will field a candidate, so there will be no repeat of the 1997 election at Tatton, when the then Tory MP Neil Hamilton was ousted by a cross-party “anti-sleaze” candidate, the former BBC journalist Martin Bell.
But it doesn’t require a man in a white suit to make Downing Street nervous. The Conservative lead over Labour has probably gone, at least for as long as the country can remember what this week’s spectacle was about. It is of course unusual for the governing party to be ahead at this point anyway; only the unexpectedly strong economic recovery, plus the weakness of the Labour leadership, has allowed the Tories to defy political gravity thus far. But the combination of tax rises and the pandemic promise another hard winter ahead. If the country were to turn against the Government, the fickler sort of Tory MP could turn against the PM. What happened to Mrs Thatcher in the depths of winter more than thirty years ago could happen again.
What can Boris Johnson do to avert that fate? A degree of contrition on his part would not come amiss. The Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, may have to fall on his sword, but the buck stops with No 10. Any reform of standards must not merely be seen to benefit MPs, by giving them a right of appeal, but also the public, by closing any loopholes that allow them to act as paid advocates for commercial interests without open scrutiny. The PM must show by actions as well as words that Parliament is safe in his hands.
The Labour Party was fortunate that the Paterson imbroglio distracted attention from the trial of its own former MP, Claudia Webbe, in the Crown Court. Ms Webbe, who had threatened a female rival with acid and has shown no remorse, was lucky to have her 10 week prison sentence suspended. Only now expelled by Labour, she should face recall, triggering another potential by-election in Leicester East, but she is appealing against her conviction, delaying any resolution of her future for months. She is the seventh Labour MP to receive a prison sentence in the past decade. All the major parties inhabit glass houses and should be wary of chucking stones indiscriminately. Last week Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, apologised for calling Tories “scum”. This week she was back again, calling them “shameless” for “wallowing in sleaze”.
Talk of a return to Tory sleaze is overdone; in any case, there is no monopoly of virtue on either side of the House. How quickly we have forgotten the expressions of admiration for the late Sir David Amess, murdered by a terrorist in the line of duty at his constituency surgery, just as Jo Cox was in 2016. Instead we seem to have returned to a false and hateful impression of Parliament as a mixture of lobbyists, lobby-fodder and low life. There are, in truth, many more decent MPs in the David Amess or Jo Cox mould than this negative image implies. The vast majority of Members do indeed deserve to be called “Honourable”. Even Owen Paterson did not cling onto office; his resignation has made a fresh start possible for his colleagues. This has not been a good week for the reputation of our elected representatives, but in the end they have done the right thing.
