From crisis of legitimacy comes legitimate opportunity

I am not alone, I think, in being taken aback at the scale of MP expenses scandal. 

I distrust sensationalist headlines, and prefer to wait till the detail is available before taking a view.  Thus, for example I’ve preferred to wati a few days, read all the words, and wait till the headlines have died off a bit before having my say on the Welfare Reform Bill, where the devil really is in the detail of implementation, or a Conservative think-tank’s recommendations on Northern Cities, where there was a lot more nonsense than immediately met the eye.

But in this instance it is the drip, drip, drip of detail which convinces me (and Charlie) that I had until now underestimated just how corrupt and corrupting is the culture of parliament, and how far removed are some, perhaps many, Labour MPs from the people they have purported (simply by being a members of the Labour party) to serve. 

In the case of Hazel Blears, for example, I had argued with Dave, in my structure-over-agency way, that she was a victim of institutionalisation and that her socialist heart might actually be in the right place.  Quite simply, it looks like I was wrong and Dave was right.

And on the doorstep it is very different this time.  Before this weekend, there was the odd comment about MPs’ expenses, and general exasperation with Labour’s national performance, but it was more or less business as usual. 

Now it’s suddenly different.  The mood swing is palpable; it’s not exasperation with the general body politic.  It’s anger; it’s a feeling of betrayal, a feeling that we’ve all been robbed by the bastards, and a feeling that people like me, associated with these bastards because I’m in the same party, are also bastards who, every now and then at least (in general people are very nice) do deserve the door slammed in our face.

From those supposedly loyal to Labour, there have been and will be the excuses to follow – that this is a cross-party problem, that lots of Conservatives (and Libdems to come, no doubt) have been found out too, and that while it is all very embarassing, we should just reform the rules and get on with life again because our democracy is basically sound.

Hopi, for example, is  eager to cling on to the idea that parliamentary politics is essentially, eager to think the best of people, even at times like this.  And like Hopi,  Vino, with the best of motives, just seems to protesta little bit too much that it should all ‘be taken in context’.

I can understand that motivation –  to make the best of it for Labour, even for the body politic in general - but it is the wrong thing to do this time round.

Firstly, it is wrongbecause a pure focus on the ‘facts’ does not take into account the way in which these facts (and the way they are being dripped out by the press) are being conjioned in the public mind with all the other happenings of the last few months or years – from the idiotic irrelevance of the email saga through to the very real bailing out of the banks – to create a very real crisis of politicial legitmacy, where all politicians, but especially those of the governing party are seen as part of an amorphous rottenness at the heart of  ‘the system’. 

This time, much though it goes against my nature to say so, it is not about original facts – it is abouta wide discourse of illegitimacy and corruption which has, in effect, become reality through mass belief (I won’t stop here to do the ontological stuff about the social contruction of reality).

But secondly, and more importantly for Labour supporters, it is wrong because Labour MPs should not be just like other MPs. 

Frankly, I don’t give a monkey’s toss about what the Conservative Party, or the Liberal Democratic Party,  does about its  corrupted MPs.  As a Conservative commenter on Hopi’s blog admits:

‘Lefties believe in politicians and their benevolent ability to improve things – Righties are highly dubious about too much power in anyone’s hands whatever they say it is for.’

And as no less authority on the ethos of the Conservative party than Viscount Hailsham once said:

‘Conservatives do not believe that political struggle is the most important thing in life. In this they differ from Communists, Socialists, Nazis, Fascists, Social Creditors, and most members of the British Labour Party. The simplest amongst them prefer fox-hunting - the wisest, religion. To the great majority of Conservatives, religion, art, study, family, country, friends, music, fun, duty, all the joy s and riches of existence of which the poor no less than the rich are the indefeasible free-holders, all these are higher in the scale than their handmaiden, political struggle.’

Conservatives (and Libdems) are not, fundamentally, in parliament to serve the interests of the majority of the people, because that is not what their politics is about; they are there to serve the interests of capital, and themselves while they are there.  They are not bound by the same values-born-of-tradition that should bind Labour MPs , and they are not bound to their party in the same way that Labour MPs should be bound to their party, and servants to it.

For Labour MPs, it’s different, or at least it should be different.

Labour MPs’  values should reflect the reasons the Parliamentary Labour party was formed – to represent the interests of working people in parliament, and not to do so while feathering their own nest at the direct expense of those working people.

It is not enough this time round to tell a few of the worst offenders off, not enough to ask them to pay back what they have taken, not enough even to throw the odd one out of the cabinet for a while till they are deemed to have repented. 

It is not enough, for example, for Hazel Blears to say she is sorry, and that she understands how angry people are.  Indeed it is a further insult of her to do so, especially – as he did last night on TV – invoking the name of here ‘Salford people’ (I am from Salford, by the way). 

She has shown that she does not understand the people of Salford, and enough is now enough of the lakc of understanding.

This time round, any Labour MP found by their local parties to have abused the expenses system should have the whip removed, and then they should be deselected in advance of the general election. 

I don’t care how many MPs this affects, because now is the time – a time of real opportunity – to act to reconstruct the Labour party as a party where the values of the representatives of the working class actually matter, and are actually put to the test.

Of course, that is easier said than done, because the Labour hierarchy will stand together with its backs to the wall, seeking to assure the rank and file that now is not the time for disunity, that now is the time to get behind the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Well bollox to that.

Grassroots action needs to start up right now, not to support the old corrupt order, but to sweep it away.  Local CLPs must stand up and be counted, in whatever way they can and with the support of whatever passing pressure group they find handy (LRC, Compass etc), so that the National Executive Committee, whether by emergency conference resolution or beforehand, is forced to submit to the new and suddenly resurgent will of the party, forced to ‘allow’ the deselection of however many Labour MPs must be deselected. 

It is time for party members, and their union colleagues, to reassert their authority over their party.

And of course, this is easy enough for me to say, because I have an MP who has all her expenses on her website and will not be caught up personally in this scandal.  I won’t therefore be in a position to stand up in a CLP meeting and incur the self-righteous wrath of those in the party who still believe (or at least claim to believe) that it is important to stand behind their MP .for the good of party unity’, whatever that MP has done.

The Conservatives will not do this.  Nor will the Libdems. That is their problem. If we gloss over this whole scandal and allow people like Hazel Blears to retain their seat, then electorally we will suffer, and the Conservatives will win. 

If, on the other hand, the Labour party as a whole draws a line in the sand, deselects MPs who have transgressed – not the official rules but the basic principles of what it should be to be a Labour MP – then we will have done the right thing, and the uncorrupted representatives that fight for seats in the general election will do so from the moral high ground. 

Those who are selected to fight seats at short notice will, in general, be socialists, because that is the kind of MP the party, and the wider country, yearns for.  Ernest Millington’s death the other day, and the obitiuaries that followed, point us in the right direction there. 

And you know – a new Labour party, a proper new Labour party, might even win such a general election, because it was brave, because it was decisive, because it was taken back over by its members.

Bizarrely, it might turn out to be the Telegraph wot won it.