The corruption of power

When the political deterioration of governments is discussed, it is frequently asserted that one reason for their decline is the arrogance of power - the tendency to become too familiar with being in office and to start to override the checks placed on office-holders.

My experience is that the opposite holds just as strongly. And I think Lord Goldsmith’s failure to rule himself out of the cash-for-peerages decision is a classic example.

What do I mean by that? I mean that as parties reach their tenth year in power they see themselves increasingly as a government rather than as a political grouping. Ministerial fiefdoms, bureaucratic conventions, civil service advice, precedents - all become more important than political considerations.

Before the 1997 election, the Tories were under huge pressure to publish the Commons Privileges Committee report on Neil Hamilton and other MPs. The Government machinery said that this was quite impossible, it was a Commons matter, the power didn't exist, and so on. I attended the meetings. The will to publish was there, but the ministers couldn't see a way around convention.

In those days, Blair would have had the document out there in 5 minutes. He was politically ruthless. He would have found a way.

Now, they too have caught government-itis. It is clearly politically insane for Lord Goldsmith not to rule himself out but they are too office-bound to be able to find a way around convention.

It's not, then, just contempt for governing conventions that does political damage, but also respect for them.

Comments

[Mandarin Orange]

Nothing, even, from Stephen Pollard, who once penned this paean, amongst others:

http://www.stephenpollard.net/000765.html

[John Hirst]

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton). Lord Goldsmith had decided that the Iraq war was illegal, and he was right. Then he was told to change his decision by Tony Blair, this was wrong and so was the changed decision. It is against natural justice/fairness to be judge in ones own cause as it leads to bias. All of this would make for a good TV series, Tony Soprano Blair and his Henchmen, for family viewing, all about the British Mafia...

[John Hirst]

It is said that, a rat will desert a sinking ship. I note that Lord Sainsbury has resigned from the government. No doubt his personal reasons for disembarking the pirate ship, Peersforsale, captained by Tony Soprano Blair, are that he does not want to get his shoes wet. Obviously, he had seen the torpedo with the words "cash-for-peerages" heading towards the ship. He claims that he did not buy his peerage. This maybe the truth. However, he has a history of misleading the public. There was the £2M loan he did not disclose to senior officials at his department. The whole thing maybe honest and above board, but if I had £13M to donate to Labour I would be asking What Is In It For Me? Surely it is not charity, because there are more deserving causes. There is more than a whiff of conspiracy in this whole affair. It also appears that the crew favour a mutiny. Another saying I like is that, there is no honour amongst thieves...

[Lindsay Thomas]

What is the point in the obsessive urge to treat the origin of mankind as a mere zoological quest when, ultimately, there is nothing important to be gained from it?
After all, it has never been less than obvious that human beings are made of the same stuff - the same "building blocks" - as all other animated creatures: of bone, flesh and blood, functioning dynamically in a way that is common to all species.
What indeed is to be gained from "proving" that we, too, originated from some protoplasmic, primeval state of being from which we have since progressed via this or that particular strand of the evolutionary process?
What really matters, surely, is not where we began this journey but where we have now arrived: at a state of being that makes us intrinsically different from the condition of all other living creatures?
Much is made of the point that we humans share 98% of our genes with our "first cousin" the chimpanzee and that "consequently" we ourselves are merely an ape that has somehow developed a far higher degree of intelligence.
Some scientists - indeed a majority - are so fixated by this point that they conveniently fail to ask themselves the far more pertinent question: "Why is it that our closest fellow-creature, the chimpanzee, has failed so conspicuously to attain the same extraordinary gifts and insights with which we ourselves have been specially endowed?"

[mvaupe]

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