The voters’ backlash on Thursday is all but sealed. In local council elections across London and large swathes of the country, the Government will pay a price, not only for cost of living hikes and Covid miscalculations, but also for a torrent of damaging revelations about a new era of sleaze at Westminster.
Eye-popping stories of criminality, misconduct and sexism roll forth on a weekly basis and the boss class of the major parties looks evasive. More than 50 MPs are currently referred to Parliament’s ethics watchdog. Kwasi Kwarteng, the usually frank Business Secretary, wheedles that this is the fault of a few “bad apples” — a strikingly poor metaphor, given that the old saying goes on to say that a mouldy fruit spoils the entire barrel.
Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer decrees a “culture change” is needed and then defaults to the safer ground of Tory-bashing with scant concession that many of his own MPs have cases of misbehaviour to answer.
Yes, there are distinctions to draw. Neil Parish is a hapless fool whose excuses for accessing porn videos (twice) in the Commons were so awful that it was a relief when he offered a resignation that was eagerly accepted.
Angela Rayner’s alleged “Sharon Stone” tribute is more convoluted: as much the fault of salacious newspaper presentation of a silly story, but one which multiple sources say she told jokingly about her own abilities to divert the Prime Minister in the Commons.
Rayner is, however, well within her rights to point out that there are double standards here. No male MP’s story of throwing a female minister off stride with his allure would be taken as more than a slow-day diary piece. Parties will inevitably look for ammunition in the wider political tussles. They cannot, alas, deal with the scale and range of problems in their ranks if they are intent solely on seeking out embarrassing stories to torment their foes.
Now Tory whips are said to be aghast that so many women have declared that they have had enough of being hectored and touched up by “dinosaur” MPs. To which one can only say with Captain Renault in Casablanca that they are “shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on” in Rick’s bar.
I have written from and about Westminster for two decades and it is not simply the Triassics who have thought it okay to be handsy. A long “working dinner” with a Tory grandee ended up with him nuzzling and muttering unwanted endearments. A former senior Labour frontbencher who thought the best way to discuss economic policy was while extending a “friendly” arm around female shoulders.
Parties long in government risk ending up morally stale as well as politically tired. (The number of Conservatives either being investigated for, or belatedly stepping down, over abuse of their office tells its own sorry story.) Yet oppositions play their part. John Bercow’s serial intimidation was tolerated by Labour when it backed him as Speaker to be a thorn in the side of the Government.
After the divisions of the referendum, too many strong Remain MPs and allies turned a blind eye because they relished his sword fight with Johnson over the withdrawal agreement and prorogation of Parliament.
As soon as the fray of this week’s midterms is over, Tories and Labour (together with the other parties who are not short of skeletons in their closets) need to embrace a shared determination to make “cultural change” more than just another glib pledge.
For his part, the PM has been remarkably reticent on his foot soldiers’ misdeeds, until the latest embarrassment breaks and he is duly “shocked”. No one is fooled — leaders have access to as much information from ministers, whips and trusted backbenchers about the behaviour of the ranks as they wish to hear. Mr Parish will have done Parliament a favour by leaving it. And while accusations should never be taken for guilt without proper scrutiny, the scale of the problems is too large to be dismissed as a legacy or the fault of long hours and late-night drinking.
So Johnson and Starmer have a choice. They can endeavour, preferably in a concerted manner, to lead change. Or they can remain complicit. If there is rot in the parliamentary barrel, it is because those who bear the proud titles of leadership have been too distracted or indifferent to root it out.
