Out of tune

It has been a rich month for satirists. But when we have all done laughing at chaps so down on their luck they only have one moat to clean (which is very nearly as shaming as having to buy your own furniture) and when our snorts of glee about gigantic plasma tellies, bath plugs and doggie food die away, what will we be left with? The shipwreck of democracy, that's what.

It was a nice idea, that voting lark, and it was very good of all those people in our history to fight for it as hard as they did. It looked so '“ well, so reasonable didn't it? The majority in a community choose a fellow citizen to represent them in the legislature; a job for which he or she is paid a living wage, where the privileges more or less balance out the responsibilities, and the job description is of interest '“ making and scrutinizing the laws under which we are all to live. The working environment is pleasant '“ rather lovely rooms, good libraries, and competent research assistants (although your indigent sons are best avoided).

The payback is that the elected member has to be more or less decent, legal and honest, and should put in the hours on their constituents' problems as well as thinking independently from time to time. Oh, and they should stick by not only the letter of the law but '“ as they make the bleeding stuff '“ the spirit too.

Fast and loose

Instead of that fairly straightforward contract we have absurdity. The etymology of absurd is from the Latin for 'out of tune' '“ something hard to listen to, that does not accord with what should be '“ something that grates. And it grates that the compilers of the Fraud Act 2006, under which income support claimants are prosecuted because they do a job on the side to eke out their benefit, play fast and loose with their own representations.

A false representation, under the Fraud Act, is one which is untrue or misleading, where the maker of it knows that it is or might be untrue or misleading. Such as that the purchase of an item is necessary for the conduct of parliamentary business or was a legitimate expense directly related to the job when it was nothing of the sort. But prosecutions will depend on the provable existence of dishonesty rather than folly or greed. A child with an insatiable lust for sweets who also has the great good luck to employ a sweetshop owner who does not like saying no is not dishonest, although he will certainly not grow up to be John Stuart Mill.

Our venerable DPP Keir Starmer is living in interesting times, and he and the police will settle that question. But for the rest of the electorate what remains? After the giggles and the headlines, what will remain of our involvement in democracy? How far will the voting figures fall? How more alienated can people get? Quite apart from the shame of it '“ imagine the Mother of Parliaments with a social mandate of under 30 per cent voting turnout '“ the less interest there is in Parliament and what it gets up to, the worse it is for justice.

First, think of the kind of futrets1 we might get as MPs if only fanatics vote and the more or less normal stay at home '“ an urgent problem for the European elections in the North West at the moment. And secondly, analyzing, scrutinizing and debating legislation needs to be done in the open, with people watching '“ always ready to write in, or email TheyWorkForYou.com if they find the performance unsatisfactory. If no one cares and the populace is too irritated or repelled by their financial shenanigans, heaven alone knows what regulations we might be lumbered with. There is not enough scrutiny of the legislation as it is '“ secondary legislation slithers into our law without debate or consideration, and our zealous government makes great use of it.

Comfort amidst absurdity

But as an example of how parliamentary scrutiny should work, the Home Affairs Committee is taking evidence at present about G20 policing. Paul Stephenson and Commander Bob Broadhurst, Gold Commander (head of operations) on 1 April went head to head with Tom Brake MP, a bright-eyed LibDem who brought some personal experience to the debate. He had got himself kettled at Bank, and found it disagreeable. More to the point, he had seen some of an incident where two men who had been inciting the crowd to violence were accused of being agents provocateurs working for the police, after which they immediately slipped through the cordon '“ after showing ID observers thought were warrant cards. Brake has sent this material to Paul Stephenson, and wants an investigation. Stephenson suggested that the IPCC could do it better; Brake suggested that they could not as they were hardly in a position to identify plain clothes policemen however clear the video was.

So far so usual '“ but in reply to an apparently innocent question about the deployment of plain clothes officers generally on 1 April, Broadhurst came up with a bald answer: it was 'too dangerous' to put plain clothes policemen into the crowd, and none were used that day. Definite answers can be proved or disproved but permit no wriggle room: pinning senior police officers to such sticking points is a proper function of our elected members. That is a comfort, albeit minute, amidst the absurdity of our Home Secretary's husband's cultural choices and the high price of wisteria-chopping. But the last word comes from someone who fought more for democracy than we have had to: Vaclav Havel, who wrote:

'Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.'

We have certainly had it with absurdity '“ some sense is well overdue.

1 A weasel or stoat, in Lallans (or Scots)