David Cameron offered the following statement at the University of East London last week. “Expenses has dominated politics for the last year. But if anyone thinks that cleaning up politics means dealing with this alone and then forgetting about it, they
are wrong. Because there is another big issue that we can no longer ignore. It is the next big scandal waiting to happen. It’s an issue that crosses party lines and has tainted our politics for too long, an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money.”
I wrote to David Cameron in January 2009 some months before the expenses scandal. Here is an excerpt from the letter. “How long will it take the nation to despair of ministers handsomely remunerated by a business world hungry for political sway? It may well be uncomfortable for all parties if the names of MPs with commercial interests in companies pitching for and securing government contracts were to be revealed.” At this stage I had not yet withdrawn my shortlived membership of the Conservative party. I was impressed with Mr Cameron’s ambitions to reform ‘Broken Britain’ and was trying to win a hearing.
The response from his office accelerated my distrust in the direction of the Conservative party. Though I had not once referred to expenses in my letter
the response largely attempted to allay a concern that neither I, nor the nation, had developed yet! “Regarding the public disclosure by MPs of their expenses..” it started before going on to criticise the Government for attempting to conceal the damaging expenses revelations and also to present a sense that the Conservative party were the frustrated and noble adversaries trying to reveal the truth. The word ‘transparency’ or a variation thereof was included 5 times in that letter. In political parlance a reference to transparency often confirms the existence of a cover up. Some months later the story broke and most of us were fed up with politicians of all parties.
These unnerving reflections lead on to sinister projections. When I wrote that letter I believed that an attempt to rid Parliament of its unhealthy alliance with the business world was a pressing matter for the national interest. Now, as David Cameron says, it has become a critical issue. A few weeks after I sent my letter 4 Peers agreed to change laws in return for cash. Then came the expenses fiasco. In the backdrop of a country losing confidence in its Parliament the BNP sent two men to Brussels. The culture of greed at Westminster needs to be legislated against and trust restored or the future could be far more frightening than Cameron has forseen.
