I am not a crook

There’s a lot of weasel words going on about parliamentary sleaze at the moment and I think it is time to be clear on at least the basics.

The Guy Fawkes blog has been making the running on this and today he lists five current investigations. There will be more, I think we all know that. And politicians run around like headless chickens wondering why hardly anyone votes! People think that one lot is as bad as another so what’s the point?

Now we are getting the sly mitigation. Ian Dale, a decent man, wonders whether Mr Conway – suspended from parliament and the whip withdrawn – hasn’t suffered enough, whether we shouldn’t call an end to the witch-hunt. Conway himself in the Sunday Mail says he has done nothing wrong (inadvertently copying the ‘I am not a crook’ line from Richard Nixon); Wendy Alexander says no useful purpose would result from her resigning.

This is where we have to be clear. Nothing can be above parliament in a parliamentary democracy so we must let them rule themselves. This takes a leap of faith on the part of the populace, particularly now, but we can do it. In return we require absolute scrupulousness. These people knew they were doing wrong – Conway, Hain, Alexander, the rest – but they thought they’d get away with it.

Parliament rules itself – no problem with that – but the burden of proof must be on our politicians to show they are without sin, otherwise they will not be allowed to make laws over us. Even if Conway were innocent – and frankly I don’t believe for a moment that he is – he should have been so scared of opprobrium that he kept proper records of his family’s work.

In the meantime we must root out every single instance of this, or the very foundation of our democracy – people going out to vote – will be at risk.