“If you wish to know what a man really is, give him power”, goes the saying.
Who could have predicted that a government led by Boris Johnson would be so flagrantly dismissive of democratic standards?
This is the man who connived with a friend to have a journalist assaulted; who frequently punched down in his writing (using plainly bigoted epithets like “bumboys”, “watermelon smiles” and “letterboxes” behind the humour he wears like a mask); who ran the London mayorality, by some accounts, like it was a pick-up joint; and who still refuses to take questions on his personal life. Probity clearly wasn’t for him.
Yet, he’s been even worse as prime minister than I feared. Whenever crossed by any independent power in the realm, he has sought to kneecap it. When parliament defied his wishes to threaten a no deal Brexit, he sought to prorogue it; when the UK’s Supreme Court found that illegal, his government railed against lawyers in its subsequent manifesto.
When home secretary Priti Patel was found guilty of bullying, the permanent secretary ended up resigning. When the government said it would alter legally binding Northern Ireland protocol, breaking the law, it was the head of the Government Legal Department who fell on his sword, rather than any minister.
Paterson broke the rules so Johnson tried to change them
So, when Conservative MP Owen Paterson was found bang to rights by parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, for being paid by a private company to lobby ministers and duly given a 30-day suspension, what was the reaction? Why, you guessed it! It was to hobble the entire standards framework, halting Paterson’s suspension and demanding a “review” of the entire process to allow for “appeals”.
The protestations of rectitude and moral virtue were as grotesque as they were disingenuous. With a three-line whip, however, the measure went through – though not without 13 Tory MPs voting against and 98 abstaining.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng tells #KayBurley it is "difficult" to see a future for Kathryn Stone, the independent parliamentary commissioner for standards, after her recommendation to suspend Owen Paterson was blocked by Conservative MPs.
Read more: https://t.co/yO7qkI3LFC pic.twitter.com/WueXSajHaj
— Sky News (@SkyNews) November 4, 2021
But, that wasn’t all. Almost unbelievably, Johnson’s lapdog, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, was sent on morning TV to say” “I think it’s difficult to see what the future of the commissioner is, given the fact that we’re reviewing the process and we’re overturning and trying to reform this whole process.”
He almost gave the game by using the word “overturning”, and so sought refuge in the higher nebulousness of “trying to reform” the standards processes. But why? What had Stone done?
Farcical charade shows who the government really are
The suspicion is that Paterson’s conduct was merely an excuse to remove someone who dared to anger Boris. Stone, lest we forget, was the standards commissioner who found that the prime minister breached the code of conduct by not declaring his £15,000 holiday to Mustique.
Adding fuel to the fire, Dominic Cummings – Boris’s former political strategist – recently tweeted: “Yesterday was a preemptive strike by PM on EC [electoral commission] & Stone. Tory MPs are just expendable cannon fodder.”
If Johnson’s government is venal, it is also cowardly and incompetent, like contestants on The Apprentice savaging each other in desperate attempts to dodge blame.
My statement today: pic.twitter.com/gZocV3WIwS
— Owen Paterson (@OwenPaterson) November 4, 2021
After further debasing parliament, and squandering whatever might remain of the government’s reputation, Jacob Rees-Mogg casually backpedalled and said that, well, actually, the government would work “on a cross-party basis” to review the standards processes. Soon after, Paterson resigned as an MP.
So, it was all for nothing. Boris’s ploy will have to wait. Yet, the whole farcical charade has shown, if nothing else, that we have a government that is as morally virtuous as it is competent.
Susan Urticant is a teacher from Aberdeen