It was Owen Paterson who suggested, when he was a Cabinet minister, that “the badgers moved the goal posts” to explain the failure to hit the government target for a cull. So it is perhaps not surprising that his supporters should have decided that the best way to deal with his six-week suspension from the House of Commons was to move the goal posts so that the punishment no longer applies.
What is more shocking, however, is that the prime minister should back the attempt to change the rules and that government whips should tell Conservatives to vote to rush through a reform that would block the sanction against him. MPs duly voted this afternoon to overrule an independent cross-party committee which found that Paterson improperly lobbied for two companies that together were paying him more than £100,000 a year.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, was full of righteous anger at Prime Minister’s Questions as she accused the Tories of “wallowing in sleaze.” Leaving aside the rhetoric, it is extraordinary that the governing party should go to such lengths to overturn the disciplinary system set up to protect public trust in politics. Only two previous attempts have ever been made to alter MPs’ suspensions—one of them as long ago as 1947—and both of them failed.
The Commons Standards Committee described Paterson’s conduct as “an egregious case of paid advocacy” and concluded that he had “brought the House into disrepute.” Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, is among those who fear this afternoon's vote will further undermine the standing of MPs—and he is right.
It is almost 30 years since the word “sleaze” first entered the political lexicon in the 1990s, when Tory MPs were found to have accepted “cash for questions.” You have to ask: have they learned nothing since then about the extent of public disenchantment with politics and anger with politicians?
The 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal only deepened voters’ distaste for their elected representatives. And since arriving in Downing Street Boris Johnson has done nothing to rebuild faith in Westminster. Priti Patel remains in the Cabinet, despite a ruling that she broke the ministerial code on bullying, and Dominic Cummings did not even consider quitting as a Downing Street adviser after he was caught breaking lockdown rules to drive to Barnard Castle.
Of course, the vast majority of politicians are decent, hard-working men and women who are trying to do their best for their constituents—people like David Amess, whose death provoked an outpouring of grief and admiration from across the House. Most MPs are not driven by self-interest or greed, but a desire to make the world a better place. Yet politicians typically rank below bankers and journalists in surveys of most trusted professions.
In order for trust to be rebuilt and retained, the system must not only be rigorously enforced; it must be seen to be rigorously enforced. Only this week, a report by the anti-corruption watchdog Lord Evans of Weardale called for politicians with “poor ethical standards” to face tougher sanctions.
Paterson and his allies claim he has been denied “natural justice.” He blames his wife Rose’s suicide in part on the investigation against him, led by Kathyrn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards. But her tragic death does not detract from the facts of his behaviour. Boris Johnson told MPs that the issue was whether Paterson had been allowed “a fair opportunity to make fair representations” and whether the procedures in the Commons “allow for proper appeal.”
Yet even if the process is flawed (which is far from clear) it cannot be right or proper to change it in the middle of a particular case to avoid the consequences of an individual ruling. Any reform should be considered in the abstract to allow for an objective decision to be made. It should also be above party politics, rather than overseen by Tory-dominated committee. Even Bernard Jenkin, the senior Conservative MP and a friend of Paterson, admitted that “this looks terrible.”
It is easy to see this afternoon’s vote as a “beltway issue” that will not resonate among ordinary voters, who are more interested in fuel prices and food shortages. But trust is the foundation on which the whole political process is built. People may not care about individual Commons votes but they mind about politicians following the rules. There is a reason why the anti-politics mood is such a powerful force in successful campaigns—from Labour’s 1997 landslide to the Brexit referendum and the Tories’ 2019 general election victory.
Boris Johnson has ridden this wave, but it could yet overwhelm him. The prime minister thinks that the rules do not apply to him. One teacher wrote of the young Johnson in a school report: “I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.” This is, in a sense, Johnson’s greatest strength—he has achieved his extraordinary political success by breaking all the political norms, throwing Conservative grandees out of the party then winning an 80-seat parliamentary majority for the Tories by crashing through Labour’s “red wall.” In his public and his private life he is a rule breaker who usually gets away with it. That is why voters warm to him as a loveable rogue. It is, however, usually a leader’s strongest asset that becomes his defining weakness. Sooner or later, the prime minister’s conviction that he is above the rules will be his downfall. It’s just a question of when.
