Owen Paterson resigns but Johnson’s Government is still mired in Old Corruption
There was rightly a furore after Tory MPs (for the most part) voted not to carry through the suspension of Tory MP Owen Paterson (Paterson himself voted against his suspension) for dealings which Keir Starmer has rightly labelled ‘corruption,
MPs have standards of behaviour and an independent committee found that Patterson had broken them. Johnson’s response was to back the committee but to have a look and see if rules can be changed to allow corrupt dealings.
On Thursday after anger at this attempt to avoid democratic scrutiny and accountability Owen Paterson has resigned as an MP.
The whole episode has an echo in British history perhaps particularly in the views of William Cobbett
EP Thompson encapsulated the Cobbettian worldview in the Making of the English Working Class. Describing Cobbett’s intervention in the 1806 election for the Westminster seat in the unreformed Parliament, he noted how Cobbett summed up the opponents of the radical candidate:
relations of placemen and pensioners’, ‘tax-gatherers, magistrates, policemen and dependent clergy’, ‘play-actors, scene-shifters, candle-snuffers, and persons following.. immoral callings’.
In his Rural Rides, Cobbett criticised ‘pensions, sinecures, tithes and the other ‘glorious institutions’ of this ‘mighty empire’. He referred to this collectively as The Thing.
That world eventually began to change as Parliamentary Democracy started itself to be renewed with the 1832 Reform Act. It might be noted however that the passage of the Act was a fine call between reform and a plebeian revolution.
Its good for Parliamentary democracy that Paterson eventually resigned but the wider point is that Johnson’s Government is deeply mired in the practices of Cobbettian Old Corruption. Sinecures and favours for mates are rampant, democratic practice is not.
The 1832 Reform Act averted a revolution in Britain. If action isn’t taken on Old Corruption 2021 there could be real trouble ahead
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