The financial scandal engulfing British parliamentarians now threatens to bring down the socialist government of Gordon Brown. A significant number of MPs from all political parties has been exposed by the Daily Telegraph newspaper for using their parliamentary allowances for a range of expenses that ordinary Britons have to pay out of their salaries. These included expensive furnishing for second homes and even in the case of an opposition Conservative MP, the cost of cleaning out the moat around his stately home.
Even more seriously, some legislators have been caught out claiming for mortgages that had in fact been paid off. The extent of the manipulation of a system set up by MPs themselves has enraged UK voters, who are uninterested in the excuse that these general allowances came about because Parliament was reluctant to vote itself pay rises. Police are already investigating a few allegations of outright fraud. These newspaper revelations, which are far from over, have come about because the Daily Telegraph acquired some two million different files leaked from the parliamentary office that handles Mps’ expenses.
On Tuesday, the speaker, who chairs the proceedings in the House of Commons was forced to announce his retirement because of public anger at the way in which he had tried to defend MPs and even called for the police to investigate who had given the information to the public. So far a handful of legislators from both the main Labour and Conservative parties have been forced to announce they will not be standing for re-election. Premier Brown has said the future of many Labour MPs is in doubt.
A hasty and radical revision of the expenses rules came into force yesterday but this is unlikely to quell public fury. In Britain, politicians along with journalists, lawyers and estate agents are not held in high regard. In the last 20 years, cynicism about politics has been reflected by less and less electors bothering to vote. The question now is whether next month’s European and local elections will see a massive stay at home or whether voters will flock to support minority parties which have not been caught up in the scandal. It seems almost certain that the governing Labour Party, already blamed for economic ineptitude, will do badly. If Labour candidates are trounced, Gordon Brown’s leadership will be back in the firing line, from which he escaped providentially thanks to the onset of the financial crisis last year.
His performance as premier has been lackluster. An election must be held by next May but after 12 years, popular patience has run out with Labour rule. It is hard to see now how the party can avoid defeat, even though the opposition parties may not themselves seem very appealing. Brown’s record suggests he will try to hang on to the bitter end. However, with his party mired in scandal, his would-be successors maneuvering for advantage and voters outraged at the entire crew of politicians, Brown’s authority may well collapse. His extremely thin last chance of survival would then be to go to the country.
A handshake shakes a region
Excerpts from an editorial in yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor:
Make one move in the unstable Caucasus region, and a host of difficult and far-reaching issues get tripped over — ethnic tensions, Russian dominance, and competition over oil and gas.
So the world discovered when Russia’s military clashed with tiny Georgia’s last August. And so it’s discovering again under far more welcome circumstances: A long-awaited warming between Turkey and its Caucasus neighbor, Armenia. Yes, even such rapprochement can stir up this region, sandwiched between the Black and Caspian seas and bordered by Russia to the north and Turkey and Iran to the south.
Unless the Turks make resolving Nagorno-Karabakh part of normalizing ties with Armenia (and Armenia objects to this), the longer gas pipeline will end as a pipe dream — or so the Azeris hinted. They threatened to withdraw Turkey’s status as “most favored customer” and as the main Azeri export route for oil and gas. There’s Russia as an alternative, the Azeris warned. Azerbaijan has a self-interest in a diversified export energy market, but its overture to Russia is more than bluff. The Azeris and Russians recently signed a memo of understanding about gas sales. The concern is that this could go further and that Azerbaijan, fed up with delays over a gas pipeline to Europe, would make Russia its gas patron. Because supplies are not enough to support two gas pipelines, European governments are now pushing to realize their dream of a gas line that reaches them. If Russia eventually gets the gas deal, it not only locks in energy supplies, it also solidifies its leverage over the Caucasus — already enhanced by its occupation of Georgia’s two breakaway republics. Multiple fears are at work in the Caucasus: At the local level about the preservation of ethnic culture, at the national level about territorial integrity, and at the international level about regional influence and access to energy markets.
