The fallout from the Committee of Privileges’ report on Boris Johnson’s conduct has descended into farce. The image of Conservative politicians, many of whom having been in or currently are part of government, sniping at the sidelines calling the committee a kangaroo court while never having mentioned or actioned during their time in government any attempt at parliamentary reform or changes to the Ministerial Code is only trumped by the pathetic response of the committee to these politicians’ claims.
In undermining the work of the committee “the confidence of the public in our whole political system is undermined”[1]. As if it hasn’t been systematically undermined over years before[2]. There are no clean hands here, whether it be the committee members or Johnson’s supporters. Both, through incompetence and corruption, have helped to erode public trust in politicians as well as eroding the quality of politics generally. Johnson’s supporters are fools, putting their faith in man given a substantial mandate for changing the landscape of this country but who was incapable of doing so[3].
Yet the Committee of Privileges’ report on what it terms a “co-ordinated campaign of interference” is demonstrative of the petty authoritarian nature of British politics. It was not enough that they were unequivocal in their condemnation of Johnson’s conduct. Anyone who questions their verdict is also condemnable. That the actions of 10 politicians who backed Boris Johnson can be seriously called a co-ordinated campaign is laughable. Beyond that, the report is just one long complaint regarding the questions raised on the committee’s impartiality.
Bernard Jenkin and Harriet Harman has both been criticised since the release of the Partygate report, both for hypocritical conduct and for potentially holding biases against Johnson when making their verdict. Why shouldn’t these criticisms be aired? If the committee themselves make the point that they are the last line of defence when it comes to holding ministers and MPs accountable and making sure that truth is the basis for political conduct, then surely the same principle can be applied to that committee itself.
Jenkin has already been documented as having broken COVID rules in December 2020 when attending his wife’s birthday party[4]. He was also one of the worst abusers of expense claims found out during the 2009 expenses scandal, going so far as to have bragged on Have I Got News for You about how corrupt the expenses system was. Harman also has form in this respect, having pushed to have MPs’ expense claims exempted from Freedom of Information requests. She has also been a consistent friend to Keith Vaz, one of the most corrupt parliamentarians in modern politics. Apart from Vaz’s sordid private life, he has also been suspended from parliament for making false allegations against an ex-policewoman so as to prevent the revelation he and his wife had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. He had also helped a billionaire friend avoid extradition to France. None of this prevented Harman from rigging the selection process for the Home Affairs Select Committee chairmanship in 2007 so that Vaz was the only selected candidate. It’s good to see accountable politics has such venerable proponents.
None of this matters though because the point of the committee’s report is not to repair trust in politics but to extend and entrench politics-as-drama. From the point of view of the committee, there are good and bad forces in British politics. They are the former, and Johnson and his supporters are the latter. This is why the blatant corruption of committee members can be so easily ignored, because their corruption was within the bounds of normal politics. Johnson’s, by contrast, was not. This narrative doesn’t really make any sense but it doesn’t have to, so long as the overarching plot is maintained.
Due in part to the Wright reforms select committee nominations are now glorified popularity contests that curtail ambitious opponents and reward grandees. So the nature of select committees and the capability of their members will remain questionable, particularly when pushing forth simplistic narratives that mark out opponents as censurable.
I have no sympathy with either side in this debacle. This nonsense is a microcosm of modern politics, two sides arguing over privileges and what scraps their allies can get while circling over a chasm of real issues. This most recent Committee of Privileges report just demonstrates that criticism will not be tolerated and political action can only be filtered through the narrowest of Overton windows. Johnson was a fool, but power no longer lies with him. It lies within a coterie of machinations and systems which are accountable to no one but themselves.
[1] https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/40679/documents/198237/default/
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/trustingovernmentuk/2022
[3] https://thelibertarianideal.com/2023/06/24/opportunity-lost-johnsons-legacy/
[4] https://order-order.com/2023/06/15/privileges-committee-intends-to-publish-special-report-on-critics/
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