of the title roles.” I’d say its strength is the stars in cameo roles, but otherwise I can’t disagree.
† The original shot was restored in the finished film.
* This is the stock comment if you want to say something nice about someone’s film when there’s really nothing nice to say.
TO CALL MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT the dregs of society is the kind of hasty judgment one makes at every new revelation of folly or corruption at Westminster, but the sober truth is that no group except criminals and illegal immigrants ranks lower in public esteem. Journalists, lawyers, and even chat-show hosts attract less odium. The reasons are plain: parliament has become increasingly untrustworthy and incompetent, and there is a natural instinct that anyone with the brazen cheek and monumental conceit to say: “Vote for me, for I am fit to govern you, decide your destiny, set your taxes, and make your laws” is patently unfit for election, and in an ideal world would be pelted in the street. People know this, and hold MPs in contempt, but thanks to the inevitable evil of the party system have no option but to vote for them or effectively disenfranchise themselves by abstention.
That is not to say that there are not worthy men and women in the Commons, but it would be rash to think they are a majority. The remainder you would, at best, hesitate to rely on for their ability, courage, and probity, and, at worst, be unwilling to trust with doing more than sweep your steps or, in an emergency, remove your refuse.
Conspicuous among the honourable exceptions, imbued by the old ideals of service to country and constituents, and (don’t laugh, there are such folk) putting party second and self a distant third, are those admirable Left-wingers with an independent streak born sometimes of wealth, but also of their personal reputation which puts them beyond deselection. Some may be more noteworthy for their integrity than for their intellect – indeed, some may be described as eccentric to say the least. You know who they are; be thankful for them, and for those others who know that to be a good MP it is first necessary to be a lady or a gentleman.*
But they are well outnumbered by the lobby fodder of all parties whose first loyalty is to themselves, their positions, and their purses, which means in effect loyalty to the party until the time seems right to defect or stab the leader in the back. There is little to choose between the sides, but one remembers with particular distaste the rat-like behaviour of Conservative members when Mrs Thatcher was brought down. For those who still retain any illusions about Parliament as a whole, study of the diaries of the late Alan Clark will prove instructive and disgusting.
But it is not to be wondered at, when one considers the muddy path that aspiring politicians must follow to reach Westminster. To win selection as candidates they must be able convincingly to dissemble, to toady, to cozen, and, when necessary, to lie outright; given these essential defects of character, and a sufficient supply of platitudinous wind to deceive the voters, all they need is luck and grovelling loyalty to the leader, obedience to the Whips, and an ability to suppress conscience, common sense, and decency as the need arises.
It was not always so. As recently as fifty years ago, Members of Parliament at least presented a more dignified and worthy appearance. They were, to a fair extent, respected and not entirely distrusted; they were thought of as sound, largely decent, dependable people, a cut above the ordinary. Tories might be a bit pompous, Labour passionate, and Liberals rather quaint, but no one doubted, really, that they were men (and very occasionally women) of bottom and common sense. They were the subject of jokes, lampoons, and caricatures, and their worthlessness was taken for granted by comedians, but it was a fairly kindly humour; if Parliament was regarded with cynicism, it was of a tolerant kind. It might be derided, but not despised, and it was expected, by and large, to do right.
How far this tolerant-cynical view was justified it is hard to say. MPs were not under the intense spotlight they endure today; their faults were not seen in close-up, and they had the sense to limit their public utterances to political meetings, and not run off at the mouth as politicians nowadays seem to feel obliged to do, God knows why. Possibly we were less critical of them than we should have been; there were rogues among them, but not that many so far as the public could see, and their conduct was generally thought to be above the national average. They were certainly not at the bottom of the league table of the despised.
All that has changed. It is no longer taken for granted that a politician will bear a level dish. There used to be occasional scandals; now one follows hard on another, with shady deals and loans and honours for the boys and brown envelopes and cash for questions and favours in return for party contributions and blatant buying of influence and feverish attempts to hide personal interests.
It is a sorry tale, made worse by the contempt which the Commons plainly feel for the electorate, as we see when a married MP, detected in infidelity, protests indignantly that it is none of his constituents’ business what he does in his private life – and in this arrogance he does not lack support among his parliamentary colleagues. What turns the stomach is not the adultery, which is usually good for a laugh, but the lofty assumption that the voters have no right to know that he is not a man to be trusted; he has broken the most solemn promise a man ever makes, but when it is asked “If his wife couldn’t trust him, who can?” there comes the inevitable whine about privacy, and the childish attempt at justification: “Everybody does it,” which is a lie. Everybody doesn’t. Without being unduly sanctimonious, one may remark that time was when unsavoury personal character, like poor performance, was a matter for resignation, but no longer. We have government from the gutter, and neither the detected transgressor nor the incompetent minister feels it incumbent on himself to do the honourable thing. They seldom jump; they have to be shoved. No wonder Parliament has fallen into disrepute.
The tragedy is that not Parliament alone, but the very matter of government, has been besmirched. God knows democracy, that much-trumpeted and venerated myth, has faults enough; the notion of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, was silly enough when Lincoln said it, but later generations of politicians have turned it into an obscene farce. It is worth defining democracy, not in its literal* sense or in the swollen meaningless terms beloved of demagogues, but as it exists in fact: the opportunity, every four or five years, to choose among a few party hacks of doubtful character and ability in whose selection the voter has had no say. That is democracy, Western style.
None of Lincoln’s conditions for government exists in fact. There is government of the people only in the sense that they are governed, but not in the sense that government comes of the people, and only a crook or a madman would say we have government by the people, when the truth is that it is in the hands of a dishonest, self-serving clique under unbreakable party control. As for government for the people, don’t make me laugh: the people’s will is flouted at every turn, on Europe, capital punishment, and the promotion of sexual perversion by government, to take only three issues. The politicians’ attitude is, bluntly, that the public are sheep who don’t know what’s good for them, and need to be led by a pack of second-rate lawyers, trade union activists, career opportunists, student agitators, and crazed feminists. That is democracy, British style.
A striking illustration
