Taking Liberties

These texts are provisional...

It is perhaps a good thing that the physical exhibition is no longer with us, given that the government and the opposition seem to have agreed to have talks about constitutional reform.  Curators hate it when their labels are wrong, so this may have caused all sorts of upset.

Live From Westminster

I think I may have been a little too dismissive or understated in my last post, as the expenses row has now mutated into a full-blown political conversation about constitutional reform, elections and even 'revolution'.  Precedents from the past have been sought - the Norway Debate, the Civil Wars ('In the name of God, go!'), and obscure cases of City sleaze from 1695 - and on this morning's Today programme one sensed the political parties also had their eye on a soon to be redrawn future.   No-one has mentioned the Self-Denying Ordinance yet, as far as I know, either from the Civil Wars or the transition between the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies in the French Revolution (1791).  You read it here first.

This said, I still think this is a matter that is consuming the political classes rather than the rest of us.  Everyone else is quietly satisfied that their views of politicians matched their assumption that The New Statesman got it about right.  But match all this with the backdrop of the financial crisis, and suddenly the notion that history was 'then' (and safely explored, say, in exhibitions at national institutions), and that things will tick along as they are, seems less a safe bet than it did a few months ago.

Expenses

One of the Chartists' "six points" called for the:

4. Payment of members, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country

No mention of trouser presses, moats, moles, or artex removal, I note. On the other hand, there's still a barrier to entry, as the modern-day 'honest tradesperson' seeking a parliamentary seat will probably have to make several attempts at selection and take a couple of runs at an election before they finally get the keys to their office in Portcullis House and their hands on the expenses forms. Doing this requires a lot of unpaid time off work, trips across the country, nights in hotels and, as a friend-of-a-friend quoted one current MP, a fortune spent at every tombola, raffle and dinner that you're expected to attend during the campaign (and, of course, the year or two before that when you've been selected for your constituency). These are not sums that most us of could meet lightly.

There may also be something to be said about the performative aspect of Parliament: part of us wants them to look succesful, important, and somehow different from us. That's why they're making up the rules, not us. When their cover is blown and expenses reveal an all-too-human side, we get annoyed, perhaps more by that than because of the amounts involved.

We had some election expenses on display, dating from the 1780s, which included the joyous fact that a mob cost one guinea to rent during the election season. Of course, these were expenses met out of the MP's own pocket, not the public purse.

1215 and all that

We may be living in the last days of the South Bank Show, but Melvyn Bragg is still going strong on Radio 4.  Today's 'In Our Time' was all about Magna Carta - that medieval ragbag of baronial strong-arming.  The show tries to answer what the following words meant and mean:

“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land”.

As regular readers will know, this is clause 39 of the Great Charter.  Nicholas Vincent, one of the participants, also kindly gave a great talk at the BL on this very subject.