Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- An interesting electoral development from The Local. Of course, it's not unusual in Spain for folk in prison to be elected to government positions. Even drug dealers in the case of Galicia.
- The Times polled 50,000 'travellers' (not gypsies in this case) and then came up with this - to me bizarre - list of The Best Country to Visit candidates. Neither Spain nor the UK made the list, and here are the Top Ten. I've visited 5 of them but have no wish to see the others.
2. South Africa
3. Maldives
4. Japan
5. Botswana
6. Burma
7. Tanzania
8. Australia
9. Namibia
10. Kenya
Others in the 50 were:-
- Italy 13
- Greece 21
- USA 22
- Israel 38
- Portugal 42
- And The Best City - for the 6th year in succession - was Cape Town. Beats me. Travellers must stay away from some bits of it.
- Talking about travelling . . . In his book, Slow Travels in Unsung Spain, Brett Heatherington observes it's not uncommon, in Spain, to see men being 'nagged and browbeaten' in public by their hen-pecking partners. I'd thought only 'feisty' Galician women were notorious for this but it seems not. Anyway, BH suggest that there might be a connection between this and the level of (retaliatory) 'gender violence' that the Spanish media is rather obsessed with, even though the stats aren't any worse than those of the UK, for example. Not that BH condones this in any way, of course.
- It reminds me that, years ago, I set up an organisation for men called VOGA - Victims of Gallegas Association. There were several members, mostly expat males whose marriages to local women hadn't quite turned out as they'd expected . . .We never did expand to the other 16 regions . . .
- I said yesterday I was surprised to see that athletics associations were unafraid to use the word 'elite'. This is because the very concept of elitism is so deprecated and shunned these days. But there are consequences for this, of course. As one Times writer puts it this morning: The pledge to rid parliament of elites has filled it with mediocre MPs rather than the heavyweight thinkers of old. . . . The anti-elitism and politician-loathing spawned by the expenses scandal backfired badly on us all, because it has repelled exceptional people who might have been MPs. It has left us with a thin parliamentary talent pool, several ministers who would not have made it into the government just 10 years ago, and not enough choice when it comes to who leads our nation next.
- Hence the Brexit mess. See the full article below. . . .
- Odd Old Word: Fangast. A Norfolk term for a 'marriageable maid'. From the German Fangen, 'To catch'??
- Number of 'pilgrims' who've sought my Guide to Pontevedra? Just three fewer than the 3 readers who've done so. Things can only get better . . .
- Here's a couple of fotos of an odd but pretty building I passed in a local camino the other day. Tall and in pretty granite but only one-room deep. Doubt there's much of a back garden.
THE ARTICLE
We’re still paying the price for the expenses scandal: Clare Foges
The pledge to rid parliament of elites has filled it with mediocre MPs rather than the heavyweight thinkers of old
A glittery toilet seat, a jar of Branston Pickle, 17 silk cushions, a single paper clip and, of course, that ornamental duck house; just some of the expensed items which brought the mother of all parliaments to her knees a decade ago. Remember those more carefree times, when all we had to tut about was the MP for Fiddleshire claiming £1.20 for a packet of custard creams?
As David Cameron’s speechwriter at the time I saw this scandal as a gift; a crisis to be turned into rhetorical opportunity. Yes, numerous Tories were implicated (it wasn’t a Labour MP who had their moat cleaned courtesy of the taxpayer), but here was a chance for Cameron to champion a noble cause: cleaning up Westminster. The promises of reform were grand. In speech after speech we said the Conservatives would “fix our broken politics”, as though the political system were a faulty washer-dryer in need of some detailed spanner work. Ten years on, can we say politics was “fixed”? Alas, I believe a couple of serious mistakes were made in the aftermath of the scandal for which we are still paying dearly.
The first was the level of self-flagellation indulged in by the political class, out of all proportion to the “offences” committed and enduringly detrimental to the reputation of politicians. Sure, there were a few who were fired or even imprisoned for genuine fiddling — rightly so. But beneath this were many who were simply acting with the herd, without thinking, within a system that never questioned them. The phrase “there but for the grace of God go I” might have been invented for the scandal. If you or I had been working in parliament we might well have fallen foul; what seemed outrageous and splashed all over the papers became scandalous only in hindsight.
Yet listening to the mea culpas coming out of Westminster, you might have supposed that the House of Commons had been exposed as a den of paedophiles, Ponzi salesmen and granny-muggers. “What we are seeing now is the unravelling of a system that thrived in the shadows,” thundered Nick Clegg. Wanting to paint themselves as the embodiment of the new, reforming politics, it suited Cameron and Clegg to paint the scandal as the epitome of the old, rotten politics.
All this showy breast-beating was meant to draw a line under the scandal and win back public confidence — but it failed spectacularly. So pungent was the ordure heaped on parliament that the stink still hangs around its members. No matter how humble an MP, how modest their expenses, how hard they work, the in-it-for-themselves narrative endures. It was this that contributed seven years later to the Leave vote, the slap in the establishment’s face that we suffer the consequences of today.
The second time-bomb laid in 2009 was the widely spouted notion that this scandal happened because parliament was stuffed with “elites” — pampered politicians whose temerity in ordering bath plugs on expenses was rooted in the fact that they lived on easy street. From this emerged the wisdom that what we needed in parliament was more “real” people with “real” experience, who had “real” jobs. Postman, nurse, charity campaigner: real jobs. Banker, lawyer, political adviser: not real jobs. Down with those who worked in thickly carpeted City offices, who had made large amounts of money. Up with the real workers!
Anti-elitism was sold as the solution to the rot. Cameron promised to “transform politics . . . by taking power from the party elites and the old-boy networks and giving it to the people”. He went about this by throwing the Conservative candidates’ list wide open, to bring in “new blood”. And so, at the 2010 election, a load of experience was lost from the Commons and in came hundreds of new MPs, many swept through the selection process with little scrutiny because they were deemed real people. At the 2015 and 2017 elections the same attitudes persisted.
The result? Though there are many brilliant MPs in the Commons, a significant proportion are, well, a little mediocre. Not unintelligent — just not of the calibre we might expect. Forty years ago, the corridors of Westminster were thick with heavyweights: Margaret Thatcher, Shirley Williams, Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, Peter Shore, David Owen, Douglas Hurd, Jim Prior, Roy Jenkins, Geoffrey Howe, Denis Healey, Michael Heseltine. Today the parliamentary talent pool is far less vibrant. Sure, those MPs I describe as mediocre can parrot the party line, stand at PMQs and ask the prime minister to “join me in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Fiddleshire festival”, but they are not the authoritative, original thinkers we should expect. Do they have broader views on the scope of the state, on Britain’s place in the world, on the challenges that face us from automation to our ageing population? This should concern us all, for from 650 MPs are drawn the ministers and leaders who shape our future.
Yes, parliament should be open to people from all walks of life, but it shouldn’t suck them in regardless of talent. The deciding factor for candidates must be raw ability, not “real” life experience. Alan Johnson was a good politician because of his clear thinking and easy charm — not because he was once a postman. Rory Stewart is a good politician because of his intelligence and eloquence — the fact he went to Eton should be irrelevant.
The anti-elitism and politician-loathing spawned by the expenses scandal backfired badly on us all, because it has repelled exceptional people who might have been MPs. It has left us with a thin parliamentary talent pool, several ministers who would not have made it into the government just ten years ago, and not enough choice when it comes to who leads our nation next. The reputation of politics won’t be restored if we continue to put “ordinary” people into roles which should be reserved for the extraordinary. We must aim higher. When it comes to the calibre of candidates selected, the approach must be more elitist, not less.
To recruit the best, things must change. Parties should end the obsession with local candidates, as though only those with decades on the district council were qualified. They must stop being so preoccupied with candidates’ gender, race and sexuality, as though any of these things made a difference to an MP’s ability. And while it might make some furious, the truth is we will only attract better candidates for parliament if the salary is more in line with other senior roles in the public sector.
Ten years on from expenses, it’s clear there is no easy way to fix politics and our discontent with it, but focusing on attracting more exceptional MPs would be a good start.
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