against the hate show

Joan Smith writes in defence of MPs - a brave thing to do right now. It's not just a defence, it's an attack on the hysterical sanctimony - and indiscriminate spite - of her fellow citizens (including a sort of inverted echo of Michelle Obama):

The British public – not all of them, but the smug guardians of morality who are enjoying this crisis so much – say they are disgusted by the behaviour of our elected representatives. Let me say that it works both ways: for the first time in my life, I am sick of my country. I am sick of the daily undermining of democracy, and sick of the sadistic pleasure people take in humiliating decent public servants.

I agree with her. It's all a bit Oceanic.

Comments

[dp]

Joan Smith?
Do you mean Joan Rivers?
In either case it sounds like she's an apologist for the status quo.

As has been said elsewhere, 'sunlight is the best disinfectant'. We need more of it, more corrosion of what has been called 'democracy' (though it's increasingly removed from Athenian precedent), more heat on each of the participants regardless of whether they've violated the spirit of the ACA, or simply ignored it to get on with business-as-usual.

It's easy to see that the fortnight's events have prompted hungry-for-approval David Cameron to start making appropriate noises and gestures. But neither he nor anyone else have shown they understand the depth and breadth of change that's wanted. So the scouring process should continue. Maybe after several months of this they'll get a clearer sense of what's needed.

So please don't belittle the process. Unless you're allied with MPs Dorries and Steen.

[Marbury]

This sort of thing is what creeps me out, dp. Apparently one must be either a full-blooded MP hater OR an "apologist for the status quo". There's no middle ground. With us or against us.

[Robbie]

Big up Marbury and Joan Smith. Good to have scrutiny. Some of the expenses are ridiculous. Second-house-swapping is venal, and so on. Let's stop the ones who are being crooked, which is very few. Let's change some rules so that people don't get encouraged to supplement their income because everyone does it and that's the system (how much free money do you not pick up off the ground?). But from the papers, it's pretty hard to work out that Britain has one of least corrupt polities in the world and that's worth celebrating.

[elizabeth]

I find Joan Smith's hypocrisy somewhat galling. It's OK for her to "monster" members of the Royal Family in her Guardian columns, and to target them "of a degree of vitrioli disproportionate to any offence they are deemed to have caused", but how dare others humiliate decent people like her MP husband and his ilk. To get some sense of Ms Smith's hypocrisy, here she is on Princes William and Harry: "the character and behaviour of Princes William and Harry would render them almost comically unsuitable candidates for the role of head of state. They are disqualified by their snobbery, their sense of entitlement, and their spendthrift attitude to public money – not to mention the fact that they're not very bright". Here's another Joan Smith anti-Royal Family diatribe: "All the bronze statues in the world cannot conceal the fact that the nation's favourite granny was an unashamed bigot". As the saying goes, "people who live in chateaux, shouldn't throw tomateaux". I wish Ms Smith would practise what she preaches!

[dp]

Ian, I can sympathise somewhat with your impression that there's a note of either/or in the public discourse, but I think Smith is more guilty than most of making that false dichotomy.

I *do* see gradations of comprehension and support for reform. For example, it's pretty clear that Cameron gets it, even though he also fails to get it as much as I think he ought to. So he's somewhere along the spectrum of comprehension, rather than wholly in one camp or another.

The spectrum itself changes over time. First it was Jacqui Smith, then Michael Martin, then Steen anchoring down one extreme. So the range of comprehension changes as well. I don't know who's at the other end. But what I am quite clear about is that the highest priority should be a focus on what to reform, rather than how painful the exposés are.

The discussion of what to reform is itself a tricky one. It comes with any number of potential digressions, multiple questions about what to prioritise, how far to go, where to draw the lines. It is subject to obfuscation - just look at Cameron's attempts to steer away from some topics - which means that comments like Smith's are not just off-topic, but out of line. She, and others like her, should show more discipline in the face of what could be the biggest changes to British democracy in centuries. If she can't see that, I can only say she should step aside.