I have to confess I’ve struggled to get quite as emotionally caught up in this as some people. Those of us who stand for parliament do so with an underlying notion of public service. Of course we want our party to win. And there is always personal ambition: we want to be in there, making the decisions, with our fingers on the turning of the world. But nobody would go through the five weeks of gruelling punishment, preceded by four years of selection and campaigning, preceded in turn by how ever many years of becoming involved and going through a candidate approval process, unless there was more than simply the desire for our team to win.

Nick Clegg was always honour-bound to make his decision in the nation’s best interests. Anything less would have simply ruled him unfit to be a party leader.

The only question was: what decision would be in the nation’s best interests?

I will put my cards on the table: after last year’s expenses debacle, and this year’s scandal over the Ashcroft million, electoral reform seems to me to be one of the nation’s most important and pressing concerns. The result of the General Election — no clear majority in parliament, nothing like a majority in the popular vote (Tories polled only 12% more than Lib Dems, lest we forget, but gained more than five times as many seats) — demonstrates very clearly that the public are not satisfied.

But, although pressing, electoral reform is not the most pressing concern. I do not accept the view of the scaremongerers that Britain is about to go the way of Greece. David Cameron has already had to eat his words that a hung parliament would spell economic disaster. But it is true that the economy is right at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed now, and fixed right.

A coalition with Labour was always a long-shot, and Clegg was right to honour his election pledge and talk first to the party with the most votes. But he was also right to at least attempt a deal with Labour. This was not treachery, as some of the Tory press and some of my own correspondents have suggested, but a necessary and entirely honourable step: Clegg was duty bound to explore both feasible possibilities as he decided for the United Kingdom who should be the next prime minister.

For the record, I think it would have been possible to do it. (I do not say that it would have necessarily been the best thing, but I do say that it would have been possible). Those who argued that this was undemocratic forget the very shaky ground on which they stand: Labour and the Lib Dems between them gained more than 50% of the popular vote, although, because of our misrepresentative system, this was not quite 50% of the seats in parliament. Labour certainly seemed ready to promise a much swifter, much surer route to electoral reform. And Gordon Brown nobly was willing to accept Nick Clegg’s other election promise — that, whatever happened, Brown would not continue as Prime Minister.

But it was Labour MPs themselves who made it quite clear that they had no real interest in staying in government. From the point that (then, still) government ministers went on the record in public stating this, the chances of a deal with Labour were over.

Many Lib Dem voters find the coalition with the Conservatives distasteful. I personally remained on good terms with all the candidates in the Stratford election, except for the BNP who never attended any of the debates and with whom I never spoke. But there have been instances where Tory attacks were brutal and unfounded. And we have endured the jeers and scorn of the Tory press barons for more than a generation.

It is certainly true that very few will have voted Lib Dem with the aim of putting David Cameron in government.

But Nick Clegg still had to put the nation’s interest ahead of his own. The choice between a Conservative minority government which would be almost certain to fall in recriminations within six months, in which time it would have made little real progress in tackling the economic crisis, and none at all in electoral reform, or a true Lib Dem Con coalition, was one that simply could not be made in any other way from the way it has been made.

The solution is not perfect. David Cameron could have divested himself of the lacklustre George Osborne. If having Vince Cable as chancellor was too much to swallow (though it would have pleased the nation, and the markets), Ken Clarke was waiting in the wings, the only member of Cameron’s team who had ever served in a senior role in a government. There could have been (and should have) a commitment to a referendum on true electoral reform, not merely the disproportional Alternative Vote (AV) system. If the Conservatives believe that the public has no appetite for electoral reform, then they should have agreed to a referendum on the real issue. If they were willing to accept a grudging compromise and no more, they should have offered a simple bill on AV as Labour did, and left it at that. The nation is to be put to the trouble and expense of a referendum without being allowed to vote on the real topic of discussion.

Nonetheless, the prospect of an autumn election has receded to the horizon. Cameron’s lightweight team will be strongly bolstered by 5 Lib Dem cabinet ministers, and a total of 20 Lib Dems across his ministries.

Lib Dem fortunes at the next election will almost certainly suffer, and there will equally certainly be a spate of recriminations and even member-resignations. And this is the true mark of Nick Clegg’s leadership: at personal cost, he has put the interests of the nation first.

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What are we to make of this?

The first duty of government — and of opposition — is to serve the nation. Whether or not we like Gordon Brown, the Labour Party already had one chance to vote him in, or someone else. In the event, no-one else came forward, and Brown won by default. But it was a leadership contest, and they got the leader they collectively chose. With the economy in a parlous state, parliament’s own reputation in substantial trouble, and a leadership contest of a much more serious nature at the General Election looming, the nation is in no way served by panic in its ruling party.

If Gordon Brown had been caught with his fingers in the till, or was putting forward some dramatic U-turn which required a new mandate from his party, then a leadership contest might have been the right thing to do. But a contest to (allegedly) settle doubt and get things “sorted out once and for all”, will do no such thing. John Major tried to bolster his flagging leadership two years before an election, and it did nothing to establish his credibility. In fact, it only made him look weaker.

I’m sure that the majority of Labour MPs will have the sense to ignore it — if only out of self-interest. More chaos in Downing Street will simply rob them of votes they could still have counted on.

We need to leave this storm in a tea-cup behind, and get back to the proper business of politics. The pre-election debate has started. It is too late to change the debaters.

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What kinds of Prime Minister are there? I made a little list: Leaders, Managers, Administrators, and Caretakers.

Gordon Brown is a caretaker. He came in at the dog-end of the Blair years, and was instantly faced with crisis after crisis. The poor man has never got his head above water. The things he did well (the Millennium debt campaign, for example) are all forgotten about. Nobody can really point to anything he has done especially badly. It’s just that crises gather round him and he doesn’t seem to have the power to sort them out and get on with his real agenda. In fact, more than anything else, the public’s un-love affair with Gordon is based on him not having an agenda at all.

John Major was an administrator. Aside from the personal things (you can imagine him carefully filling in all the forms, and frowning when anyone had written in the space marked ‘do not write in this space’), his approach to Britain was to carefully make sure that we were fulfilling expectations, doing our duty, moving the agenda long in safe increments. But it wasn’t his agenda, and, since he’d been voted in because he wasn’t Thatcher, it wasn’t her agenda either. Really, it was the ‘Victorian values’ agenda — harking back to a time when politicians were good, and the people were good, and Britain could be proud of its place in the world, because it was good. John Major never went to university (he did a correspondence course in banking instead). If he had done, he would probably have discovered that history is not quite as simple as he thought it was, and that nostalgia is not all it used to be.

Cameron wants to be a manager. ‘Let us look after the economy, and we’ll do it somewhat better’, is his appeal to the electorate. I’m reminded of a story I read about a new manager who arrived at a company and found three envelopes on his desk, with a note: “If things are not going well after three months, open envelope 1. If things are not going well after six months, open envelope 2. If things are not going well after nine months, open envelope 3.” After three months, things were not going well, so he opened envelope 1. Inside was a note, which said “Blame your predecessor.” After six months, he felt obliged to open envelope 2. Inside, the note said: “Predict that things will shortly get better.” He duly did so. However, as things still did not improve, he found himself opening envelope 3 after nine months. The note inside was terse: “Prepare three envelopes”.

The ever fickle public may well believe that Cameron could not possibly do it worse than Brown, and may want to give him a chance. I have to say, I think that that confidence is misguided. But Cameron has no compelling vision of the future of Britain, and absolutely no vision at all of the future of politics in Britain. He wants to keep as much of the system intact as he can in the face of the overwhelming public hatred for the political class and their expenses. He will duck and dive and say all the right things. But Cameron will not be any kind of a reforming leader, and, to give him his due, he has never promised to be. If elected (and contacts in Mori are now saying it is unlikely he will obtain a sufficient majority), he will be blaming Brown after three months and after six predicting recovery.

Tony Blair, of course, saw himself as a great leader. As did Margaret Thatcher. But, of course, both of them led us into trouble. Thatcher established greed as the one great spiritual value of the nation and tried to turn it into policy with the poll tax, charging people based not on their ability to pay, but on the simple fact of their existence. Blair led us straight into the arms of George W Bush, and thence into the Iraqi desert. Leaders will be judged by history more strictly than managers, administrators and caretakers. It’s probably fair to say of John Major that he did no real harm, and of Brown that he did no real anything.

However, this is not the time for a caretaker, or an administrator, or even a manager. The expenses scandal is not the cause of what is wrong with politics, it is merely a symptom of it. For years the role of the MP has become steadily less clear and less valuable. Prime ministers have become more presidential, cabinet has become steadily less answerable to parliament. When I was small, ministers resigned when their departments blundered. These days, they simply blame officials and sack them.

In the mean time, parliament has increasingly realised that all it actually does is make or block legislation, and play a supporting role to the government-opposition media prize fight. Unsurprisingly, we have ever more laws, and yet no greater justice. MPs talk constantly about efficiency savings that could be made, but every bill they pass makes life more complicated and requires the creation of more jobs to administer and supervise it. And, before we see that as some kind of useful job-creation, the people who really have the ability to manage such new laws would be better employed applying their talents to the great problems of state.

I do not remotely condone the misuse of tax-payers’ money (and, more importantly, the misuse of power and privilege which we the citizen voted them in for). But I understand why some MPs, arriving perhaps full of ideals only to discover that their significance in a stitched-up secret society is essentially zero, would then look around for something else to do. The devil has indeed made work for idle hands. Or, if not the devil, Mrs Thatcher, who, to support her articulation of greed as the basic principle of the economy, created a system which rewarded inventiveness and brazenness at the expense of public duty and honesty.

People are talking about a March election suddenly. Of course, Cameron is talking it up, because he knows that the sooner the election, the less chance that he or his party will have been caught saying or doing something really stupid. But the larger question goes unanswered: just what exactly are we electing? What is an MP’s job description? What are the hours? What are the duties? What constitutes a legitimate expense and what is simply misconduct. More importantly, what is the role of the House of Commons? Clearly not to scrutinise — the House of Lords does that, and, despite the archaic system, is more effective in doing it, because it has a robust group of cross-benchers and independently-minded lords political who ensure that it is not simply the whipping dog of the party in power. Hopefully not to generate yet more regulation and legislation. We have — in many parts of our life together — moved to the point where we are no longer protecting people, but actively curtailing their legitimate life aspirations.

Liberal Democrats may have been a voice crying in the wilderness for a long time, arguing that politics should be changed, that the safe-seat system (which is at the heart of the vast majority of the really serious expenses breaches) needs to be abolished and every vote should be counted, not just the few that are cast by floating voters in a vanishingly small number of swing seats, arguing that MP expenses should be made public, and for an end to Punch-and-Judy two-party politics. A voice crying in the wilderness, but the wilderness is now at our doorstep.

When leadership is needed, we would do best to those who have been pointing the way consistently throughout their careers, not those who jumped when the bandwagon suddenly became popular.

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52% of people were prepared to vote for a candidate not caught up in the scandal, even if that meant voting against the party they want to win the election.

It’s not hard to see how we got to where we are. But the question is: how do we get away?

Given that only 1 in 4 people have said they trusted MPs in general to tell the truth, and this figure has stayed fairly constant since pollsters began asking the question, we could perhaps say that it is inevitable that voters don’t trust politicians. But this is clearly not universal. 51% of Americans think Obama’s leadership is excellent or good, and 47% think his ethics are excellent or good.

Are the British naturally more cynical than Americans? Most of the world — we are given to understand — still believes British democracy to be above par on its ethics and honesty. Or do they simply believe this because they just don’t pay as much attention to it as we do?

Certainly, right now, everyone who wants to distrust politicians (that is, 3/4 of us) can find lots of evidence for it. But, as Mori points out, even before the scandal, approximately the same number of people still distrusted politicians. It is therefore clear that it is something other than our observation of what politicians do that sows our distrust.

It was said of King John that nobody trusts a man who trusts nobody.

This struck me deeply when I heard it on Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time during the run up to the Euro elections. No-one trusts a man who himself trusts no-one. The more I consider it, the more I am compelled to believe that it is the culture of sowing distrust, innuendo, constant attacks on the character of opponents, and, worse, constant mocking, that makes all politicians (including those who don’t indulge in this, because all are tarred by association) appear to be untrusting, and therefore untrustworthy.

And yet, and yet. If we were to say that politicians were not allowed to be in conflict with each other, and to point out each other’s failings, then we would have no debate, and no means of holding government to account. The duty of opposition is to oppose, and it is one of the things which holds us back from tyranny.

So, are we therefore left with a choice: either our politicians by their behaviour will forever command our distrust, or, by their silence, will appear to earn our trust while, in truth, betraying it? This is a truly Shakespearian conundrum.

The answer, surely, is that there is a middle way. We are now engaged in a national process of hand wringing about standards in public life in relation to expenses. But it would not be beyond our power as a nation to start imposing standards on the the discourse of MPs. It was two elections ago that the Advertising Standards Authority threw its hands up and ceased to police political advertising. You can now, in a very real sense, say anything you want on a political poster, and get away with it. But the imposition of a standard of debate both in and outside the chamber of the House of Commons is something which could be done, and, for that reason, should and must be done.

At the moment, the only thing which limits a politician’s ability to make any accusation they want is the risk of being found out later on.

We are expecting the new Speaker of the House of Commons to reform members’ expenses. But we should also expect and require the Speaker to reform the standard of debate.

We, the electorate, should also seek to vote, in the new parliament, for new MPs who will not stop at nothing to obtain and maintain power. In this, in the past, we have signally failed, and we should therefore, collectively, accept a large part of the responsibility for the politicians we have elected. Because, ultimately, the electorate does not necessarily get the government it wants, but it always, collectively, gets the government it deserves.

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David Cameron has been wrong-footed for once by Labour. In responding to Alan Johnson’s Lib-Dem inspired call for proportional representation, he has gone strong on ‘radical change’. Except that his changes are not radical at all.

Cameron, writing in tomorrow’s Guardian, and, if he hasn’t thought better of it by then, giving a speech in Milton Keynes, suggests fixed-term parliaments (yawn, everyone has agreed that ought to happen for years), less whipping of MP votes (Lib-Dems already do this, and it’s not a reform of parliament, it’s a reform of his own dynastic and hierarchical party), allowing backbench MPs to choose committee chairs (backbench MPs got to pick the Speaker — and see where that got us), limiting the number of decisions the prime minister can make without going to parliament (Tony Blair — yeah, him — already introduced that one), allowing local councils to reverse government decisions (radical, but completely loopy), and publishing the expenses of civil servants who get more than £150,000 salaries (not really a reform of parliament).

But he bitterly opposes a reform of the electoral system saying, with an enormous piece of double-think that would have done credit to George Orwell’s 1984 characters, “Proportional representation takes power away from the man and woman in the street and hands it to the political elites.” Say what?

It’s quite bonkers, and I suspect that he knows it is. He goes on: “Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers would choose a government on the basis of secret backroom deals. How is that going to deliver the transparency and trust we need?”

But, David, voters don’t choose the government at all on the current system. And you know they don’t.

Cameron is hoping on the current system that 40% of the vote will give him an absolute majority in parliament. How can that be voters choosing the government, if 60% of them wanted someone else, but he gets the power to over rule everyone else? Sometimes, 35% of the vote is enough to give an absolute majority, on our current system. How can that possibly be allowing the voters to choose the government? In fact, it’s mathematically possible (and, heaven knows, after the Florida run off which got George W Bush elected, mathematically possible is something which needs to be taken seriously) — mathematically possible that a party which gets less votes than either of two rivals gains an absolute majority in Westminster.

What’s worse is that the first past the post system creates safe seats, at least for Labour and the Tories. If you look around the electoral canvas at who the worst culprits are for misuse of expenses, you see fairly quickly that they are concentrated in… yes, that’s right — the safe seats. A candidate in a safe seat need make no particularly strong appeal to the electorate. He (90% of the time it is a he, not a she) does not need (except now, since we are all alert) to publish expenses, account for the number of hours he spent in Westminster or in the constituency, or defend his apparent complete uninterest in discussing constituency related matters in the House. For example, at the last election, Andrew Mackay, now standing down in disgrace, polled 49.7% of the vote, which was 23% above his nearest rival. Derek Conway, famous for paying his son from the public purse even though his son did nothing, polled 49.8%, 22% above his nearest rival. Douglas Hogg, of moat fame, polled 50.3%. Sir Peter Viggers, known for his duck island, polled 44.8%. Nicholas Winterton polled 49.6%, while his wife Anne Winterton polled 45.4%.

I am not remotely suggesting that a safe seat made these MPs behave in the way they did, any more than the expenses system made them do what they did. But I am stating absolutely categorically that safe seats make MPs unresponsive to the electorate.

And it’s the safe seat system which David Cameron (polled 49.3%, lest we forget) is defending when he puts forward a series of relatively inconsequential changes to avoid the big change which he fears — proportional representation, otherwise known as a fair voting system. In a fair voting system, where the votes of the people really decide who is in and who is out, no seats are safe, and no MP’s career is ever in the bag — no matter how well he has sweet talked the local Conservative association.

So far in this crisis, David Cameron has played a master game, giving the impression of strong leadership despite the fact that it is Tory MPs who have notched up the most ridiculous claims, and had the least grace in accepting the public’s anger. Poor bumbling Brown has never got close to him. But, now he is beginning to reveal what he really thinks, and it is incumbent upon us as the voters to read carefully what he is proposing:

Not one of the changes he is putting forward would have the slightest effect on making MPs more honest or less likely to misuse the public’s money, and not one would make them more responsive to the voters. Cameron’s eye is on government. It’s what he really wants. But, in this crisis, it is for once not the government, but the ordinary MPs who have let us down. Cameron’s solution — reduce the power of government, increase the power of MPs — is curiously disconnected from the real problem.

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Lib-Dems have been complaining about the electoral system ever since they were the Lib-Dems. In fact, the Social Democrats — one of the predecessor parties, for those with short memories — really had it as their top policy. If you want to get really bored in a pub, identify a Lib-Dem (this time of year, easy to spot because they will be carrying lots of leaflets or a badge) and ask them to explain the difference between STV, AV, AV plus and the D’Hondt system. You can silently slip away if there are other Lib-Dems in the pub, because they will discuss it together for hours.

If you’ve heard less from us on the subject recently, it’s not that we don’t care about it any more, it’s that, with Gordon Brown in Downing Street, any prospect of electoral reform seemed further than ever. Back in the day, Tony Blair (you remember him, right?) commissioned Roy Jenkins, one of the founders of the Social Democrats (this is getting like Rock Family Trees, but without the loud music) to review the electoral system and come up with a recommendation for a truly fair, truly democratic system which could work in Britain. Jenkins took his road show round the country (I remember giving evidence at it), and duly made a recommendation which was a mixture of pragmatism and true reform. Word on the street, however (that’s Downing Street, not Ramsay Street), was that Gordon Brown bitterly opposed it, and Blair had to back down. Poor Blair, between Bush and Brown he really didn’t have much to call his own. So everything was shelved, and we went on with the same grossly unfair system which means that your vote only really counts if you live in a small number of swing seats, and are a floating voter. If you always vote for one party, or if you live in a ‘safe’ seat, then your vote doesn’t really do much.

The problem with electoral reform, of course, is that the people who have to vote it in — MPs — are the ones who got in under the present system, and have the most to lose if it changes. A bit like allowing MPs to vote on their own expenses, now I come to think about it.

So, with parliament in disarray, and the public out for blood, Alan Johnson, already tipped as a leadership contender, steps up and says we ought to change the whole system.

He’s right, of course, but his timing is absolutely rubbish! After twelve years of doing nothing, and just a year out from the last possible date for a General Election, how does he intend to get the system changed in time for anything other than electoral chaos next year? If he actually has a plan, let’s hear it. In principle, of course, with up to 350 MPs set to lose their seats as a result of the growing unpopularity not only of the government, but of the entire political class, this is a golden opportunity to change things. If we have an election on the old system, the 350 or so new MPs will suddenly have a vested interest in keeping the system going that elected them. And, of course, unless something very, very funny happens, Alan Johnson will not be running the show in 12 months and 2 weeks time.

So, what’s he about? One thing, perhaps two. Certainly, this is a gauntlet in the face to Gordon Brown, who, as yet, doesn’t quite seem to have woken up to the chaos around him. Johnson might as well have announced his intention to challenge Brown for the leadership. The second? Could Johnson be proffering an olive branch to the Lib-Dems? Could he be trying now to stitch up a coalition which will keep the Tories out? If so, he needs to make better guarantees than the ones that Tony Blair used to try to gain Paddy Ashdown’s support in the event of a hung parliament. Blair made (it appears in private) all kinds of promises to Ashdown. But, when he romped home to victory, these were watered down to a Jenkins commission which was moth-balled the moment it was finished.

(New) Labour may not learn, but Liberal Democrats have. We won’t be so trusting this time around… to paraphrase a higher authority, let Johnson first produce fruits in keeping with a commitment to fair democracy.

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But — once the now almost inevitable leadership challenge has prematurely ended his premiership — his legacy will have been the perfect storm of crisis in Westminster, economic meltdown, and environmental collapse.

Brown waited ten years for the best job in politics, and within two years almost every shred of authority has fallen from him.

We are, of course, nowhere near the position of Germany in the 1930s. Confidence in our democracy has not collapsed to that extent, and our economy — though in poor shape — is not remotely like that of the Weimar republic.

Nonetheless — even accepting that our position, though appalling, is not desperate as theirs was — we must learn something. The extremist parties are already rushing to cash in on the combination of economics and crisis of trust. UKIP have lost an MEP to the criminal justice system as a result of benefit fraud, and yet they are attempting to make capital out of the ‘dishonesty’ of the MPs of the mainstream parties. Other groups, more extreme, widely exposed in the media for what they really are, are flooding the streets of susceptible areas with their promises to clean up politics.

Politics must be cleaned up, but the extremist parties are not the ones to do it. Great Britain must hold its nerve through this crisis. Electing someone just because they are ‘different’ is no sound basis for the future.

Gordon Brown’s tragedy is a personal one. He longed to serve his country, but the times were not right. We must not allow his to become our national tragedy. We are in danger of electing the most right wing set of MEPs in our European history, and in danger of doing the same thing at Westminster when the General Election comes.

Reactionary, right wing politics is no more likely to lead to upright, honest politicians than any other random stab in the dark. It is terribly hard, but Britain must rally round the core of centre politicians who have not been tarnished (except by rhetoric) in this scandal.

We owe it to ourselves.

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Others who do choose to re-stand may discover that their popularity has faded faster than they could possibly have imagined.

In which case, we will probably see the biggest turnover of MPs in living memory.

But, in that case, if we are not satisfied with the current crop of MPs, what should we actually be looking for? It’s easy to trot out ‘integrity, leadership, vision’, but are these really the qualities that define a good member of parliament? And, if so, in what measure? Half of Britain could probably make some claim to these qualities. Most of the MPs who are now under the most intense scrutiny have probably made claims of this kind, and probably most of them still believe that they are described by them.

And, actually, although MPs talk about leadership, most back-benchers are followers rather than leaders. MPs talk about integrity, but often its just a code-word for stubbornly pursuing their own idea as a matter of ‘principle’, even when it is proven to be wrong. And the word vision can be used to mean anything you want.

So let me offer, as a starter, another list, as to what we should really look for in a constituency MP. To make it memorable, I’ve organised it according to the vowels, A,E, I, O, U, as follows:

Available
Effective
Inspiring
One of us
Upright

Available, because the most important function of the constituency MP is that he or she serves the constituency. Once it was enough to hold constituency surgeries once a week. Today’s constituency MP needs to be available by post, by email, in person, through Facebook (maybe), even by Twitter. The moment that a constituency MP puts his political career ahead of his constituents needs is the moment they should elect someone else. The first question I would be asking a prospective MP, therefore, is, will you be available when I need you? And, to a sitting MP, are you available right now?

Effective, because, ultimately, we elect MPs to do something. Far too many MPs — and this is, really, more serious than the expenses — would struggle to point to their achievements over the last five years. Whether they are paid £67,000 salary, or £300,000 with expenses and staff counted in, or just £6,000, an MP who is ineffective is a waste of money. Effectiveness comes in different forms, of course, but the second question I would ask a candidate is: how have you demonstrated effectiveness in your non-political life so far? To a sitting MP, I would ask straight out: what have you done since you were elected that actually counts for anything?

Inspiring, because, for good or ill, MPs are the leaders of Britain, and if they cannot inspire us, nobody will. It’s all very well for the Archbishop of Canterbury to speak up, but an awful lot of people are not part of his church, and therefore do not feel he represents them. Likewise, we like to hear from celebs, athletes and broadcasters, but none of those people have a connection to us. To be inspiring, someone must be on fire about something. So, my next question to a candidate would be, how will you inspire us? To a sitting MP it is more direct: who have you inspired, and when?

I was going to put ‘ordinary’ rather than ‘one of us’, but, in fact, we really need our MPs to be extraordinary. But to be true representatives in a democracy, they must be men and women of the people. True, an MP’s life is different from the run of the mill. But an MP must understand and be a part of the society that elects her or him. So I would ask a candidate: how are you like me? How are you like the people on my street? And I would ask a sitting MP: how have you stayed ‘one of us’ through your parliamentary career. I think this may be a very hard question to answer for many of the moat-cleaners and tennis-court repairers.

Finally, upright. We expect not merely adherence to the same codes and laws as the rest of us, but that an MP adheres to the very highest ideals. Why should we elect someone who is only averagely honest, averagely compassionate, averagely self-controlled? Like Caesar’s wife, an MP should be above reproach — not, as some MPs would have it, because reproach should be stifled, but because their lifestyles and daily interactions demonstrate complete integrity of word and action.

These, to me, are the qualities we should look for in our MPs. We require further qualities for those in government. But this is a start.

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Oh, and, by the way, just to muddy the waters, all military personnel are being awarded the recommended 2.8% rise.

So, what’s going on here?
(By the way, if you are reading this and wondering if I am being self-serving, I am not in the category of senior civil servants, top NHS managers or judges covered by this new announcement).

This is a clear case of failure to understand what leadership is about. We can debate endlessly whether top civil servants are worth the money they are paid. It would benefit us to look at the way the gap between the richest and the poorest has grown over the last years. But this is not what Gordon Brown is talking about.

He says that senior staff must show leadership. But he says that to justify the fact that he has determined that they will not be paid the money they were promised by the Senior Salaries Review Body. Again, we could argue about whether the SSRB got it right. We could also argue that Gordon Brown has the right to impose this reduction, and that it will not be harmful, because of the way inflation is slowing (except, of course, that the latest figures show that it isn’t slowing). And we can argue that in a time of national crisis, we must all show solidarity, and the highly paid must face the same regime that the lesser paid are facing — many of whom are now being asked to take pay cuts.

But he does not advance any of these arguments. Instead, he says leadership. But leadership is about leaders making decisions. The people Gordon Brown is referring to in this speech may well be leaders. But, in the matter of setting their own salaries, they are not leaders, they are followers.

Telling someone to do what they are told, because this shows ‘leadership’ is not merely ironic, it is ridiculous.

If Brown had come out and said ‘sorry lads, but with the economy in chaos, I can’t give you what I promised you’, he would at least have the virtue of being honest. If he had gone to this group and said ‘I want you all to think how we lead this country together, and I want you to decide with me on what we should all be paid — and I’ll take the same thing you take’, then he would at least have engaged in a form of co-operative, collective decision making.

And then there’s the curious case of the military personnel. I am not remotely suggesting that military personnel do not deserve their pay increase. But why are they singled out? If the reason is that military personnel have somehow fallen behind the others, then Brown should say so. I regretfully write that the answer seems much more likely to be that the Daily Mail and the Sun would lead an outcry if money were taken from soldiers, sailors and airmen. Quite possibly they would be right to do so. But it means that Brown has calculated that he can afford to penalise one group, but won’t get away with penalising another group.

There is another word for this. It is not leadership, but bullying. It is not unusual for the bully to consider his bullying to be leadership.

And, finally, MPs. It is certainly true that there is an irony that MP salaries are substantially lower than judges, top civil servants and other public sector managers, and vastly lower than those paid in industry. But, hard on the heels of the ongoing scandal of MP expenses, Gordon Brown’s choice of today to announce a virtual pay freeze for public servants, one day after a pay increase has been announced for MPs, who, after all, are supposed to be the real leaders of Britain — this has gone from the ironic to the purely sarcastic.

Mr Brown, whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, the public do not understand your peculiar combination of thrift and spendthrift. They do not understand how MPs are paid. Many of them are reaching the point where they don’t think MPs should be paid at all. The way this country organises its funding and finances no longer seems clever, but too clever by half.

Mr Brown, will you give the nation a clear steer on what we should earn and what we should expect in the economic crisis? Will you, for once, tell us honestly where we are headed?

That would be true leadership.

If not, step aside, and let someone such as Vince Cable, who does understand the economy, and is prepared to discuss it openly, compassionately, and dispassionately, take the reins.

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It’s one of the days of the week which ends in ‘day’, so, sure as sure, David Cameron is sniping at Gordon Brown again. This time it’s for dithering over the Olympics. Of course, when Mr Cameron himself was dithering over expelling Derek Conway MP for paying his son public money, it wasn’t dithering, it was ‘leadership’. The fact is, we all know that Gordon Brown is not the decisive figure that Tony Blair was. Brown has been ‘Mr Prudence’ for as long as we’ve been aware of him. After ten years of Tony, many people were glad to have something a bit different.

The real issue is that David Cameron does not seem to have anything in his arsenal except for sniping. Well, perhaps that’s a little harsh. After all, he can also mock, jeer, deride, damn with faint praise, and hold up for ridicule. But that’s it. No wonder the public are losing confidence in their MPs: if they behave like schoolboys, people will trust them like schoolboys.

Am I perhaps doing the same thing, mocking poor Mr Cameron?

Perhaps.

But I do have a serious point to make. When someone is elected to parliament, they are being paid by the taxpayer to serve the public. As such, they should respect other public servants, and work constructively to create a better Britain. There are times when, for the sake of a better Britain, opposition MPs must oppose with vehemence and with passion. They must hold the government to account, questioning motives where they appear to be in doubt, questioning the wisdom of courses of action, and proposing alternatives. There are also times when the opposition should support the government of the day as it discharges its public duty. And, of course, opposition parties have a right to put forward their own policies and views, so that the public can know what they would be getting if one of those parties were in power.

It seems to me that this is what David Cameron is entirely failing to do. Every action by the government is held up to ridicule. Very seldom is a coherent argument put forward for why the government’s course of action is wrong, and the course of action which Mr Cameron proposes is right. Often, Mr Cameron has no course of action to propose.

By the law of averages, not everything that Mr Brown does can be ridiculous. Nonetheless, it appears that Mr Cameron thinks it is. This shows poor judgement, and a lack of proper respect for another public servant.

The most accident-prone and ridiculous prime-minister for many years was, of course, the last Tory prime minister, John Major. In retrospect, of course, the actual impact of John Major’s policies seems to have been no worse than his predecessor. Let us not forget that it was John Major who began the process that led to the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, even though Tony Blair completed it. But he was prone to gaffes, one of which was when he accused the Labour party of not being a proper opposition at all, more like ‘a government in waiting’.

David Cameron’s party have shown little effectiveness as an opposition, but neither do they show any sign of being ‘a government in waiting’. It would be entirely too self-serving of me at this point to suggest that there are parliamentarians and there is a party which has consistently attempted to hold the government to account, and questioned the substance rather than the style, while putting forward carefully formulated alternative paths. And it would be unfair to claim that that party never indulged in a little banter, and perhaps even some mockery. But herein lies the difference: it is a lot of hard questions, and a little mockery, not a lot of mockery, and merely a few hard questions.

Voters, take note: you will get the government you deserve.

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