On the crisis of parliamentarianism in the United Kingdom

Much is being written these days on the crisis of parliamentarianism in the UK, caused by the exposure of practices apparently shared by parliamentarians across all political parties and factions of claiming unjustified allowances and expenses that had either not arisen to them (for example, for a non-existent second home in their constituency or in London) or that were not linked to their political mandate (porn films, garden manure, dog food, etc.). Some resignations from the parliamentary benches and government have already been tendered and more are expected to follow.

There is growing concern that the unfolding of events may lead to anti-democratic sentiment and action amongst the populace (such as gains for the neo-fascist British National Party in the upcoming elections to the European Parliament) and it would indeed be easy for an avowed anti-democrat to take this as an occasion to slap and slander parliamentary democracy, just as the mainstream media, led on by the newspaper Daily Telegraph, "glory" in doing.

The usual mode of anti-democratic thought and criticism of democracy would have been to take the news from Britain as a proof of the inherent weakness of every democratic system of governance. Let's be real, though, and agree that this just as easily could have happened in any corrupt authoritarian country. The real lesson to be learned here is that democracies are no better than authoritarian governments. They can claim no moral advantage or high ground – or they will do so at their own peril.

As I wrote in my paper "Fighting Capitalism and Democracy", the notion that democracy is intrinsically linked to money, and democratic power is linked to material wealth, is as old as democracy itself. In the very first democracies, in ancient Greece, as James Bryce stated,
'[t]he power of money and the greed for money appears from the prevalence of bribery and the frequent embezzlement of the public funds' (Modern Democracies: I/206). The same has held true for every democracy since.

The new mode of anti-democratic thought that I am propagating takes the recent events not as sufficient reason to doubt democracy. It rather takes them as one more reason to doubt capitalism and the fixation on money that characterizes our present time and order – and to doubt democracy because of its inherent linkage to capitalism.

Just a few years back similar "scandals" erupted in Germany and at the European Union as well as in South Africa ("Travelgate"). In all these countries, parliamentarianism survived – as it will undoubtedly, for the time being, in the UK.

The difference between now and then, other countries and the UK is however significant. What British members of parliament now experience and endure is a sort of personal and professional destruction – that will be satisfied only with complete annihilation of the man or woman targeted. Other people, less in the public spotlight, have been enduring such treatment at the hands of the UK media for a long time. Myself, I have been subjected to it by an anonymous cyberstalker and compliant media for over a year now.

It's the naming and shaming that the media laws in most other countries prohibit – people, parliamentarians and others, being called criminals and frauds by journalists and not given the chance to set the record straight and defend themselves against allegations that are either false, unproven, or rest on the worst possible interpretation of shaky evidence and questionable facts. There is no presumption of innocence here and the sentence is not to be spoken by a court of law or a body of parliamentary control, but by public opinion. The sentence is the destruction of people's reputations and existence at the hands of unaccountable forces, with no right to appeal.

That is the way the media work in the UK. As the Guardian newspaper reports: "The MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, claimed the Telegraph's expenses campaign was proving so invasive that some MPs were on suicide watch. 'The atmosphere in Westminster is unbearable,' she wrote on her blog. 'People are constantly checking to see if others are OK. Everyone fears a suicide. If someone isn't seen, offices are called and checked.'"

In another country with similar penchant for personal destruction, South Korea, former president Roh Moo-hyun was driven to suicide only last week by corruption charges he strongly denied. Again in the Guardian, a citizen of South Korea comments: "I've never been so ashamed of being a citizen of this country, a country that kills its own president [...]. It feels like we've lost all respect in pushing each other to extremes."

The partner of a UK member of parliament, in the same newspaper, meant likewise: "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. Even so, I will go on urging my friend not to give up her seat. She is a brilliant constituency MP, and I don't believe anyone should give in to bullies."

As if to prove the fact that the victims of such mob rule and media man hunt deserve no right to defend themselves, or point to the media's agenda and consequences of their actions, lawyers acting for the Daily Telegraph swiftly got a court order against Nadine Dorries that forced her to shut down her blog:

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/23/dorries-tory-mp-blog-taken-down

This is not about democracy or anti-democracy, or about whether someone may have bent the rules. It's not about being in favour of or against parliaments. Make no mistake, I am against them. The issue here is personal. It's a personalized smear and defamation campaign against particular parliamentarians, although numerous, not against parliament as an institution. That is why most people in the UK do not perceive what is happening as an attack on democracy. The campaign is not anti-democracy, it's anti-those-representing-democracy.

It is not aimed at democracy as an abstract principle, but at humans who are being thrown to the wolves, merciless, by corporate interests and base instincts. This campaign is the biggest thing since 9/11, with new revelations day after day after day. Self-righteously, it claims to be about the misuse of public funds. In sober truth, though, it is about selling newspapers. It is almost certain that the Daily Telegraph paid money – that is, employed corruption of public officials itself – to obtain the information they now use against MPs. Money, here as always, shapes public opinion. And no one believe for a moment that one could not uncover similar stories about each and every Daily Telegraph executive and manager – they are just not likely ever to be published.

Nothing of the scale of the public reaction in the UK has happened or could even be imagined to happen in similar cases elsewhere in Europe. The British "stiff upper lip" is an imperial upper-class myth that always hid the fact that Britain is a nation of binge-drinking chavs and the venomous media serving them. In its majority, it is a vile people full of spite and bile that enjoys wallowing in the gutter. It is a sign of the times that even the conservative and formerly serious Daily Telegraph has stooped so low.

While indeed such a "scandal" could happen under authoritarian rule too, the moralistic and moralizing nonsense, the media's double standards now so publicly exhibited in the UK, and the vilification of members of parliament lies entirely in the nature of the beast, in the nature of democracy. Already in ancient Greece, politicians who had fallen from public favour were subjected to a vote in the citizens' assembly that would decide whether they should be killed or merely sent into exile.

The sentence was as harsh as any passed by a tyrant, but a collective decision meant that no one had to feel responsible individually when fellow men were stripped of their rights as citizens.

It's the politics of anonymous total personal annihilation and character assassination.

Short, suicide or murder by proxy.