In today's Daily Mail Melanie Phillips examines the response from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the scandal of MP's expenses. While we have disagreed on some issues, on this one I believe she has got it right."There has never been anything like it. The political class is disgraced. Public fury is unassuaged. Revolution is in the air. Yet our MPs are still obdurately behaving true to discredited form. Some are taking refuge in self-pity, claiming they are being driven to the edge of nervous breakdowns or even contemplating suicide. Certainly, public shaming is a savage ordeal. But since this has occurred only because MPs hid shameful behaviour which has now been exposed, such an appeal to public sympathy just adds insult to injury…
….It can’t be emphasised enough that it’s not the system that’s to blame, but the members of Parliament who have abused it. This is not a constitutional problem. It is a moral crisis. With MPs apparently incapable of recognising this fundamental fact, one would hope that the Church would do what we expect it to do and provide a moral lead. Dream on!
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, took instead the dismal MPs-are-victims line and called for a halt to the disclosures. In his view the point had already been ‘adequately made’, and the ‘continuing systematic humiliation of politicians’ would only undermine confidence in democracy.
Well, parliamentary democracy certainly has been undermined - not by those who have shone a light on the corruption of the system, but by those who have corrupted it.
How very depressing - if not altogether surprising - that the Archbishop of Canterbury, of all people, appears not to be able to distinguish between the two."
The whole article is here
