Attacking MPs is journalistic cowardice

Billions have been spent on banks that will not lend. The crisis in finance means the next government, whether under David Cameron or Joanna Lumley, will have to make savage cuts in public expenditure. But no politicians are talking about any of that until after the next General Election while the champions of the people in the media are letting them get away with it. They are checking receipts for second homes and moats.

Shaken politicians and excited reporters say public anger and disgust may destroy the foundations of trust that underpin democracy. Except that opinion polls don’t support this view. Support for all parties has hardly varied during the course of the affair so far.

The public is imagined in the minds of politicians and Westminster journalists as an unstable and unpredictable rabble. They fear the anger of the mob, but how, exactly, has this anger been expressed? A satirical website planted a pound-shaped flowerbed in an MP’s garden and some more were booed on Question Time. The public may be revolted, but it is not revolting. Some polls say people see the expenses issue as peripheral.

The media, led by The Daily Telegraph, has been humiliating MPs as part of a long-running feud. There is a strong blame culture involving the politicians we vote in to represent us directly and the media that scrutinise, edit and communicate what they do in our name. “Village” is an apt description of Westminster if it describes a parochial, paranoid place where scandal results from everyone knowing your business.

Both antagonists have trust and legitimacy problems. The media, especially its biggest British organisation, the BBC, can’t do anything right. Newspapers are declining, commercial TV is going broke and local media are endangered species. Journalists collecting and editing information on behalf of the public are representative, in fact, of the organisations that sell and exploit that information. Reporters must chase circulation and eyeballs, not the big picture.

Politicians are suspicious of the reporters’ agendas and try to channel and control communication through to their voters. The reporters must be seen to work under Jeremy Paxman’s maxim: “Why is this bastard lying to me?” The public, endowed with the many eyes and arms of the media, becomes capable of bringing about the downfall of politicians without recourse to the voter.

The politicians’ refusal to discuss the near future is cowardly.  The Tories, as the probable next government, are particularly craven. they are not trying to win the next election, ther're just sitting back, waiting for Gordon Brown to lose it. They spinelessly waffle about austerity while keeping quiet about unpopular policies.

Political journalists cannot even prod the Prime Minister-in-waiting to say what he will do in power. The media, led by that vanguard of the people, the Telegraph, take the government to task for its decoration bills while it runs up the biggest public debt ever – after a 15-year boom.

MPs’ expenses have taken a long and winding route to become a strange form of public property. Investigative journalist and author Heather Brooke tried to use the Freedom of Information Act to publish MPs’ expenses in 2004 and received such a run-around she ended up in the High Court last year, where she won. The Commons still had not published the information before it started to be incompetently hawked around Fleet Street and partially leaked last month. Then the Telegraph somehow obtained the data and fearlessly published the choicest morsels via a circulation-boosting daily drip feed.

Poorly performing politicians deserve to be kicked out of office. They have all performed badly on the economy, wars and much else. But it is not the public that is venting its anger now. The public does not express its opinions through the media, much. Public opinions are only directly revealed by elections. 

Mainstream parties are right to fear the wrath of the public but wrong to assume there will be apathetic lynchings. Politicians that cannot give you a reason to vote for them do not deserve your vote. Give us something to vote for in a plan for the future. The political journalists will investigate the persons of MPs if they are not given any policies to scrutinise. The Westminster press pack might even start asking politicians the questions people really want answered.