The theft of public money by Members of Parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege. It is rare because not one political reporter or commentator, those who fill tombstones of column inches and dominate broadcast journalism, revealed a shred of this scandal. It was left to a public relations man to sell the "leak." Why?
The answer lies in a deeper corruption which tales of tax evasion and phantom mortgages touch upon but also conceal. Since Margaret Thatcher, British parliamentary democracy has been progressively destroyed as the two main parties have converged into a single-ideology business state, each with almost identical social, economic and foreign policies. This "project" was completed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, inspired by the political monoculture of the United States. That Labour and Tory politicians are now revealed as personally crooked is no more than a metaphor for the antidemocratic system they have forged together.
Their accomplices have been Westminster "lobby" (parliamentary) journalists and their editors who have "played the game," wilfully, and deluded the public (and sometimes themselves) that vital, democratic differences exist between the parties. Media-designed opinion polls based on absurdly small samplings, along with a tsunami of comment on political personalities and their specious crises, have reduced the "national conversation" to a series of media events, in which the withdrawal of popular consent — as the historically low electoral turnouts under Blair demonstrated — has been abused as apathy.
Having fixed the boundaries of political debate and possibility and vocabulary, self-important paladins, especially liberals, promoted the naked emperor Blair as "mystical" and championed his "values" that would allow "the mind [to] range in search of a better Britain." And when the bloodstains showed, they ran for cover. It has all been, as Larry David once described an erstwhile crony, "a babbling brook of bullshit."
How contrite their former heroes now seem. On 17 May, the leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harman, who is alleged to have spent 10,000 of taxpayers’ money on "media training," called on MPs to "rebuild cross party trust." The unintended irony of her words recalls one of her first acts as Blair’s Social Security Secretary more than a decade ago — cutting the benefits of single mothers. This was spun and reported as if there was a "revolt" among Labour backbenchers, which was false. None of Blair’s new female MPs, who had been elected "to end male-dominated, Conservatives policies," spoke up against this attack on the poorest of poor women. All voted for it.
The same was true of the lawless attack on Iraq in 2003, behind which the cross-party establishment and the political media rallied. The famous BBC man Andrew Marr stood in Downing Street and excitedly told his viewers that Blair "said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both those points he has been proved conclusively right." When Blair’s army finally retreated from Basra last month, they left behind, according to scholarly estimate, more than a million people dead, a majority of stricken, sick children, a contaminated water supply, a crippled energy grid and four million refugees. As for the "celebrating" Iraqis, the vast majority, say Whitehall’s own surveys, want the invader out. And when Blair finally departed the House of Commons, MPs gave him a standing ovation — they who had refused to hold a vote on his criminal invasion or even to set up an inquiry into its lies, which almost three-quarters of the British population wanted.
Such corruption goes beyond avarice.
Normalizing the unthinkable, Edward Herman’s memorable phrase from his essay, The Banality of Evil, about the division of labour in state crime, is applicable here. On 18 May, the Guardian devoted the top of one page to a report headlined, "Blair awarded $1 million prize for international relations work." Announced in Israel soon after the Gaza massacre, the prize was for Blair’s "cultural and social impact on the world." You looked in vain for evidence of a spoof or some recognition of the truth. Instead, there was his "optimism about the chance of bringing peace …" and his work "designed to forge peace."
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This was the same Blair who committed the same crime — deliberately planning and invading a country, "the supreme international crime" — for which Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi foreign minister, was hanged at Nuremberg, after proof of his guilt was located in German cabinet documents. Last February, Britain’s "Justice" Minister Jack Straw blocked publication of crucial cabinet minutes in March 2003 about the planning of the invasion of Iraq, even though the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has ordered their release. For Blair, the unthinkable is both normalized and celebrated.
"How our corrupt MPs are playing into the hands of extremists," said the cover of last week’s New Statesman. But is not their support for the epic crime in Iraq already extremism? And for the murderous imperial adventure in Afghanistan? And for the government’s collusion with torture?
It is as if our public language is now Orwellian. Using totalitarian laws approved by a majority of MPs, the police have set up secretive units to combat democratic dissent they call "extremism." Their effective partners are "security" journalists, a recent breed of state or "lobby" propagandist. On 9 April, the BBC’s Newsnight program promoted the guilt of twelve "terrorists" arrested in a contrived media drama orchestrated by the prime minister himself. All were subsequently released without charge.
Something is changing in Britain. The British people have never been more political aware and prepared to clear out decrepit myths and other rubbish while angrily stepping over the babbling brook of bulls**t.
May 28, 2009
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, filmmaker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism’s highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia. His new book, Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and Its Triumphs, will be published by Jonathan Cape in June.
