Most of us can remember one teacher in particular who helped to shape our view of the world. In my case it was Geoff Hoon.
No, don’t laugh. The former Cabinet minister, just suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party over the cash-for-influence scandal, was once a law lecturer at Leeds University, where I was a student in the 1970s.
He was just four years my senior, but even then he was a chap who strode around seeming to know his way in the world. In my second year I studied welfare and employment law, and, with the help of lectures from Hoon, began to form the impression that society wasn’t fair, and lawyers were not doing a fantastic job of putting that right.
So I watched with interest as this firebrand made his way in politics – MEP for Derbyshire by the time he was 30, to the House of Commons in 1992 and, with new Labour’s ascent to power, such plum jobs as Defence Secretary, Minister for Europe and Chief Whip. A man of such obvious moral fibre could only be good for the political process.
But this is where a glittering political career ends. Hoon had a bit part in the MPs’ expenses drama as a home-flipper, made a botched attempt, with Patricia Hewitt, to unseat Gordon Brown and now takes a starring role in a Dispatches documentary which caught Hoon, Stephen Byers and Hewitt seemingly willing to accept lavish pay to use their contacts to influence policy.
Hoon was eager to translate his ‘knowledge and contacts about the international scene into something that frankly makes money’. He boasted he had already been fielding job offers including chairmanship of a foreign defence firm for an ‘embarrassing’ amount of money.
It must take an awful lot of money to embarrass Hoon, for he was quite comfortable talking in terms of £3,000 a day from the fictitious company that enticed him before Dispatches’ hidden camera.
Byers’ cynical remark that he was like a ‘cab for hire’ was a dismal counterpoint to the famous words of lobbyist Ian Greer to Mohamed al-Fayed that you ‘rent an MP just like you rent a London taxi’. If the cash-for-questions debacle was part of the ‘sleaze’ that did for the long Tory reign, then cash-for-influence is surely one more nail in the coffin of new Labour.
Perhaps all power corrupts. Or perhaps recent years have seen the emergence of a new class of MPs who cynically regard politics as a career, not a calling. Or perhaps there has been, for so long, so little idealism in politics that it has bred a monstrous pragmatism in those who serve. “What’s in it for me?”, they say.
And since both Conservative and Labour have for so long courted society’s wealth-creators, rubbing shoulders with those who have paid themselves ever more obscene sums, MPs themselves have started to feel entitled to membership of the super-rich club. Brother Blair has certainly shown them the way.
Hoon told the undercover reporter on Dispatches that his diary for April was largely free. Which makes you wonder just how much effort he had planned to put into campaigning for the re-election of the party which gave him the clout to field job offers at £3,000 a day.
Not for the first time, I feel let down by politicians. Indeed, you struggle to identify more than a handful of our elected representatives you would describe as shining examples of public service, untainted by self-interest.
It’s a hoary old cliche, but maybe they really are all as bad as each other.
Tweet
Comments
Login or Register to comment
Call me an idealist, but I don't believe they are all as bad as each other yet. Look at the constant: these disgraced MPs were all blairites. Coincidence? I don't think so. Tony and his cronies distinguished themselves from day 1 for their cavalier attitude to lies ("spin") and their longing for money (cash for honours, Cherie's engagements, book deals etc etc).
Whereas the current PM writes personal letters to each and every family of fallen soldiers, is widely regarded as honest to the point of being blunt, and the worst that they could find on him is that he might have been, occasionally, a bit angry. The difference is striking.
Another good article from Paul Taylor!
I think there are a few honest MP's out there. From what I gather a former MP in the Lib-Dems (cant recall the name) travelled by train in second class, claimed for the rent on small one bed room flat when in London and wouldn’t expense his coffee/sandwiches and such like for his lunch!
I also believe Ann Widdecombe was 'squeaky clean' as a politician.
I am not saying they were good politicians and I don’t agree with their politics, but this aside, their behavior and the way they went about their business was an example of how people in elected positions of power and influence should behave.
As for teachers, my games master was a former ‘All Black’ who shaped my view of the world. He used to say “I am from a farming community in New Zealand, I taught myself how to read and write, I didn’t go to school because we were too busy on the farm. And here I am, having the kids from privileged backgrounds doing as their told when I speak, listening to me. You can achieve anything if you want it bad enough”!
Those words still motivate me to this day!
I always thought that Buff Hoon was very aptly named.
Well you were wasting your time studying the law and writing about MPs mate. Just go out on the rob because at the end of the day that is what they do! Just cut out the middle man and fill your boots!
Botty, with a few words to the unwise!
Call me an idealist, but I don't believe they are all as bad as each other yet. Look at the constant: these disgraced MPs were all blairites. Coincidence? I don't think so. Tony and his cronies distinguished themselves from day 1 for their cavalier attitude to lies ("spin") and their longing for money (cash for honours, Cherie's engagements, book deals etc etc). Whereas the current PM writes personal letters to each and every family of fallen soldiers, is widely regarded as honest to the point of being blunt, and the worst that they could find on him is that he might have been, occasionally, a bit angry. The difference is striking." - GL, Stockport
Whereas Thatcher - and her acolytes - were all shining beacons of propriety, honesty and trust... so why did the electorate gave them, led by 'Circus-Boy', such a bloody nose in '97?
I always regarded left wing MPs as lunatics.A point proved over and over again, but I knew Dulcie Fines a Salford magistrate fairly well, and I once met her nephew Frank Allaun a nutter if ever there was at a dinner.He was a perfectly nice unassuming man.
The personnell manager at the company I worked for played golf with Hugh Scanlon another union 'nutter' who was different on the golf course.I also worked on the market with a former militant steward on the buses. He spent his holidays every year helping to look after handicapped catholic children going to Lourdes in a large ambulance.Never went anywhere else.
I also knew a former president of the chemical workers union, another Salford lad.
Their politics may have been misguided, but their dedication,and sincerity was not.
People spent years fighting for better rights and conditions for the working class when conditions were really bad.
Modern politicians are a total disgrace not just for their greed and venality,but endless tinkering with the legislation,most of which is silly, and counter productive. Makes you wonder now who pays them to do it.
I used to frequent a city pub,one of the barmaids had a degree in politics. She got a job with a politician.She was so revolted by the whole experience she decided her whole education was a terrible mistake,and was working behind the bar whilst she decided in despair what to do next.
Out of conservatives and Labour I suppose for me I would have to go with the ones who are more willing to see justice for the general public.
Regarding Mr Hoon & Mrs Hewitt, these two were wanting to stick the Knife in Mr Brown when there are up to no good. If you are going to have a go at Mr Brown then you have to be squeaky clean or it could come back and haunt you.
The problem with politics is that if you are up to no good then you are giving food for other areas of Law to hold you to ransom and you end up with the wrong part of the Law controlling the system. Thats my view.
Or perhaps, Paul Taylor, its the unchallengeable arrogance of the public sector that drags the bright-eyed politician down into the depths of bureaucratic untouchability. This is the system. This is how WE do it. Fall in or fall out. And the system is no longer focussed on the public to which it is meant to serve - it has morphed into a beast which prioritises its own self interest and has its own self-serving morality. It has spawned a family of interbreds who look after their own and are incapable of recognising the values of wider society. The beast needs major surgery.