MP’s expenses and Brown

Mp’s expenses and Brown

It’s been now 28 days since the Daily Telegraph started their revelations about the MP’s expenses. Some would say that they have unleashed a campaign against politicians as a whole. For some it is investigative journalism at its best.

The political establishment is shaken by it. Heads are rolling, Michael Martin, Julie Kirkbride,Jacqui Smith,Hazel Blears…


The public is angry, the press, the commentators are going wild. The British democracy is in peril. The BNP is on the verge on taking power. MP’s are going to need police protection like the Royals because they can be lynched.
Everything is moving fast though; the press has shifted its fire power from the MP’s to Gordon Brown. There is no ambiguity in The Guardian’s editorial (3/06/09) “Labor has a year left before an election; its current leader would waste it. It is time to cut him loose.”
I do think though that the Press in general does not learn anything from the past. Dominique Wolton a French scholar and researcher call it” la culture de l’instant”. We can translate it by the culture of the present, of the moment without looking forwards or backwards. It seems that today is eternal with no future.

I can’t predict the future but I think Gordon Brown will stay on and could end up by winning the next election if it is in one year time. One year in politics is a very, very long time.
That does not mean that the Prime Minister does not deserve the critics, but to count him out is premature and begging for more blood and heads will not fix ‘broken England” or save the papers from their struggle to survive.