Home page So if corruption is a party issue what about their representatives in Parliament? The greater efforts by politicians in the House of Parliment under their party whip and supported by the Prime Ministrial patronage of government positions used to buy loyalty to party policy and ensure the maintenance of an illicit majority gained on the support of just 19% of the electorate, is first and foremost to defend their party. Before the people, before most things, MPs represent their party in Parliament. However, when the organization whose dictats they follow in such unashamed and slavish terms, and to whom they dedicate their intellectually-shackled representative devotion, is found to be behaving in a corrupt fashion, the political class are completely capable of stating that this is a "party issue" and not a government issue. MPs invariably, and in a barefaced manner, will usually say what they think people want to hear at the moment they open their mouth. This recent illegal and poorly disguised attempt at corruption in contravention to the party funding regulations by using proxies to send cheques into the Labour party, cannot be put down to people "not realizing they were breaking the rules." Today, on this issue, a secondary school student knows this is unethical because it is hiding the truth. Of course these political party hacks must have known they were breaking the rules and the law. It is completely ingenuous of any MP or Prime Minister to try and pretend or even suggest otherwise to the electorate. One cannot as an MP on the one hand be taking orders and assisting lobbies who use the political party as their intermediation and dedicate their entire time serving their party in government and then try and suggest those in high office within the political party heirarchy are naive and incompetent. Political parties are collectives which amass people of a similar mindset so there is never really any possibility for the government or the party to come clean on an issue like this because the tenticles and connections, nods and winks remain. The theatre that this time it is different because before an investigation started an official admitted his mistake and resigned only reflects the fact that the irregularity is so obvious and there is no way to side step it. Because it is so serious the act of resignation is irrelevant because we are still left with the unacceptable spectacle of a Parliament controlled by an unelected political party whose representatives in Parliament are still stalling the US investigations and requests for Serious Fraud Office material on a another matter of corruption involving a Saudi arms deal. The problem here is that this is another level of political corruption which does not seem to only involve a £billion or so which flowed one way to a Saudi intermediary under the instructions of the "government of the day" but was a system sustained by different political parties in government. It is notable that on this specific issue the usually proactive opposition, in the form of the Conservative party, remains very, very, very quiet. As long as we have a Parliment which represents the will of political parties over the free will of the people then Britons will have to endure a public spectacle of a shameful and shabby side show which provides no inspiration or vision but rather of an embarrassing and failing attempt to hide private and corrupt party interests. This debases our democracy and it insults the people. Posted: 27th November, 2007.