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As much as the Tories made any advance in the first ten years following the 1997 debacle, it was on the European front. And the first sign of any kind of recovery in their electoral fortunes came in the 1999 European elections. This was no accident, and neither was it a protest against Tony Blair, who remained very popular at the time. The Conservatives won the 1999 European elections because a majority of the public is still unconvinced by the institution that is the EU. They see laws issuing from Brussels without the democratic debate which precedes Westminster legislation. They see officials’ extravagant spending, and the EU’s auditors refusing to sign off the accounts for the past 12 years. And they see — or they saw — the Conservatives as the party most likely to hold it to account.
It is especially damaging, then, to learn that Tory MEPs have pressed their noses deep in the European trough. As we write, 15 out of 28 Tory MEPs are still refusing to comply with David Cameron’s request to disclose their expenses. It is not enough for them to attempt to reassure us that they are not breaking European parliament rules. The extravagances of the European parliament are widely known; taxpayers have every right to expect that their elected representatives will exercise restraint.
What impresses no one is the conduct of Sir Robert Atkins, an MEP for the north-west, taking a flight to his son’s wedding in the US and trying to reassure people that it is all above board because he ‘was campaigning or discussing current political issues with Republican party members’. Never mind what he thinks the rules can be construed to allow, does he really think that British taxpayers’ money should be spent campaigning for the Republican party?
As far as Conservative party chairman Caroline Spelman is concerned, the nature of the secretarial duties supposedly performed by her former nanny during 1997/98 seem to get murkier by the day. It is not enough for her to excuse herself by saying it was all an innocent mistake: she could have put the matter to rest by offering to pay back, with interest, the money she saved through the arrangement. By failing to do so she has prolonged her own agony and helped to keep a negative story about the Conservatives in the press for several days.
David Cameron has rightly been credited with decontaminating the Tory brand. It is hard to remember, though it is extremely important to do so, that for years the mere mention of the Conservative party resulted in an upwards curl of many voters’ lips. The lowly image of the party in 1997 was partly a result of the length of time it had been in power, partly of the indecisive leadership of John Major and the gross miscalculation of joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism. But another good part of it was sleaze, and the perception that Conservative MPs were in politics principally to enrich themselves.
For as long as this image remained, policy statements counted for nothing, however cleverly they might be devised. That is why it is vital that the decontamination process now be completed by tackling the increasingly toxic fumes emanating from the buff folder marked ‘expenses’.
It is one of the strengths of the Conservative party that many of its MPs have come into politics with business experience. There is no need for MPs to feel ashamed of wealth — unless, that is, it has by various wheezes been accumulated from the public purse. There should be no excuses for failing to understand the rules regarding expenses, nor for taking advantage of them. A party which will campaign for the next election on tackling Labour’s gross misspending has no room for MPs who waste taxpayers’ money themselves. Any candidate who fails to understand that, or fears that they cannot sustain their lifestyle on an MP’s pay, should step down and instead seek money-making opportunities in the private sector.
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