FOLLOWING widespread outrage over the Johnson government's scheme to make changes to the standards system for MPs, in order to protect former cabinet minister Owen Paterson from sanctions that could trigger a recall and a possible by-election that would be very difficult for the Conservatives, the Johnson government has been forced into a U-turn that for any normal government would be described as humiliating.
However, in order to be humiliating, the object of the outrage needs to be in possession of a functioning sense of shame, a quality which is absent from the personalities and characters of the Prime Minister, Michael Gove, Rishi Sunak and the other senior figures in this British Government. It is also absent from the character of Scotland Secretary Alister Jack, but saying that it's a stretch to describe him as a senior government figure is like saying that if you screw your eyes half shut and glance at it sideways, you might be able to mistake a rusted and clapped out Austin Allegro propped up on bricks for a top of the range Lamborghini.
The government's proposals to change the oversight system for MPs and to replace the independent system of scrutiny with a new committee led by a Conservative MP and with a Conservative majority was described by crossbench peer Lord Evans, who chairs the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as "a very serious and damaging moment for parliament and public standards in this country".
READ MORE: Owen Paterson resigns amid 'indescribable nightmare' after Boris Johnson U-turn
Lord Evans was damning in his condemnation of a transparent Conservative plan designed to ensure that Johnson and his cronies are never going to fear any effective scrutiny of the sleaze and corruption in which his government is embroiled. Lord Evans called the planned changes "extraordinary" and slammed them as "deeply at odds with the best traditions of British democracy" and as "an attack on standards".
The government ordered that Conservative MPs were to vote for the new system after Paterson was found by the independent parliamentary commissioner for standards to have breached lobbying rules on several occasions after he was paid by two companies, Randox and Lynn’s Country Foods, which employed him as a consultant.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, who is an independent officer of the House of Commons answerable to the Speaker, not the government, considered Paterson's behaviour to be so egregious that she ordered him to be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. A suspension of longer than 10 days triggers the recall process which permits constituents to petition the recall of the MP. If more than one in ten of those registered to vote in the constituency sign the petition, there must be a by-election.
Owen Paterson has now stepped down as MP for North Shropshire, so there will be a by-election, but one with a new Conservative candidate, sparing the party from having to defend its record as the protector of a disgraced MP who was suspended from Parliament for Tory sleaze.
Johnson is himself facing several investigations into his own behaviour in office, including an investigation into how the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat with its famously expensive wallpaper was actually paid for. So naturally he was keen to replace the independent parliamentary commissioner for standards with a tame and partisan committee with a Tory majority and chair.
The Conservatives are afraid of independent scrutiny, their Elections Bill replaces the independent Electoral Commission and makes it directly accountable to the Government. Whether it's their attacks on devolution or their attempts to evade independent oversight, it is clear that democracy is not safe with the Conservatives, and the sclerotic mechanisms of the British constitution contains nothing that can effectively prevent their march to corrupt and sleazy authoritarianism.
This piece is an extract from today's REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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