David Laws: A Problem of Folly, Not Corruption

Tuesday, 1st June 2010

So, yes, as several commenters pointed out, the timing of this post about David Laws proved unfortunate. James and Fraser have said much of all that needs to be said on the matter. Perhaps if Laws had been in any other cabinet post he could have survived this firestorm - though the alacrity with which he resigned despite entreaties from David Cameron and Nick Clegg that he should stay - suggests otherwise frankly.

The impression given is of a man appalled by the consequences of his blunder and horrified by the impact of the fall-out on his housemate, family and friends. Contra Tom Harris and the opinions of some of my friends, this collapse was entirely about sexuality and barely concerned with money at all.

Not the press or public's view of homosexuality, but David Laws's relationship to his own personal life. If he were a heterosexual renting a room from his quasi-partner there'd have been little difficulty in his ceasing to do so when the rules governing this kind of (perfectly reasonable in my view) arrangemet changed in 2006. But that wasn't the case and, evidently, Laws must have felt that ceasing to make a claim for housing allowances would have been, effectively, to out himself at a time when he was not prepared to do so. Such are the traumas of life in the closet or of a semi-closeted life.

In one sense then, Laws was "living a lie" to employ a phrase too redolent by far of tabloid harpies, but, really, what we have here is a public figure wishing to keep his private life properly private. Perhaps that was a weakness, perhaps it was a mistake to presume that this situation could continue even as the Liberal Democrats entered government. But if so then this was an all too human failing and something, surely, that merits sympathy and understanding, not outrage or castigation.

If there's folly here there is nevertheless nothing venal about Laws's conduct. And when measured against extravagant claims for gardening expenses and the like - among others, we're looking at you David Miliband - it is hard for me at any rate to muster much indignation about Laws's domestic arrangements.

Even so, one may admit that it doesn't "look good". But while perceptions are important public life cannot, surely, always be dictated by how matters "play" in the press. The notion of a quasi-amnesty for all but the most egregious abuse of parliamentary expenses might not be popular with the public or press but one had hoped that the new parliament might offer the chance of a fresh start.

That's proved too much to hope for, however and so a vitally promising career has been cut short. In some technical sense this may be considered some rough form of "justice" but it is difficult to see what ends have been advanced by this sorry episode, far less who benefits from it apart from the nastier kind of media scold.

A bloody shame, then, and one hopes that David Laws will be strong enough to return to the government in due course and that David Cameron will be man enough to give him the opportunity to serve again. Foolishness is not necessarily corrupt just as corruption isn't necessarily foolish. One of those should disqualify an MP from government; the other need not.

UPDATE: Chris Cook has an excellent post over at the FT too. Well worth your time.

Filed under: ConLib (118 more articles) , David Laws (57 more articles) , Expenses (31 more articles) , Westminster (182 more articles)

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The Masked Marvel

June 1st, 2010 4:08pm Report this comment

If the LibDems and Laws' friends and family weren't so intolerant, this wouldn't have been a problem for him. I wonder if the friends and family (and constituents, let's be honest) about whom Laws was so concerned can be tarred with the epithet "homophobic" with which Nick Clegg was so quick to attack the Conservatives' coalition partners in the EU?

More expense-fiddling, homophobia...Perhaps the LibDems aren't what they claim to be at all.

donpatrico

June 1st, 2010 5:41pm Report this comment

'Ceasing to make a claim... would have been effectively to out himself'. Would it have been noticed and pursued? Alex, as a journo you'd know better than I, but couldn't he just have said that he'd decided he didn't need the money? Perhaps it was more comfortable at the time to carry on as before. Seems the outcome was both correct and cruel.
Anyway, he paid up and went quickly. I wish him well.

David Lindsay

June 1st, 2010 6:32pm Report this comment

Polly Toynbee is not right about everything, and she is not quite right even about one or two things here, but she certainly has the measure of the despicable David Laws:

"Who would be a politician? As yet another Icarus falls, many would-be politicians will shy away, appalled by the British press acting as the nation's moral Taliban. Few people live without hypocrisy, with no contradictions between principle and practice, nothing embarrassing that risks exposure. David Laws had every right to hide his private life. But scrupulous honesty with public money was essential for this Savonarola about to conduct a bonfire of others' benefits, services and livelihoods.

Desire to conceal the truth about his lover may have caused the duplicity over his £40,000 rent claims, but other expenses also show him falling short. He claimed £150 a month for utilities and £200 a month for service charges until receipts began to be demanded, when his claims abruptly dropped to £37 and £25 respectively – trifling sums for a rich man, but for the lord high axeman political death. How does he take away a baby's child trust fund while being so casual about similar sums himself? How does he tell classroom assistants the loss of their job is a price worth paying?

As for the right to privacy, it doesn't exist for benefit claimants. Iain Duncan Smith and other scourges of welfare protest that single mothers cheat the system by claiming not to be living with or sleeping with anyone else. While the tax system assesses individuals, the benefits system assesses household income, demanding to know, in nosy detail, who is in your bed and how often. Snoopers are common. People live in fear of falling out with malicious neighbours. James Purnell had ads put up in bus stops in poor areas exhorting people to grass up their neighbours. No ads appeared in City wine bars calling for informers against tax frauds costing the state between 40 and 100 times more than benefit cheats.

While outrageous fraud cases do hit the headlines, most of those caught for working while claiming only do odd hours, temporary and uncertain, too risky to declare when there are long delays in reclaiming benefits. But this toughness on the poor with a reason to cheat, and laxness on tax evasion or MPs' expenses, sets politicians up for a stern dose of their own medicine.

This is the faultline between £64,000-a-year Westminster MPs and millions of people's daily lives. Britain's median income is only £24,000 – and MPs (and journalists) forget at their peril that they are in the top 10%. The oddity about British attitudes right now concerns the class fury easily aroused by hypergreed in the boardroom or the Queen demanding £6m more at a time like this. The incomes of over half the population hardly rose in the boom years, yet now those people risk paying a heavy penalty for the behaviour of bankers and City types clamouring for deeper cuts, their press diverting anger from the true cause of this catastrophe towards the "bloated" public sector.

The same Daily Telegraph that berates the public sector and castigates MPs' expenses is owned by a pair of tax exiles refusing to pay their public dues. The same owners are running a vociferous "Hands Off Our Assets" campaign against raising capital gains tax. David Cameron and George Osborne declare they are "listening" to a bullying clamour for loopholes so large that most of the rich will hardly pay more. (Only 130,000 shareholders and 250,000 second-home owners must pay, as gains of less than £10,100 a year attract no tax). Expect an outburst of public anger if the government backtracks to allow huge loopholes: Vince Cable last week on Radio 4 adamantly ruled out as unworkable any kind of "taper" arrangement.

An edgy rancour about unfairness erupts easily these days yet doesn't quite express itself as class politics. Class simmers everywhere with unfocused resentments since Labour deliberately stopped being a conduit for the inchoate indignation of the bottom half or two-thirds. After next April's budget when public employees cascade on to the dole, will this scratchy resentfulness crystallise into a political movement? Or will the sense of social injustice be skilfully channelled by government and press into outbursts against dole cheats, immigrants, overpaid public-sector chiefs, MPs and each new scapegoat of the day?

It is by no means clear if Labour's leadership candidates have an economic strategy to oppose unemployment on the scale we are about to witness. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns there will be 25% cuts in unprotected departments – a quarter of staff in schools, nurseries, colleges and universities, police, prisons, social care, child protection, street cleaning, parks, road repair. Nor will NHS jobs be preserved. The terrifying scale has not begun to sink in with the public, or politicians still claiming that the deficit is the priority: it won't be soon. The US treasury is warning Europe against the frenzied cutting each country is embarked on, risking a downward spiral when growth should come before cuts.

On resigning, David Laws said: "How much I regret having to leave such vital work, which I feel all my life has prepared me for." How odd that his relished life goal was to cast people out of work. As editor of the Orange Book that staked out new turf for Liberal Democrats as state-shrinking economic neoliberals, he called for a rejection of "soggy socialism" and breaking the NHS into a private insurance system. Laws's faction rejected the heritage of Beveridge and Keynes, the two great Liberal giants.

So perhaps Labour negotiators in the days after the election should not have been so shocked when Laws and Alexander demanded that the Tories' £6bn of cuts should be implemented this year, although they had campaigned against cuts in the election. Laws's biggest cut last week was £700m from Labour's Keynesian stimulus to kickstart manufacturing and growth.

He would have been a Tory, were it not for repugnance at section 28 social Conservatism. I regret the manner of his fall, but not the departure of one who expressed little sympathy for the lives of others being damaged by a too harsh interpretation of economic necessity."

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