The Spectator

Zero tolerance for Tory sleaze

The Spectator on why there should be zero tolerance for sleaze

‘What gets me,’ said David Cameron in a speech to the CBI last November, ‘is the deliberate extravagance committed by the people at the top of the government machine, the administrators and managers and quangocrats who administer public money.’ He went on to name Home Office officials who had blown £800,000 on taxis in a year, the MoD, which spend £2.3 million on a headquarters for itself while soldiers in Afghanistan had to do without their proper kit, and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which ate its way through £1.6 million in just six months on hotels and conference centres.

It was a fine and timely speech by the Conservative leader, striking a chord with an electorate increasingly shocked by public sector waste. Unfortunately, it has now become clear that there is one class of extravagant public servant which Mr Cameron omitted to mention: his own MEPs, and to a lesser extent, his Westminster MPs.

It would be difficult to underestimate the effect that the stories of the past week must have had on wavering voters, not least the 300,000 pensioners and the parents of the 100,000 children revealed this week to have sunk below the poverty line over the past year. Having turned against the government in protest at rising mortgages, food bills, motoring bills and stealth taxes, the floating voter looks inquisitively once more at the Conservative party — only to read that the party’s EU ‘sleazebuster’, Giles Chichester, has been driven to resign as the leader of Conservative MEPs for inexplicably paying £445,000-worth of staff allowances into his family’s map-making company. Until last week, few voters could have named Mr Chichester at all, let alone explained what he does; his dubious achievement now is to make even the Foreign Office’s taxi bill look good value.

As much as the Tories made any advance in the first ten years following the 1997 debacle, it was on the European front.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in