The wider scandal in cash for access

Perhaps it is because cash scandals in politics are relatively common that they attract such interest; or maybe it is because a 'scandal' doesn't have to mean actual wrongdoing, just the appearance of it: either way, they tend to create a lot of comment.  In doing so, discussions of 'what can we do to prevent this?' bump into some profound questions around how civil society operates.


The BBC's Nick Robinson tweeted this earlier today:
Why no statesmanship? asks @EvanHD Politics = power. Power = elections. Elections = £s . Parties fear less £s = less power. Solution anyone?


The key point (and without wishing to blow my own trumpet, one I picked up in an earlier blog) is the last one: 'parties fear less £s = less power'.  The logic, taken apart completely, is that the ones who spend the most at election time will ultimately win (or will have the best chance of winning).  In that sense, it's almost a 'hygeine' factor, a sort of 'necessary but not sufficient' influence on elections.  In other words, having money won't necessarily win you an election, but not having it will almost certainly mean losing.


Nick's tweet was in response to a question about statesmanship, and one point to make would be that a statesman/woman probably wouldn't believe in that logic.  If politicians merely think about power, it is arguable that statesmen/women think instead about concepts such as change, reform, or the 'greater good'.  So the existence of the narrative leading to the need for money is itself a symptom of a lack of statesmanship in our politicians.


It is, of course, possible that the party that spends the most wins the election.  It would be bleak if it were true, and I'm not sure how one would separate out the influence of good ideas and general spend levels to establish its truth.  It may be a coincidence; it's also possible that the parties with the best ideas generate the most political support, giving them the advantage in terms of advertising spend.


But to get back to the issue of statesmanship, it seems to me to come down to a choice.  Statesmanship, in other words, is something that you choose to be; in that sense it is not created, so it's not about the conditions in which people are born, raised, or live.  One could equally substitute 'statesmanship' for 'moral courage' or 'ethics' here.  So why aren't we seeing more of it in relation to political funding?


Ultimately, these attributes have to be a choice, I think (in part because their essence is taking control of events, and not allowing excuses to flourish).  But are there things that influences this choice?  It is often said that people know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.  Statesmanship could be argued to fall into this category, a sort of moral attribute where, because it cannot be tied to increased salary or power (quite often the reverse, I would think), it is discarded.  Society is bombarded with these kind of 'wider choices' - ethical products vs cheaper products, for example.  It is part of a process whereby 'values' come up against the limits of tolerance, and society can choose to accept the bare minimum from its members rather than the potential full quota.  It would be good, for example, if people put others first: limiting noise pollution, picking up litter, waving others through, offering to help.  But if we don't count these interventions directly, and as a society we place value on what we can count, then such actions will become more rare.  It is common in some parts of the country, for example, to let someone ahead in a queue at a supermarket if they have only one or two items; do that in other parts of the country and you will generate a strange stare.


Our society does not value the things it professes to believe in, as a rule, and one conclusion we can draw from that is that society doesn't actually believe in them anymore.  It just likes to think that it does.  On that basis, should we be surprised that political parties might want to sell access?  I can't see why we would.  It is just another example of society holding up a mirror to itself, not liking what it sees and blaming the image for looking the way it does.  If the latest political scandal teaches us anything, it is that we need to place more value on our values; fully to appreciate the things we can do either at no cost to ourselves, or even at our personal cost.  Because the converse of this would also hold true: we would place less value on actions that did not support our values.  If we started to do that, we may yet see a return of phrases like 'this was the wrong thing to do'.