25.05.1995

Sinking in sleaze

This week has seen the Tories collapse into a sewer of sleaze and confusion. They are reduced to saving their own skins and quite clearly the party is unfit to govern, even by capitalist standards. Rupert Murdoch would be happy with a change of government, and perhaps even the Iron Lady will consider leaving the sinking Tory ship after Blair praised her so eloquently last month. But the working class needs to get rid of the whole stinking system, not replace Tory sleaze-balls with Labour ones

TORY MP Jerry Wiggin returned from his latest freebie in South Africa to find himself in hot water. He had submitted an amendment to a bill in another MP’s name to hide his own financial interest in the matter. The amendment was withdrawn before the committee hearing because the other MP, Sebastian Coe, refused to take responsibility for it.

Behind-the-scenes negotiations on Monday ensured that our errant ‘fraudster’ only had to say ‘sorry’ to the House to be let off. He said he was only trying to present his client’s case in the most favourable light and he thought Coe would not mind - an apology for an apology!

Tory after Tory dug themselves deeper into the proverbial hole and Major could not stop them. Wiggin admitted trying to conceal his interests from journalists in an interview on Radio 4. Edwina Curry claimed to be shocked, but now understood that the scam seemed to be quite widespread. The party as usual was out of control, as more evidence of the parliamentary scum rose to the surface.

Wiggin’s limp apology and backbench demands that the Nolan committee keep its nose out of MPs’ financial affairs have exposed the sham of the Nolan enquiry, not to mention ‘our’ so-called parliamentary ‘democracy’ itself. The Tories’ political ineptness has done a great service to the population in laying bear the corruption at the core of the system.

On a radio chat show this Saturday a Conservative claimed that the word ‘sleaze’ was not in the dictionary, so her party could not be guilty of it. To the rest of us it just proves there is no word in the language to describe their behaviour. The small-minded decadence of the Tories has risen to the surface as they grapple to hold onto their positions of influence in business and government. Any hope of saving the party has disintegrated: they just want to save themselves. Who can help but despise them?

All trace of unity evaporated in their rush to serve their personal interests - to blame one another for everything that they got wrong together. They seem intent only on self-destruction. The mass of the population hopes it will come soon.

But workers beware. We know from bitter experience of local government how low Labour noses can sink into the trough of corruption. Blair’s promise on Monday to be tougher than the Tories on inflation can only mean stepping up the attacks on the working class. Labour has made no secret of the fact that any upturn in the bosses’ profits will be at our expense.