On June 4, Great Britain will go to the polls to vote in elections for the European Parliament and for local councils. European elections are normally dull affairs that draw few voters: the European Union may exercise an outsized influence on the governing of Britain, but the European Parliament is a distant, pompous, and irrelevant organization that plays only a minor role in the Union. Local council elections are more exciting – they are the nearest Britain comes to American-style mid-term elections – but in a highly-centralized state like Britain, it has, regrettably, become difficult to take local councils seriously.
Of course, critics might say that that is part of the problem. Indeed, that is precisely what they do say: no less than David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, has called for “a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power. From the state to citizens; from the government to parliament; from Whitehall to communities. From the EU to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy.” This call does not come out of a clear blue sky: indeed, it is a direct response to the scandals that have rocked all the major parties over the past month. Gordon Brown has had problems of his own – a Labour effort to establish a deniable ‘dirty tricks’ team backfired spectacularly – but the main scandal crosses party lines.
In outline, it is simple enough: MPs from all parties have been caught submitting dubious expense receipts. The varieties of alleged misconduct are almost endless, and range from minor claims for travel to more serious questions about the purchase and sale of second homes, and occasionally, for moat cleaning. The amounts in question are, as scandals go, not terribly large, which makes it a very British scandal: only in Britain could a leading member of the Socialist Campaign Group, and a Labour MP, get into hot water for spending 1,100 pounds on up-market wallpaper.
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