Political Scandals

There have been two news items in the papers this year in the UK that I have found particularly interesting to follow.

The first has been the Damian Green affair, a scandal in which a Tory (opposition) MP was arrested this fall as part of an investigation into "leaks" (details of various government plans and programs given to the media). Green had his office in Westminster searched and was arrested, along with suffering various other indignities. Virtually everyone (with the exception of a few members of the Gordon Brown administration who had been the target of the leaks) agreed that the arrest was politically motivated and should never have happened; it was clear that Green had been acting in the best interests of the country by disclosing issues/problems with the way the government was being run. On the other hand, there was not, in fact, any law preventing the arrest: the police were completely above board.

The second item is the so-called "cash for amendments" scandal in which a newspaper (Sunday Times) arranged for a collection of "fake" businessmen to meet with various members of the House of Lords; during these meetings the peers (House of Lords members) offered to delay or amend bills/legislation, in return for substantial yearly retainers (anywhere from 25 to 100 thousand pounds). There was again universal agreement that if the newspaper accounts were correct, the peers in question should be removed for corruption. As it turns out, however, there isn't actually any law that provides for getting rid of a peer who has done something dastardly-- members of the House of Lords can be scolded & reprimanded, but not removed.

Seeing this aspect of the UK political system in action does tend to make you reflect on the one back home, and how such things would be handled in the US. On the one hand, the US Constitution (as I understand it) does insures that legislators can't be arrested while Congress is in session and they are actively engaged in their jobs. Once a legislator gets in her car to go home, however: fair game for arrest. With respect to tossing out "bad apples": clearly the Constitution has explicit procedures for impeachment, no problems there. In the UK it seems that there are more gray areas. This isn't to say that the system doesn't work, of course. The "row" following the Green arrest was substantial, and it seems certain (at least to me) that he won't be prosecuted. For the House of Lords scandal, it also seems extremely unlikely that the peers in question will be allowed to continue on-- people will figure out some way to get rid of them or force them to resign. So the system functions properly, just without the same degree of explicit legal backing.