Matt Alexander
With a degree in politics and economics along with quite a few years at the grass roots of the political arena, Matt is well qualified to comment on the political situation in the UK. With a rather satirical view of life in Westminster he manages to put into words what many of us really think of our leaders and the system. He is also an ardent follower of the ‘gentlemans game played by ruffians’ so there is likely to be many a reference to football. Can it be that he actually supports Bristol Rovers!
Articles by Matt Alexander
Sweeter Tastes of What You're Missing, and darker Tales of Broken Britain
Well, we've been waiting for the first big 'story' to emerge from the new Lib-
Obviously, throughout all of this any actual crises gripping the UK have been skilfully ignored:
Germany's decision to ban short selling (the type of unilateral action that we are told heralded the descent from late 1920's recession to 1930's depression) to avoid a run on the Euro, and the emerging sovereign debt crisis.
The metaphorical 'emptying of the asylums' as the new Employment Support Allowance
testing is exposed by BBC Scotland to be routinely denying benefits to those with
non-
Rising racial tensions on the streets, fuelled by the English Defence League (sponsored by Wetherspoons pubs and Mi5) and Islam4UK (sponsored by Saudi Airlines and Mi6). The latest “you'd laugh if it wasn't so serious” moment in this has been the Facebook campaign, supported by over 130,000 people, to stop police banning England fans from wearing their shirts in pubs, as it would offend Muslims (please file in the bin along with 'English councils ban christmas' and 'EU bans straight banana').
No, an actual crisis is far too serious to be interesting. This is the summer silly season after all! So, the 'big story' in Britain this month is that a gay man had fiddled his expense return.
In case you are out of the country or something (!) I'll fill you in on the details
of this “sordid, sorry saga”. It concerns David Laws, Chief Secretary to the Treasury
and the second most powerful Lib Dem in the country, following Vince Cable's forced
march into the political wilderness. Laws was already The Story after a dazzling
display at the ballot box earlier in the week, defending the £6.25 billion spending
cuts offered to the markets as an entree to the 'real' cuts of £30+ billion that
will be made next year (all from non-
So, there was 'Dazzling David' at the top of his game, the new icon for the Pact of Steeles, seen as the perfect foil for the slightly less favoured George 'Oh No' Osbourne, the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer. Unfortunately, as every fan of Aristotle's Third Principle of Tragedy knows (I wonder if they're allowed to wear their shirts in pubs?), the public loves drama, and dazzling may be dazzling, but its not drama.
Enter The Chorus, in the form of the Daily Telegraph, who on Saturday published the revelation that Laws had been renting a flat from his partner in London for £950 a month, and over a period of years had paid him over £40,000. This was against 'The Rules' laid down by that classic oxymoron, The Committee on Standards in Public Life, and so Dazzling David was done. He apologised, pledged to refund the money, but couldn't dam the flow of condemnation and was forced to resign.
David Laws 'played the queer card' and said that the only reason he had lied was to protect his parents from discovering his sexuality. The parents of the 45 year old 'confirmed bachelor' must then have been amazed that his relationship was known by pretty much everyone else in Westminster and many more in his home constituency of Yeovil, Somerset (home of the Dark Family Secret).
Unfortunately for David Laws, he has been forced to play the role of cipher in this tale of twisted morality. The Great Expenses Scandal of 2009 has been sold as the actions of a few bad apples that had been corrected by a shake of the tree at last month's election. No one in the establishment wanted the stench of corruption to waft up again in 2010. This now seems a forlorn hope as the Telegraph has demonstrated it clearly still has some cards left to play, when it tarred his sinister successor Danny Alexander with exactly the same brush (flipping his residential status to avoid paying capital gains tax). Alexander survived only because there was no one competent left in the Lib Dems to replace him – so much for morality politics!
Laws was a capable politician by all accounts, at a time when capable politicians
are needed more than they have been for 60 years. He was brought down for doing something
that most employees do at every opportunity – wetting their beaks at the company's
expense. 
Yes, its the public's money, but that doesn't seem to matter when the state
(via the publically owned RBS Bank) loans Kraft the money to buy out Cadburys and
then sack half the workforce. It didn't seem to matter when state utilities like
BT, British Airways and British Rail were sold off for a song in the 1980's. It doesn't
matter when IT and Defence contracts are dished out by politicians who then become
directors of the bidding companies. Why does it matter now?
What matters in this Mad, Mad, Media Age is perception. The Telegraph created a perception that despite the change of government, it is still business as usual at Westminster. The Pax Steelicus had to create a perception that they were 'tough on standards' and so David Laws was put to the sword. Is there still endemic corruption in Westminster? Is the Pope a Catholic? As long as he is perceived to be, the evidence to the contrary is ignored.