Money, sex and power

Back in the early 1980s, a book called Money, Sex and Power was doing the rounds in evangelical church communities. It took as its starting point the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and argued that these were a response to the three greatest temptations of life in the secular world. It also (and bear in mind I read this about thirty years ago, and don't intend to obtain and re-read it now) argued that the most difficult temptation of the three to overcome was power.

I'm still very, very angry at the treatment meted out to David Laws over the last few days. I'm not part of the Orange Book tendency within the Liberal Democrats that is exemplified by Laws, one of the book's editors. But as his performance at the dispatch box (hat tip Pretendy Liberal) last week showed, he's a talented performer with a first class mind, and a strong member of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary team.

The Laws 'scandal' as reported in the media centres around the first two of the three temptations - money and sex. It's been argued by enemies of the Liberal Democrats that Laws, the MP for Yeovil in Somerset, was 'ripping off' the taxpayer by claiming rental expenses for accommodation in London with someone he wasn't prepared to acknowledge as his partner. At the time of writing, the extent to which any rules were broken by this arrangement are subject to a ruling by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, to whom Laws referred himself.

Ironically, the sums involved - £700-950 a month - were small in the context of London property rental prices. Aggregated over nine years they amount to the much more shocking-sounding "tens of thousands of pounds" quoted by the Daily Telegraph (no, I'm not going to link to them, on principle) - but then so would most people's housing costs. And the owners of the Telegraph, the reclusive billionaire Barclay brothers, wouldn't notice tens of thousands of pounds if it fell on their heads.

And it's a strange sort of 'ripping off' that results in the perpetrator claiming less money than he was entitled to claim quite legitimately and above board.

An entirely spurious argument is being put about by some of Laws' opponents that, as a wealthy man (which he is), he shouldn't have been claiming any housing costs in London at all, despite being an MP for a constituency from which it's unrealistic to expect him to commute daily. This argument is spurious because the House of Commons expenses system is not a means tested one. I suppose it's possible to argue that it should be, in which case it's legitimate to have that argument out in public in a theoretical way. But so long as it's not means-tested, no-one has the right to set some arbitrary threshold for claims and condemn those claimants they think fall beyond it. It's simply not up to individuals to set themselves up as guerilla freelance regulators of MPs' expenses according to rules of their own invention.

One of the worst aspects of the whole business, however, is the salacious way in which the 'gay lover' references are worked into press headlines, as journalists comb through the details of Laws' (now no longer) private life. The whole thing feels like a throwback to the 1950s. It is a sad truth that, despite modern advances, there are still people like Laws who feel they cannot be open about their sexuality with family or friends - a situation, it's worth noting, which would be even worse if some of the social conservatives on the Tory benches had their way. Tony Grew reminds us here what life was like for gay men before society became, for the most part, more liberal in its outlook on such matters. In effectively forcing David Laws to 'out' himself, the Telegraph has behaved utterly disgracefully.

So much for money and sex. What about power? As a Channel Islander by origin, I followed with interest the actions of the Telegraph's owners - the above mentioned Barclay brothers - in Sark in 2008, and the poisonous interplay of money and political power there. Are we prepared to tolerate the same toxic relationship here, where the billionaire owners of a newspaper, answerable to nobody, can effectively choose who will or will not hold one of the most significant offices of government?

The role of the press (the 'fourth estate') in public life is important, and must be able to be fulfilled without fear or favour - but is the balance right? A great deal of coverage is given to 'scandals' of money and sex; but arguably, as I said in my opening paragraph, abuse of power is the most difficult scandal of all to deal with. Interestingly, it's power that Laws has had to lay down because of the accusations around the other two temptations.

One final point. Many (though, to their credit, not all) Labour politicians, commentators and sympathisers have been licking their lips and rubbing their hands with glee at the coverage given to Laws in the last forty-eight hours. So long as people like Hazel Blears remain on the Labour benches, they have no right - repeat, no right - to pass any comment at all. Indeed, you can read a story about the expense claims of one of the current contenders for the Labour leadership here (and no, once again I'm not going to link to the Telegraph version of the story).

David Laws' response to the coverage of this story has been swift and incredibly dignified. I wish him well for the future and hope that he will soon return to make the contribution to public life of which he is so very capable.