When some disaster or scandal breaks that proves to be the result of inadequate policing or a blind eye turned to transgressions of the law. The knee-jerk reaction is invariably to introduce a new law that duplicates the existing law that was disregarded in the first place… something along the lines of Oh no! Someone has been murdered on the bank of the canal! We must bring out a law forbidding murder on canal authority property… to ensure this can never happen again!
It’s a ruse, of course. No one is under any illusion that bringing out a new and possibly more stringent law is going to prevent laws being disregarded. This is simply in order to draw attention from the fact that, if existing laws, policies, guidelines etc. had been followed correctly, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Get lots of opinion polls up and get people talking about how we can prevent this sort of thing happening and whether the new law goes far enough or if it’s too severe… and so on. It is to avoid the majority of the public asking why the existing laws, policies or guidelines were not followed in the first place. Who failed to follow which laws, policies or guidelines?
It is the government’s equivalent of “OH LOOK! THERE’S A SQUIRREL!”
The inquiry into the grubby little Murdoch affair is a prime example of this panic reaction. It is also an opportunity to restrict the rights of the press to scrutinise and report the very conduct that had led to the inquiry. Whilst I agree that there is a kind of symmetric beauty in getting a problem to disappear up its own ass, this isn’t really addressing the situation.
But there is an elephant in the room, isn’t there?
What various witnesses have tried to draw attention to… and what Lord Levison consistently swipes away as if the implications were no more than annoying little midges… is the fact that Murdoch’s relationship with government at the highest level was unacceptable and that the Prime Minister himself must be investigated and held to account.
This certainly calls into question the almost cynical joke that is the assertion that politicians are not above the law. Well, not if they’re dispensable. It’s one thing to throw the odd corrupt MP to the wolves but it’s quite another to put a Prime Minister into the witness box… or indeed, anyone the PM wants to protect. Politicians make the law. It is designed to keep everyone else in their place… not to prevent the ruling elite doing whatever the hell it likes.
But, if you really want to know whose ass to kick, start with mine and keep kicking till every ass in Christendom has been kicked and then bend over and grit your teeth because they do this with our consent. Viva la democracia!
