The Guardian view on the Paterson case: enough is enough
Boris Johnson tries to depict himself as a leader like Winston Churchill. It would be more accurate to see him as a leader like the Grand Old Duke of York – no, not the current one, but the one who marched his troops up to the top of the hill and then back down again. Having gone to the extraordinary length of igniting a sleaze scandal by getting his MPs to try to save Owen Paterson from suspension and overturning the parliamentary standards regime on Wednesday, less than 24 hours later he abruptly abandoned those corrupt decisions. The result: instead of creating one debacle, Mr Johnson has now landed himself with two.
Responsibility for this shambles is widely shared. Mr Paterson, who dramatically resigned as an MP on Thursday, is himself part of the problem. He showed no contrition or acknowledgment of possible wrongdoing for two years. After Wednesday’s whipped vote, he paraded across the media, once again, as the innocent victim. When his hubris caused embarrassment to other MPs, he walked away altogether. The truth is that Mr Paterson has jumped before he was pushed, because Thursday’s U-turn left him facing almost certain suspension next week. If he had behaved with an ounce of sense, not a hundredweight of pride, little of this might have happened.
Conservative backbenchers, though, cannot just blame their disgrace on a lone headstrong colleague. By signing the so-called Leadsom amendment, they all brought this on themselves. That amendment, which conflated ill-judged support for Mr Paterson with an explicitly partisan attempt to stitch up a new standards system, was a piece of madness. It represented a loss of judgment on a spectacular scale. It was the result of collective stupidity, stubbornness and arrogance. It reflects especially badly on the Commons leader, Jacob ReesMogg, whose role was central. If anyone ought to be “considering their position” in the wake of all this, it is he.
Ultimately this is Mr Johnson’s mess. The prime minister has faced more run-ins with the standards commissioner recently than any other MP. He has been investigated for nine cases of late registration of earnings, one of late registration of an interest in a property and, in July, for inadequately explaining how his Mustique holiday was paid for. Mr Johnson has little love for the commissioner, and there had been several press stories attacking her even before, amid the Tory party’s self-created wreckage, the business secretary said she should consider her position. The origins of the attempted hijacking of the standards system this week go deeper than the Paterson case.
The consequences are likely to extend beyond it, too. In the short term, parliament will debate the issues again, as well as Mr Rees-Mogg’s murky role, on Monday. The verdict on the Paterson case should be completed, in spite of his resignation. In time, there may be all-party talks about useful changes to the standards system too, but after the way they were treated this week, the opposition parties are not under much obligation to hold them soon. The most important consequences, though, need to be in our wider politics. In the Paterson case, as in far too much else, Mr Johnson’s government acts as though it is entitled to do whatever it wants, without checks, balances, accountability or consequences. It is the job of the rest of us to reclaim the political system and bring these corrupting abuses to an end.