Good may yet emerge from this sorry affair
RIGHT up to the end, Maria Miller couldn’t bring herself to utter the word ‘sorry’. Indeed, she seemed unable to grasp that she had done anything seriously wrong.
Instead, she sought to portray herself as victim of a media witch-hunt, mounted in vengeance for her role in implementing Leveson and legalising gay marriage. How childish – and how deeply offensive.
What is it politicians don’t understand about whose fault it is when they take more than their due from taxpayers?
But this paper derives no pleasure from the Culture Secretary’s departure, for which we never called.
From the beginning of this sorry affair, our only concerns have been to report the facts and give voice to voters’ feelings of utter betrayal by the political class. Indeed, this has not been David Cameron’s finest hour. From day one, this former public relations man (the only real-world job he has held) has misread the public mood and underestimated the toxicity of the expenses scandal.
His loyalty to Mrs Miller may be admirable in its way. But it was woefully misjudged, raising questions about why a person of such modest abilities was given a ministry in the first place. For all his many strengths, Mr Cameron is acquiring a reputation for poor judgment of people and ignoring advice, particularly from older heads.
With the election drawing ever closer, he needs to throw out his comfort blanket of Old Etonians and fill his inner office with staff of wider experience, prepared to tell him things he doesn’t want to hear.
Clearly, two other important steps must be taken to repair the breakdown of communication between rulers and ruled that we have seen these past seven days. Step one must be to impose independent regulation on MPs, whose cosy standards committee ( peppered with expenses cheats) closed ranks round one of its own.
Step two must be to simplify the labyrinthine rules on expenses, which offer MPs far too much scope for fiddling, while leading the honest into error.
But there’s a more radical money-saving measure that Mr Cameron might also consider in the wake of this affair. To put it bluntly, do we really need a Department for Culture, Media and Sport?
Starting life as the National Heritage department, this repository of low-grade civil servants was founded by John Major as a vanity project for David Mellor.
Since then, it has offered jobs to a series of lacklustre ministers, whose impact on the cultural and sporting life of the nation has been negligible, at best. But to be fair to the new incumbent, Sajid Javid appears to stand head and shoulders above his predecessors.
Unlike them, this self-made millionaire son of a bus driver has a sharp intellect and, refreshingly, a reputed belief in a robust Press and a slimmed-down BBC.
Indeed, if the lessons of the Miller affair are learned – and her successor lives up to his promise – good may yet emerge from the PR shambles of her downfall. Here’s hoping. Meanwhile, we wish Mr Javid every success. If anyone can prove the DCMS is worth saving, he could be just the man.