MPs are still far too focused on their own affairs rather than what concerns the rest of the country, writes Ian Hernon
Sleeping Beauty was only awakened after 100 years. How long will it take the Government to rise from its coma?
What we have witnessed over the past month is an administration in stasis, a Prime Minister in denial, a Parliament in tatters and MPs in the doghouse. The expenses scandal has wrecked morale, while the botched coup to oust Gordon Brown left all his ministers looking over their shoulders.
Parliament has been dominated by the labyrinthine election of a new House of Commons’ Speaker, while the legislative programme in the past few weeks before the long summer recess is a hotch-potch of half-hearted measures.
Even the row over public spending cuts between Brown and David Cameron was a lacklustre event, dominated by half-truths and bogus extrapolations.
Everyone is so battered, bruised and depressed that what we have now is politics-lite conducted by a political elite dodging shadows.
And this is in the deepest recession since the 1930s and following local and European elections which were pretty dismal for all three main parties. Low turnouts demonstrated not just public apathy, but also a real disconnection between politicians and those they are meant to serve.
MPs will witness that at brutal first hand when they return to their constituencies in less than a month for the 13-week summer recess.
In the Merseyside patch I generally cover from Westminster, there is a raft of measures of vital importance to local people, particularly in formerly rock-solid Labour heartlands, which seem to be on hold.
The families of the Hillsborough victims are still waiting to hear when and how secret police and Home Office documents pertaining to the 1989 disaster are to be released.
We are still waiting the outcome of such job-spinning projects as the stalled new tramline to the city centre, a £400 million Everton-Tesco stadium development outside the city and a second Mersey crossing.
For good or ill, and there is controversy around some, such programmes are hugely important to a city-region trying to build on its culture capital success and compete for dwindling inward investment.
Other crucial issues concern the future of the post office network, the car industry and a discriminatory ports tax. There are also national concerns about school testing, the state of the railways and the NHS.
But MPs seemed happier debating the relative merits of John Bercow over Margaret Becket over Ann Widdecombe over Sir George Young. Labour maverick Stephen Pound said: “We have spent too long looking inwards when we should start looking outside.”
The six-hour speakership election, in which a Tory maverick triumphed, saw Parliament briefly enthused. But talk about parochial parish-pump politics – it was like being in Ambridge on the day of Armageddon.
Of course, reform of our political institutions is important. But at the moment, it is just talk. And while MPs blather on, ministers should be making bread-and-butter decisions which concern millions of voters rather more than who might get to wear the buckled shoes shunned by Speaker Bercow. l
Ian Hernon has been a lobby correspondent since 1978
