It’s no use pretending. I love the place. Loved working there, indeed still do. Anyone who is privileged to work in the House of Commons ought to feel the same way. There’s nowhere quite like the Palace of Westminster. I used to call it the last autonomous republic, like Azerbaijan in the Soviet days of stagnation.
It is the only workplace where the boss can’t come and root you out, because he or she doesn’t have a pass. You have to meet them in the Central Lobby and it’s quite fun (if a bit risky) to make them wait, then turn up with some tomfool excuse just to show this is your patch and he is a guest and don’t forget it.
So, although it’s not fashionable, I have some sympathy with Eric Illsley, the former Labour MP for Barnsley Central, who was released from prison last week after serving three months of a year’s jail sentence for unduly creative parliamentary expenses. Illsley feels hard done by. He thinks he should have been dealt with by the Commons, not treated like a common criminal.
If one of his constituents had fiddled the Department of Social Security out of £14,000, rather than the Westminster Fees Office, it is very unlikely that they would have seen the inside of Armley jail. To that extent, Illsley is right to complain that he is a scapegoat. I would prefer the term fall-guy. He had to receive condign punishment, to discourage the others and show a public slavering for vengeance that justice had been done – and was seen to be done.
But expulsion from the Labour Party, withdrawal of the whip and losing his seat in the Mother of Parliaments was more than punishment enough. There is a memorable line in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, when Faustus, having unwisely sold his soul to the devil, asks what hell is like and is told by Lucifer (played by milord Peter Mandelson): “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Thinkst thou that I who saw the face of God and tasted the joy of heaven am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?”
I’m not saying that John Bercow has the face of the Lord, or that Westminster is heaven, but there is something in the comparison. Illsley was brutally evicted from the palace where he once belonged and will have to live an eternity of regret.
It was a neat coincidence that he got out of jail on the very day that David Laws, the Liberal Democrat former Chief Secretary who wrongly claimed not £14,500 but £56,592, apologised to fellow MPs and racked up a seven-day suspension from the Commons. Big deal.
As Illsley bitterly pointed out, the two cases were similar, but Laws got off with a slapped wrist. He pleaded personal privacy and not wanting to be outed as gay as justification for his wrongdoing. No police inquiry, no Crown Prosecution Service, no court appearance, no humiliating porridge with fellow inmates calling him “the MP”.
The establishment rushed to Laws’ defence. The Prime Minister said: “I hope he stays in public life”, which is as good as a nod and a wink that he will return to the Cabinet in the next reshuffle. Nick Clegg insisted that Laws was not motivated by financial gain, although £56,592 is quite a lot of money, even for an MP.
Vince Cable wants the culprit “back in action” as soon as possible, by which I presume he means as a minister not as a creative accountant. And Education Secretary Michael Gove hoped that: “We will all be able to make use of his talents before too long.” Seven days of purgatory to savour these paeans of praise before returning to heaven is just about bearable, I imagine.
Illsley’s real crime was never to have endeared himself to the establishment. He worked for the National Union of Mineworkers, not a merchant bank, before becoming an MP. He never wrote an Orange Book urging his party to be more like the Tories, paving the way for a Con-Dem coalition. He never joined “the club”, that indefinable but real coterie than runs the country from Westminster.And to cap it all, he’s straight and married. Outrageous. Being gay always helps in these difficult circumstances, because you can so easily label your tormentors homophobic – than which there is no greater crime in such circles. This defence would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, or even 10. But it works today.
I tell you what. I would sooner spend eternity in hell with Eric Illsley than 10 minutes in heaven with David Laws. He done wrong, but he never sold his people down the river. He never got into bed with the bloody Tories. Westminster is an enthralling place.
I can’t keep away from it. But he’s better off out of it. I hope he finds something worthwhile to do.
