Scotland – Day Fourteen: The Sport of Politics

I adore BBC and I especially adore BBC when Parliament is in session.  It’s way better television than C-SPAN, if only because Parliament is better television than the US Congress.

Who can fail to enjoy the give-and-take process whereby the Prime Minister must at least appear to be responsive to his opponents in the Q&A exchange?

While owning that it is dangerous to make observations about political processes and personalities with whom one is not overly familiar, I offer my reactions to this morning’s televised session of Parliament, when controversy involving Rupert Murdoch’s empire and the interactions of members of government with the same, holds sway in the nation.

My overarching sense of things is that, like the storylines of Emmerdale, Coronation Street, or my own favorite, East Enders, indeed, like the cherry blossom petals floating to the ground in the spring winds, you literally can walk away from a Parliamentary tale for years, come back later when even a different party is in power, and find that the same questions are being asked and the same answers (word for word) are being offered.

It is uncanny, this sense that no time at all has passed, when in fact, the last time I was in a position to spend time watching Parliament in the UK was in the immediately following months to the invasion of Iraq under Tony Blair’s Labor Party leadership.

Today, the Conservative Prime Minister, answering challenges to claims of back-room shenanigans vis-a-vis Murdoch, said that the matter should await the outcome of the Inquiry established to look into the matter, an answer Mr. Blair was awfully fond of offering whenever anyone from the opposition asked him any question about Iraq and the UK’s decision to join the US’s invasion of that nation.

The subject matter is literally all that has changed.  East Enders could have done no better.

But my own favorite has to be Mr. Cameron’s offering in defense of challenges to his leadership  (I paraphrase, but I’m not far off): It’s not new to us.  The implication is that when it comes to allegations of being in bed with media or other corporate interests seeking advantage from the government, Conservatives are merely following in the footsteps of the predecessor Labor leadership.

I’m in no position to judge the veracity of the claim, but as with all such claims the world over, the question begs to be asked: Really?  Really, Mr. Cameron?  Is that really the best you can do – to offer up the ‘he did it too and he did it first’ defense?  Did your mother buy that one when you were a boy?  Really?

Here’s the thing: it may seem rude for a visitor to offer such terse observations, but the fact is that even though I know better, somehow, I expect better of you in the UK when it comes to government.  I expect the process whereby questions may be asked directly of the nation’s leader, who is then required to respond, to actually result in an emerging truth.  I expect they who brought my country its foundational understandings to be so much better than we are at navigating those understandings.

Like I said, I know better.  Human institutions are flawed, being, as they are, filled with human beings.

But really, Britain, is this the best you can do?

I had expected better.

I had expected you not to be stuck in the same scene, on the same stage, uttering the same lines, that you were almost ten years, two wars, numerous inquiries, and one political party ago.

Really.