Peter Jones

Cicero on regulating MPs

How the ancients dealt with the age-old question of ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’

issue 26 March 2016

As Sir Kevin Barron, chair of the MPs’ ‘Standards’ committee, steps down so that his own MP-packed body can adjudicate an allegation against him, the ‘Standards’ commissioner Kathryn Hudson says that some MPs are breaking rules because ‘they do not agree with them’. Are MPs simply not interested in their reputation?

Oligarchs at all levels know how to look after themselves (apparently no complaint against Ofsted has ever been upheld). However committed ancient Romans were to the rule of law, it was a commonplace that to reach the top of the greasy pole, one needed to make three fortunes: one to get there, one to fight subsequent charges of corruption and one to support you in exile after you were found out. Cicero began his prosecution against the corrupt provincial governor Verres by saying that the word on the street was that no one with influence (i.e.

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