Our guide to the top 50 political scandals concludes in this issue, and seems already to have brought great pleasure and amusement to readers. As David Selbourne observes on page 18, parliament is presently suffering from a terrible dose of swine flu, symptomatic of a much wider malaise in the polity.
Revisiting the great scandals of the past, however, has reminded us that the British tend to deal with outbreaks of political disgrace with laughter and satire. Our instinct is usually to mock and scorn, rather than to roll out the tumbrils: one of many reasons why this is not a revolutionary country. In France, they stormed the Bastille. In this country, we produced Swift, Addison, That Was the Week that Was, Private Eye, Have I Got News for You and (best of all) Michael Heath.
Political scandals are the punctuation marks of our historical evolution, the scabrous warnings that the political system is sick and needs urgent remedial care. That is so now, as it was in the early Sixties when the Profumo affair broke the crust of deference once and for all and led to a fundamental re-alignment between governors and governed. Harold Macmillan could never quite understand why Peter Cook’s mockery of him was not only acute but healthy.
Our national fascination with political scandals is not salacious, we would argue, but intrinsically good for the polity. Let us hope the Cameron government insists that the history of scandals is taught to all teenagers alongside the classics.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in