The Spectator’s Notes | 21 June 2008

How strange that Gordon Brown’s suggestion this week that MPs should have no say in setting their own pay is being welcomed as a curb on sleaze. If their pay is to be set, as is proposed, by a government-funded agency instead of by their own votes, MPs will cease to be independent legislators and become government employees. Most of British constitutional history (‘I see the birds have flown’) has sought to avoid government control of those we elect, and control of a person’s pay is perhaps the most effective curb of all. We are so disillusioned by our MPs that we now welcome anything they do which discards their usual functions. Thus most of the public seems to think that David Davis is standing up for his principles by resigning his seat over ‘42 days’ and promising to fight a by-election. But surely the point of being in Parliament is to try to turn your principles into parliamentary practice.