Tory Twat of the Week

The award this week goes to Tory MP David Burrowes, who...

...has written to the attorney general, Dominic Grieve QC, asking him to review the eight-month sentences imposed on Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce on the grounds that they are “unduly lenient”.

Whatever you think of the conduct of Huhne and Pryce, or the sentences handed down, it is quite obvious that Burrowes’s request is spurious. To exploit this case for self-publicity is pretty dismal conduct, but presumably Burrowes imagines this odious behaviour will somehow counter his deserved obscurity.

Meanwhile, in today’s Guardian, Simon Jenkins gets to the heart of the matter:

The truth is that we have so few ways of making power answer for its misdeeds that we grab hold of any stick that will do. There is virtually no accountability for incompetence in office beyond the ballot.

...since we cannot charge such people for things that affect us, we must charge them for things that do not. The ministerial lies that cascade daily over the dispatch box are left as lies. The human lives that are wrecked by unnecessary recessions and pointless wars are dismissed as just too bad. We can rant at our politicians in fury, but there is nothing we can do beyond silently vote them out after five years.

So we attack the powerful for their private failings, and pretend these reflect on their public duties. We hound their marriages and their finances. We jail them for cheating on expenses, since we cannot jail them for cheating on the country. If they swear at policemen we stake out their homes and shout abuse through their windows.

I am sure Mr Justice Sweeney is no different. He would love to get his orotund tongue round the tax dodgers, Libor riggers, planning fiddlers and energy swindlers. But he cannot, so he too must resort to damning a couple of bit players in the great game who fell foul of a speed trap.

We are back in the middle ages. We subject rulers to trial by combat and ordeal. We force them to “carry the hot iron” or “swallow the blessed morsel”. We make them pass tests of purity and honesty we would never pass ourselves. When they fail, we crucify them. The reason is banal. It is that we cannot get at them any other way.

Not unless we call on David Burrowes MP for some gratuitous comment, of course.