 So it's the 23rd of May 2009. We're in Bodrum, Turkey, attending the fourth conference of the Property and Freedom Society. On this occasion, my name is Robert Grötzinger and I am interviewing Sean Gabb, the director of the Libertarian Alliance of Great Britain because of the scandal involving expenses in the UK Parliament and all the background concerning that from his point of view as what I perceive as an astute observer of British politics. So Sean, give us your view of what has happened in the last, is it two weeks now, every day a revelation about expenses that should not have been made on the taxpayers' billing. There's been talk of it being a historic event, seeing for example that the speaker has resigned for the first time before the end of the term, for the first time in 300 years or so. Sean, what is your view? Okay, we need sort of the background to this general situation. Just looking at the news reports in themselves makes for an entertaining scandal but not for much else. I think what we need to begin by understanding is that the British Parliament is the most theoretically supreme legislative body in the world. It is unrestrained by any written constitution. The British Parliament could, if it so chose, declare that I was a woman. It could divorce me from my wife. It could repeal the Government of India Act that gave India independence and send out a new vice-troy. He might not be received a new Delhi but it would be good law in the British courts. The British Parliament could pass a law sentencing every red-headed man to have his right hand cut off and this would have to be accepted and enforced by the courts. There are no limits to the power of the British Parliament or rather the legal phrase is the Queen in Parliament. As long as a bill goes to the House of Commons through the House of Lords and is signed into law by the Queen, it cannot be questioned in any British court. Now this means that any government which is accountable to Parliament might be in considerable difficulties. What has happened during the past few generations is that the Executive has neutralised the authority of Parliament by filling it with people of very limited moral character, very limited moral and intellectual character. The government is formed by the dominant party in the House of Commons. The members elected to Parliament to represent that party are chosen by the party leaders and so the government uses its ability to choose candidates to make sure that Parliament is not filled with the kind of people who in the past made such trouble for the authorities. I am thinking of the 17th, 18th and even 19th centuries. So that is part of the background. These people are of very low value as human beings. Now the deal put to them is that they will rubber stamp whatever their party leaders put in front of them. They will not raise fundamental difficulties that endanger the stability of a government or the viability of its programme. In return for that they will be allowed, indeed encouraged to have as much sex as they want and to take as much money in bribes and in fraud as takes the fancy. They have been encouraged to act which in the rest of us will be punished as fraud or tax evasion or both. When do you think did this start? Did this start consciously by some government or was this some kind of gradual erosion of morals which then the government thought with people in government realised that is quite a good thing from their point of view? And how was it when did it start to happen and how did it happen in your point of view? There is no defining moment before which we had a functioning parliamentary democracy and after which we haven't. It is a gradual process. You might say it began as far back as the 1880s when the modern party systems came into being. So not the modern parliamentary parties that they predate this by quite a long period but the party structures as they emerged in the 1880s gave leaders the ability to select candidates. Now this is a power that grew during the 20th century. It was the power of the executive of the parliament was greatly increased in 1911 partly by the fact that the House of Lords was muted and partly by the fact that for the first time members of the House of Commons were paid a salary. Before then they had been unsabred which meant that parliament was effectively shut to ordinary people or people without independent means and of course once you have people in positions of considerable potential authority without independent means they will be tempted to take rights. I'm not saying it started then but that was a step towards it. That was loading the problem or loading the gun so to speak and now the trigger was pulled and now we've discovered the smoking gun. If you want a real villain I would put Ford Margaret Thatcher's name as a candidate. She regarded the House of Commons with probably well-narrated contempt and what she did was to make sure that only the right people would be selected as conservative candidates i.e. that the only people who would be selected for the Conservative Party to stand in elections were the kind of people who would be trusted to vote for her measures Margaret Thatcher put before them and then you had the rise of new Labour. Until the 1990s Labour MPs were traditionally rather rebellious, often rather free spirits generally in the wrong respects but they were persons of individuality. With the rise of new Labour that was ruthlessly stamped out and the Labour majority that came in 1997 was made up very largely of two legged sheep who were offered the deal and took it with both hands. You can have as much sex as you want with your researchers, your prostitutes, your rent boys or anything else. You can take bribes, you can solicit for bribes as indeed several Labour peers were found to be doing a few weeks ago or you can simply pad out your expenses, change your second residence for your first residence, claim your parliamentary allowances, do things which as I said would in the rest of us be regarded as fraud or tax evasion. It's something that crept up on us but now it is a solidly established part of the constitution. Now that they've all been found out and suddenly everyone is running around like a headless chicken in Parliament at least, we've all suspected something like that going on. There was anecdotal evidence but now it's all been drawn out into the public. The question for any observer is why now and why by the Daily Telegraph or the Telegraph Group which previously has not been famous for attacking the establishment whether left or right. It seems that the left or the Labour Party of course being in government is harmed much more at the moment and Cameron is on top of the crisis as much as he can be so it seems on the face of it that it is an attempt by the Daily Telegraph to help the Conservatives to power. But at the same time it is very harmful of the right of power. The reputation of Parliament as such and that is something that the Daily Telegraph is not famous for doing previously. Indeed. The question of why the Daily Telegraph got hold of that list of expenses and then published day after day is well worth asking. The most obvious answer is that it is the function of the media in a parliamentary democracy or it is the function of the media in a liberal democracy to hunt out and expose wrongdoing in high places but the British media hasn't been very good at doing that and the Daily Telegraph has never been particularly good at doing that. The idea that this is fearless investigative journalism with nothing but the public interest at heart is probably one of the more bizarre conspiracy theories. The other conspiracy theories are much more interesting. Let's go through the most obvious conspiracy theories. One is that this helps, this helps the career of Boris Johnson. He is Britain's most senior politician who is not also a member of the House of Commons. He is the Mayor of London. He resigned from Parliament last year after being elected Mayor of London. He will hold that office until I believe 2012 after which he may stand again or he may decide to return to Parliament. He is known that he would like to return to Parliament. Indeed that he would like to become a Conservative Prime Minister. Now to see these revelations as assisting in the struggle between the parties is unrealistic. It really is like trying to an a trench battle with an atom bomb. This is something that has damaged Labour politicians very badly but it has also damaged a number of concerted politicians and it seems to have been a very random process. Indeed among the Liberal Democrats one of the people who has been damaged by the revelations is somebody who has been campaigning for many years for greater transparency of members' expenses. So it is difficult to say that any particular group of politicians has been worse hit than any other except that as you said Labour is in power so they have been raking the majority of the corrupt gains. But Boris Johnson is known to be a long term friend of Benedict Brogan, the assistant head of the David Telegraph who has supervised the publication of these revelations. Boris Johnson indeed used to be a journalist employed by the David Telegraph. Now it might assist his own ambitions if every other concerted politician were to some extent to be tainted with these corruption scandals. Boris Johnson is out of Parliament and so he has no expenses to claim at the moment. However he was a member of Parliament between 2001 and 2008 and the David Telegraph has not published anything about his own expenses. It may be that he was perfectly honest in his claiming of expenses but it might be interesting to ask why his name is on one of those lists. Indeed. Another conspiracy theory is the timing a few weeks before the European election where polls are in a way that the UKIP is on the rise, even the BNP is on the rise, Labour is on a downward trend and the other two established parties aren't doing too well. That the Telegraph or whoever is behind this revelation would like to cause as much damage in this election as possible because this election is not relevant in a direct way to British politics but is of course the result would put enough fear into the established parties to do drastic things that I don't know what but so what do you think of that possibility? It is possible that there is a European dimension to this. I am entirely ignorant of who and why. Who gave these details to be published and why? I don't know. I have given one guess as to who did it. Let me give now a guess as to why it was given over. Though I don't presume to join up for the who and the why. It may be an entirely inconsistent theory but let's imagine this. The person who handed over these details to the Telegraph or the person who initiated the publication of these details perhaps is not in favour of European integration perhaps he would like Britain to leave the European Union. Look at this thing. The Lisbon Treaty will only come into force once it has been signed into law in every one of the 27 member states. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has issued a very ambiguous promise. He has said if the Lisbon Treaty has not been ratified when we come into office we will hold a referendum on it in this country and we will recommend a no vote. Every time someone has asked Mr Cameron what would you do if you came into office after the Lisbon Treaty had been ratified? He won't answer that question. Now in the normal run of things there would be a general election about a year from today, next May, May 2010, as everyone would be behind the time, there would need to be an election on May 2010. The Czech president, Václav Klaus, is refusing to sign that there has been treaty into law in his country. He is under great pressure to sign it. I believe the Polish president has also refused to sign it. The Irish rejected the treaty in a referendum earlier this year and they may accept it in a second referendum later this year. Now President Klaus has said that he will keep the issue open until after the elections in Britain, but the question in terms of the Czech politics and the pressures that we put on the Czech president by the Germans, the French and other pro-integration governments is how long can he keep the issue open? Now if the Brown government were to be severely destabilized in Britain, if Gordon Brown were forced to go to the country in, shall we say, September, October, or even for an emergency election in July, it is highly likely that the conservatives would win. The only question for those is how big would the conservative majority be? And so the sooner the election, the more likely it is that the Lisbon Treaty will be destroyed. And so those people who say this is a European plot to taint Parliament, this is a European plot to undermine British institutions, I don't see the benefit in that, whereas this might well be an anti-European conspiracy, but by whom and for what reason, those are questions I can't at the moment answer. OK, this crisis being of historic dimensions would normally be a chance for, now looking at constitutional dimensions here, for the Queen to step in and throw out some of the Prime Minister, not that way, but she would ask him to leave more or less, ask him to hand in his resignation. I would suspect that a clever palace staff could leak this to the public, and from that moment on, Gordon Brown would have no choice anymore. The public is so furious about him and about Parliament that he would have no choice, he would have to leave. I expect you don't expect this to happen, why is it not happening? It would be a chance for the Queen to assert a little bit more power again and to recreate a new kind of checks and balances in British politics. Has she not got the stamina to do, the courage to do this? Has she not got the historic view of this, or why is this not happening? I was until a few years ago a very strong supporter of the monarchy. The argument I put forward was that the Queen was the ultimate safety valve in the Constitution. It is regrettable that from time to time governments are elected, which promise to do very bad things, but the rules of the game mean that the Queen should not stand in the way of a government which has a democratic mandate. But I did argue that there might be circumstances in which a government would behave despotedly. In that case the Queen would step in and restore the Constitution. The problem is that the present Queen has now been on the throne since 1952 and so far as I can tell she has been very happy to sign every piece of paper ever put before her, except perhaps personal checks. She signed the European Community Act in 1972, I think, without a protest. She signed the Civil Continuances Act into law in 2005. Could you just explain that specifically? Yes, the Civil Continuances Act allows government ministers to declare a state of emergency in which they can suspend virtually any law they please, they can imprison people without trial, they can take property without compensation. It allows the government to declare a police state, and it can also, I believe, pull off elections. Now this is rather like, is it Article 48 in the Weimar Constitution, the enabling, the state of emergency that Hitler used? I don't know the exact number. Anyone who uses the Nazis as an example is deemed to have lost the argument, but the Civil Continuances Act is an extraordinary, dangerous weapon in the hands of the bad government and the Queen signed that into law as well, and the Queen signed the Nice Treaty on European Integration into law without a protest. She was deluged with letters begging her not to sign the Lisbon Treaty, not to sign the Act incorporating the Lisbon Treaty into British law, and here she had a very good case for calling the Prime Minister in and saying, I won't sign this act, I'm sorry, I won't sign this bill into law, and the reason she was given was that four years ago, every party leader, every main party leader in Britain promised that before the European Constitution was ratified by British Government, there would be a referendum. The European Constitution was then repackaged as the Treaty of Lisbon, exactly the same content, different form. The Government thereby claiming that it's not the Constitution, therefore we don't need to worry about the referendum. The Conservatives tried to force the referendum, but they didn't have enough votes in Parliament. Now it would have been perfectly acceptable for the Queen to say to the Prime Minister, call a referendum or I will not sign this, because you have a contract with the British people, and I'm here to make sure that you keep your contract with the British people. And again, she just signed the bill incorporating the Treaty into British law. She has done absolutely nothing by the way of doing her duty, and so for the Queen now, now that she is 82 or 83, suddenly after 57 years of doing nothing to stand up and start behaving like Queen Victoria or William IV or George III, is a little much to expect. I don't think this came from a palace. If it did, I have seriously underestimated the monarchy. No. Last question, basically, what do you think is the likely short-term outcome of this crisis regarding the rules of expenses? What is going to happen in that sense, and also what's going to happen after the next election whenever it is? As far as the expenses go, there will be a great parading of clean hands by the senior politicians, and new rules will be announced which may make expenses more transparent. It may compel members to publish their expenses online, but after a few years it will become apparent that these people are defrauding the taxpayers in other ways. In other ways that I can't yet imagine that the deal is still on the table. Do as you're told, and here's the reward, and a reward will somehow be found. The short-term effect on the European elections, it may damage the Conservative vote because all of the main parties have suffered in these scandals. Many people will not vote here at all. Others will vote for UKIP or the BNP. I'm no good at predicting the outcome of the elections. I generally get them wrong, but before this scandal broke I was willing to think that there might be one BNP member in the European Parliament. Now it might be four or five. Before this scandal broke I was rather worried that UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, which wants to leave the European Union, the party for which I vote, I was rather worried that UKIP would lose many of the 12 seats at one of the last European elections. I think UKIP will keep those seats. It may even gain a few. In the longer term the Conservatives will probably recover faster than Labour, and we are now looking, we're now simply looking at a general election result which may be a landslide for the Conservatives or may be a record landslide. The Conservatives may win the sort of victory that outdoes what Tony Blair managed in 1997. It may then outdo the great Liberal victory of 1906 where the leader of the Conservative Party actually lost his seat. And that would not necessarily be good for liberty and democracy in Britain as a strong, super strong governing party has no, without any strong opposition can do whatever it likes. That's true and I just don't regard the Conservatives as significantly better than Labour. They are better than Labour. I'd be foolish not to agree with that proposition, but they will not be significantly better. That being said, if we had a Conservative government next time with a majority of 45 or 60 and a strong, effective Labour opposition, every time those of us in the wider Conservative movement said, hang on, you can't do that. That's awful. Conservative governments aren't supposed to do that sort of thing. You'd have the government supporters coming up and saying, well, you've got to support us because if it's not us it will be Labour. And you wouldn't want Labour back, would you? Now it looks as though that argument will not be open. If the Labour Party suffers a catastrophic defeat at the next election and the Conservatives have a super majority, yes, they can do whatever they like in legislative terms, but they'll also have a very unwieldy majority, a majority which was sucked in large numbers of members who are not persons of no consequence. It will lead to factionalism within the Conservative movement, within the Conservative Party, and it also means that those of us in the wider Conservative movement can attack bad Conservative laws with much more confidence. It will not be like in the 90s where every time we did something to undermine the major government, the last Conservative government, we always knew the back of the lines. We meaning the Libertarian Alliance? Libertarian Alliance. Any kind of other fringe organisation on the fringe of the Conservative Party? Well I should define what I mean by the wider Conservative movement. The wider Conservative movement includes organisations like Libertarian Alliance, the United Kingdom Independence Party, the Bruges Group, all the other anti-European organisations, the Taxpayers Alliance, No2ID cards, all of these organisations which are not directly affiliated to the Conservative Party but which are part of the wider movement. If there is no Labour opposition, we shall with much greater confidence be able to attack the next Conservative government and give these people 45 seats as a majority, give them 200 seats as a majority, they will still do some very bad things. Okay, thank you very much. Well thank you.