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MARTIN BELL INTERVIEW – 5th July 2009

If you believe some commentators, in recent weeks we've been watching the end of that perennially strange beast as we thought we knew it. George Negus caught up earlier with an old mate - journalist and ex-British MP Martin Bell.

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin, it's a long time since we've had a chat, but I have to ask you, what the heck is going on in British politics at the moment? I mean, we know that you do great political sex scandals, but this expenses rort could bring down the whole pack of cards.

MARTIN BELL, JOURNALIST AND FORMER MP: I knew there was some dodgy stuff going on during my own four years as an MP, but I had no idea of the scale of it. Sometimes, George, you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. There are some things that are just risible, like the MP who charged the taxpayer for his duck islands so the ducks in the middle of his pond shouldn't be molested by foxes, but there are some things which verge on fraud, like MPs who've been claiming for non-existent mortgages, and something like half our total 646 MPs seem to have been involved in some kind of shenanigans.

GEORGE NEGUS: How did this happen? It's been happening for a long while. It's not so much a rort - it's just part of the system.

MARTIN BELL: It's been happening for a long while, but it's been accelerating and gathering pace. I think about 20 years ago when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister she decided it wouldn't be a good idea for MPs to get large salary rises because that wouldn't go down well with the voters, so, instead, they voted themselves all kinds of fancy new allowances. They could claim for things like food, like groceries, cleaning materials, anything for their second homes. Then they started flipping between houses so that one month one house would be supported by the taxpayer and the next month another house, and some of them established whole property portfolios like this. I think it's been a scandal waiting to happen for a long time, but it's broken upon us very suddenly. And I'll tell you the good thing about it is that the British have absolutely risen to the challenge. I've never known everybody talking politics before. We are requiring reform from our MPs. We are actually embarrassed by our MPs and reform is on the way.

GEORGE NEGUS: So it's been a plague on both their houses, too, hasn't it?

MARTIN BELL: Yeah, a plague on just about all their houses. The main parties are both heavily involved. The minor parties, I think, rather less so, and it's actually quite a good time for independents - because I didn't have a party, I get people coming to me from all over the country wanting to stand against some miscreant MPs. Now, in some cases, they might succeed, in other cases they might not, but there's a whole fresh impetus about our politics now, and everything has changed.

GEORGE NEGUS: So, in a funny way, in a rather paradoxic way, this could end up being a good thing, because people are now seeing politicians in a different light.

MARTIN BELL: Yeah, it's a very British revolution, if I may say so. If we were Italians, we'd just shrug our shoulders and turn away.

GEORGE NEGUS: Business as usual, corruption.

MARTIN BELL: Yes, absolutely. By Italian standards, it may not be so bad. It we were French, we'd take to the barricades. What we're doing is requiring that our miscreant MPs - and there are scores of them - leave office. Come the next election, we're gonna get the biggest infusion of new blood into the House of Commons since 1945 and I hope Well, it has to be better than the lot we're just getting rid of.

GEORGE NEGUS: So you are actually predicting a wholesale clean-out of existing MPs, including ministers? You think that's the way it will go - the people will vent their spleen by throwing out these people in their dozens, if not more?

MARTIN BELL: Already, a large number of ministers have either resigned or been required to resign, and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, is reduced to filling their ranks by appointing new people to the House of Lords. He's running out of people who can be ministers. A lot of the old guard are going - the guy with the duck island is going, the guy who charged the taxpayer to clean out his moat is going. We're not sure about the man who charged the taxpayer for his mole traps, but there's a whole lot of them out there. I mean, you wouldn't believe it.

GEORGE NEGUS: What about the load of horse manure...?

MARTIN BELL: And the horse manure.

GEORGE NEGUS: We're laughing and laughing, but it's not a joke, is it?

MARTIN BELL: This must be completely inexplicable, I would think, to the Australians, who of course enjoy a pure, undiluted and honest form of democracy, but we thought better of our MPs than we're getting, and there is a kind of revolution going on, and I think a lot of good is going to come out of it.

GEORGE NEGUS: You mentioned Gordon Brown. I guess the question for an antipodean to ask you is, is Gordon Brown going to jump or will he have to be pushed? I mean, how long has Gordon Brown got? We pick up our papers here and every day he seems to be going deeper and deeper into that hole.

MARTIN BELL: Well, I get rather the same impression. You think every week is the worst week of his premiership. Theoretically, he can go till April or May of next year, but the Labour Party is threatened with something like a total wipe-out. I think there are a couple of by-elections coming up, and if Labour lose those badly, I think there'll be huge pressure for the Prime Minister to fall on his sword, but if he does that, then they'll have to have an election and then they'll be wiped out, so I think they have got themselves into a kind of secular firing squad situation, and no-one dare pull the trigger.

GEORGE NEGUS: Well, I think the great irony is that he waited so long and was so desperate to get that job - he thought it was his from day one, he probably thought it was his while Blair had it - he must be wondering now whether that was such a smart idea.

MARTIN BELL: I mean, it really is the definition of a poisoned chalice. I feel actually rather sad for him because he is a politician of integrity - no-one has doubted his personal honesty, even in the same way that nobody doubted John Major's personal honesty - but this scandal has happened on his watch, this whole air of MPs being allowed to get away with whatever they want to bill the taxpayer for this and for that, which has nothing whatever to do with our parliamentary duties, these are people who came into office in 1997 who pledged to clean up politics, and look where we are now.

GEORGE NEGUS: Tell us about David Cameron. Is he in there, the Tories are going to get back in, and what sort of a leader would Cameron be?

MARTIN BELL: Well, he's dealt with this scandal extremely deftly. He's disciplined his old guard of MPs, he's using the scandal to get rid of some elderly gentlemen who don't quite see the world in the way he sees it, and he's managed to put himself on the side of the reformers. He's very slick. He has some characteristics in common with Tony Blair. They're both very good communicators, they both do well on television. I do think, though, that such are the problems we're facing - set apart the scandal, the depth of the recession - I think that if and when they do come in - I'm sure they will - it will be the shortest political honeymoon ever.

GEORGE NEGUS: And where does that leave Labour? They've called themselves New Labour now for a few years. They can't surely call themselves new New Labour or back to old Labour? What are they going to do?

MARTIN BELL: They're going to take a terrible hit. I think any MP, Labour MP, with a majority of under 10,000, is going to be struggling to stay alive, so they're going to be driven back on their heartlands in southern Scotland and the north of England. I mean, nothing's for certain in politics, especially these days, when people are starting to think for themselves, and party politics as a whole is not popular. Our parties are just shells and husks of the great mass movements that they used to be. All in a state of flux, George.

GEORGE NEGUS: I guess I could say, too, that we have a few serious problems in the world - unresolved conflicts, the Middle East, global warming and climate change, let alone a global, financial and economic crisis - this is hardly the time for British politics to be coming apart at the seams.

MARTIN BELL: I think it is precisely because the problems we face are so unprecedented that we have to have a House of Commons with people in it who are predominantly people with a certain amount of competence and a certain amount of honesty, instead of a lot of the old has-beens we've had recently. I do a lot of work with the British Army still, and when I'm with the British Army, I feel I'm with the best of British. When I was in the House of Commons, I just didn't feel that. There are an awful lot of creepy people in there, and we do need a clean-out, and because the problems are so great, we need a better Parliament to deal with them.

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin, you mentioned - and we really have to leave it here - you mentioned the election that's due next year. No chance of it going early?

MARTIN BELL: If Brown is deposed - and this would only be some time October, November - then Labour would have to call a general election in which they'd be wiped out, because you couldn't have two successive changes of prime minister without a vote. That's why I think he'll hang on in in the hope the economy improves, green shoots appear, that people forget the present nightmares. I think it's a forlorn hope, and we can certainly - I won't say look forward to it - but we're certainly going to have a change of government by this time next year.

GEORGE NEGUS: And in the meantime, there's no doubt whatsoever that nobody's going to take that title of political scandal champion of the world from the UK at the moment, I don't think.

MARTIN BELL: We are the winners, we are the undisputed champion. You're probably disappointed down there in Australia. There's not much sex in it yet, but scandal, yes, we have that. We're the winners.

GEORGE NEGUS: And we'll probably beat you at the cricket as well, just to make it worse.

MARTIN BELL: I think that's highly unlikely, George, highly unlikely.

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin, always good to talk to you and we mustn't leave it so long next time.

MARTIN BELL: Thank you, boss.

GEORGE NEGUS: Cheers, bye-bye.