Head of state Elizabeth Windsor is reported to be “concerned” about the constitutional implications of the MPs’ expenses scandal.
However, the constitution will allow voters to remove the MPs who have been shamed at the general election in 2010.
There is no such easy way of punishing the Windsor family who make the legislators look like amateurs when it comes to living off the people. This family claims more than £38m annually at the expense of the people and are provided with many lavish homes, aircraft and even a train for their own use.
Security for the family has been estimated in the Daily Mail to cost taxpayers £50m a year. That newspaper has drawn attention to the cost of bodyguards for a granddaughter of the head of state. She goes by the name “Princess Eugenie” and has two police officer to protect her while she holidays in Cambodia. A former head of the police squad assigned to protect the Windsors told the Mail that providing bodyguards for the likes of Ms. Windsor while soldiers fighting in Afghanistan lack adequate equipment is unjustifiable.
The more serious failings of British legislators have also been generally ignored in the press frenzy. In a notable exception, Financial Times columnist Matthew Engel dew attention to MPs’ systematic failure to hold the executive to account. Most MPs allow themselves to be “whipped” by their party into voting as it wishes. In the case of the majority party this means that they usually give the executive a free ride instead of defending the rights of the people who elected them. They do so because they put their political careers in their parties before service to the people. More harm is done that way than by the money grabbing of some.
Meanwhile, feudal legislators-for-life Peter Truscott and Thomas Taylor have been found guilty of misconduct for offering their services to have laws changed to favour paying clients. Unlike the MPs, they face a mere six months suspension from the legislature. The British constitution about which Ms. Windsor is concerned does not permit the people to remove them permanently.