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| Maria Miller's resignation highlights the gulf between politicians and voters | Maria Miller's resignation highlights the gulf between politicians and voters |
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| At 7.30 this morning the voice of the Tory party at large, Conservative Home, published a poll. Four out of five Tory members thought Maria Miller should quit. But she had gone already, telling David Cameron late last night after he returned from the state banquet for the Irish president at Windsor. Regretful letters were exchanged this morning, the ritual lancing of the boil took place on the Today programme, and the prime minister will hope for a smoother ride through prime minister's questions and the more private grief of a meeting with Tory backbenchers on the 1922 Committee tonight. | At 7.30 this morning the voice of the Tory party at large, Conservative Home, published a poll. Four out of five Tory members thought Maria Miller should quit. But she had gone already, telling David Cameron late last night after he returned from the state banquet for the Irish president at Windsor. Regretful letters were exchanged this morning, the ritual lancing of the boil took place on the Today programme, and the prime minister will hope for a smoother ride through prime minister's questions and the more private grief of a meeting with Tory backbenchers on the 1922 Committee tonight. |
| Cameron has slid out of one damaging bind, but he's left with another: he has hurt himself and his already diminished reputation in the party by his apparent determination to hold on to Miller, a minister few will have heard of until last week, allegedly because he was reluctant to lose one of his few front rank women. It plays into the narrative of a man who rates his public school mates above Conservative interests. His defenders say he stuck by her from loyalty and decency. Fine qualities, to be sure. But they are not ones necessarily valued by party activists who need to extinguish the row before it overwhelms every spark of enthusiasm in the run up to local and European elections. | Cameron has slid out of one damaging bind, but he's left with another: he has hurt himself and his already diminished reputation in the party by his apparent determination to hold on to Miller, a minister few will have heard of until last week, allegedly because he was reluctant to lose one of his few front rank women. It plays into the narrative of a man who rates his public school mates above Conservative interests. His defenders say he stuck by her from loyalty and decency. Fine qualities, to be sure. But they are not ones necessarily valued by party activists who need to extinguish the row before it overwhelms every spark of enthusiasm in the run up to local and European elections. |
| The choreography of these political eruptions is familiar enough. There is the slide from the real issue – Miller's ambiguous approach to the rules and her truculent refusal to acknowledge error – into the implication that the trouble is not her conduct but the noise around her conduct, the distraction from the business of government; another rehearsal of the rule formulated by Alastair Campbell where days on the front pages accumulate until they weigh so much they become a resignation letter. The regretful letters, and then the swift slide of the shrouded and weighted political corpse off the stern of the ship of state. And then back to business. | |
| But as education secretary Michael Gove acknowledged with typical shrewdness in his instant but thoughtful interview on the Today programme, this isn't it. This past week will linger because the story was not just about Miller. In a few places it might have been about Levinson and press regulation, and possibly one or two people saw it as another kind of retribution for introducing same-sex marriage, piloted by Miller on to the statute book. No, it was only a tiny bit of any of the above. What it was really about was confirming in hideous and unmistakable technicolour the vast gulf that exists between politicians and their voters. | But as education secretary Michael Gove acknowledged with typical shrewdness in his instant but thoughtful interview on the Today programme, this isn't it. This past week will linger because the story was not just about Miller. In a few places it might have been about Levinson and press regulation, and possibly one or two people saw it as another kind of retribution for introducing same-sex marriage, piloted by Miller on to the statute book. No, it was only a tiny bit of any of the above. What it was really about was confirming in hideous and unmistakable technicolour the vast gulf that exists between politicians and their voters. |
| From the very beginning Miller showed zero understanding of any wider context – or at least, when she did allow it to influence her, she came to exactly the wrong conclusion. Her special adviser made threatening noises to the Telegraph journalist investigating the story, and even yesterday was texting round the backbenchers trying to rally support on the grounds of a witch hunt (the last straw for Number 10). Miller herself tried on grounds that may have been reasonable in narrow legal terms but showed a disastrous deficit in political nous, let alone a sense of propriety to stop the parliamentary commissioner investigating her expenses. | From the very beginning Miller showed zero understanding of any wider context – or at least, when she did allow it to influence her, she came to exactly the wrong conclusion. Her special adviser made threatening noises to the Telegraph journalist investigating the story, and even yesterday was texting round the backbenchers trying to rally support on the grounds of a witch hunt (the last straw for Number 10). Miller herself tried on grounds that may have been reasonable in narrow legal terms but showed a disastrous deficit in political nous, let alone a sense of propriety to stop the parliamentary commissioner investigating her expenses. |
| And then came the catastrophic apology. She might as well have walked up to her accuser, the Labour backbencher John Mann, and tipped a pint down his front. In those 30 seconds she drove the wedge between politicians and the public with a wild disregard for the wider consequences on trust and confidence. It was made all the worse because her attitude had been underpinned by the standards committee made up of her colleagues and three non-voting lay people. It had read the commissioner's painstaking and devastating report in the the kindest possible way, as if it were dealing with a muddled old lady who had accidentally ticked the wrong box instead of one of the country's most powerful public figures. Not that muddled old ladies get any leeway at all in the harsh new world of austerity welfare. | And then came the catastrophic apology. She might as well have walked up to her accuser, the Labour backbencher John Mann, and tipped a pint down his front. In those 30 seconds she drove the wedge between politicians and the public with a wild disregard for the wider consequences on trust and confidence. It was made all the worse because her attitude had been underpinned by the standards committee made up of her colleagues and three non-voting lay people. It had read the commissioner's painstaking and devastating report in the the kindest possible way, as if it were dealing with a muddled old lady who had accidentally ticked the wrong box instead of one of the country's most powerful public figures. Not that muddled old ladies get any leeway at all in the harsh new world of austerity welfare. |
| MPs will protest that this is a legacy case, dealing with offences dating back to the days of uncertain rules laxly applied. They shouldn't. For all parties, Miller's tale needs to be a watershed. Getting the rules right is important, but it is only one small ingredient in what needs to be a radical reshaping of the way political parties work. It is time they went back to their constituencies, as a Liberal leader once didn't say, and listened to their voters. | MPs will protest that this is a legacy case, dealing with offences dating back to the days of uncertain rules laxly applied. They shouldn't. For all parties, Miller's tale needs to be a watershed. Getting the rules right is important, but it is only one small ingredient in what needs to be a radical reshaping of the way political parties work. It is time they went back to their constituencies, as a Liberal leader once didn't say, and listened to their voters. |
| • This article was amended at 10:57 on 9 April to remove a reference to a tweet apparently by Jacob Rees-Mogg. The account referred to is in fact a spoof. |