You're as bad as each other: Voters' belief that both parties are equally corrupt explains the closeness of the polls 

By PETER OBORNE
Last updated at 2:33 AM on 27th March 2010
My wife and I spent last weekend in a comfortable and very cheerful family-run hotel in the beautiful fishing village of Ullapool in the Scottish highlands.
In due course, we fell into conversation with the hotel's owner, Jean Urquhart. Jean told us how her husband, a struggling actor, had inherited Ceilidh Place from an aunt some 40 years ago, how they had fought a long and sometimes losing battle to make the hotel pay in the early days, and how at times they had been overwhelmed by debt.
I was reflecting that rarely had I met anyone who radiated such integrity and good sense as Jean, when she revealed she was standing as an MP for the Scottish National Party. Her campaign slogan, so she informed me, was: 'If you want a politician - don't vote for me.'
Level pegging: Despite numerous sleaze scandals that have hit the Labour party voters are still torn between Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron
Level pegging: Despite numerous sleaze scandals that have hit the Labour party voters are still torn between Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron
What a wonderful slogan! It sums up what the 2010 General Election is truly about. For, although the political class still refuses to recognise the fact, it is now held in such disdain that two separate general elections are actually being fought this year.
There is, of course, the conventional contest with which we are all familiar from the pattern of British politics over the past 50 years. A failed Labour Government led by Gordon Brown is being challenged by a Conservative opposition led by a talented new leader, David Cameron - with the Lib Dems doing their best to get a look-in.

 
  

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But, at the same time, there is a second, and far more interesting, contest. This is the struggle between a morally degraded and venal political elite and the utterly disillusioned mass of ordinary, decent people - of whom Jean Urquhart from the Ceilidh Place hotel is simply one example among millions.
It is the existence of this second struggle, running parallel to the conventional battle between Tory and Labour, which makes next month's General Election campaign wholly unlike any that has gone before.
Let us examine, for example, the general puzzlement felt about David Cameron's failure to establish a commanding lead over Gordon Brown in the opinion polls. 
Almost all the experts and commentators are baffled. They rightly perceive that Brown is broken and deeply unpopular. In that case, they all ask, why can't Cameron take advantage of this?
The answer is simple. Cameron, an able man with a genuinely original set of ideas, is clearly the winner of the conventional electoral contest. But he, like Brown, is a loser in the parallel struggle between the bankrupt political class and the mass of ordinary, decent people.
Ordinary voters look at David Cameron and simply do not believe it when he pledges change. They believe that he belongs to the same, morally bankrupt governing elite as New Labour - and can offer nothing better than a Tory version of Labour corruption.
There is sound reason for their scepticism. Take this week's revelations concerning the corruption and greed of a group of former Labour Cabinet ministers, Geoff Hoon, Patricia Hewitt and Stephen Byers.
In theory, this scandal ought to be good news for the Tories. The most senior figures involved are former members of the Government, while by a lucky coincidence David Cameron himself delivered a speech denouncing political lobbyists only four weeks ago.
Suspended: Could David Cameron have been warned about Channel 4's expose?
Suspended: Could David Cameron have been warned about Channel 4's expose of MPs such as Patricia Hewitt?
But examine the facts a little more closely and a rather more troubling picture emerges. That Cameron speech looks just a little too well-timed. Can it be that the Tories got advance warning of the Channel 4 Dispatches revelations and Cameron cleverly delivered his speech to make himself look good before the film was aired.
And if Cameron genuinely dislikes lobbyists, how come so many of the Tory candidates fighting safe seats at the coming election are former lobbyists? How come, only three months ago, Cameron appointed a former lobbyist, George Bridges, to a senior position in his personal team? And how come Cameron has worked as a lobbyist himself?
No wonder the voters are unsure - and no wonder the polls stubbornly refuse to move in Cameron's direction.
And this, despite the fact that when - as is now likely - Gordon Brown travels to Buckingham Palace on the Tuesday after Easter to ask the Queen to go to the country, he will be calling time on the most sordid and corrupt Parliament in modern history.
A political generation has grown up which no longer understands the distinction between private greed and public duty.
Contemplate the developments of the past few years: the sale of peerages for hard cash; the capture of the political process by union barons and business tycoons; new legislation being bought by corporate interests; abject parliamentary subordination to the executive; Parliament itself corrupted into a system for illegally channelling taxpayers' money into the bank accounts of hundreds of greedy and unscrupulous MPs; and a second chamber where many of the 'Lords' are as corrupt as the 'Right Honorables' in the Commons.
It is necessary to go right back to the 18th century, an era famous for political corruption and the purchase of pocket boroughs, to find a time when things were as bad. Both the main parties are implicated. And sadly the Liberal Democrats - four of whose MPs were last week publicly rebuked and forced to repay taxpayers' money they had misappropriated in connection with a central London property development - are part of the same, stinking system.
So is the Speaker John Bercow, chosen by his fellow MPs in the wake of the departure of disgraced Michael Martin. Had MPs been truly contrite, they would never have elected Bercow, who had a well-documented record as one of the greediest expenses cheats.
History: Speaker John Bercow had a well-documented record as one of the greediest expenses cheats
History: Speaker John Bercow had a well-documented record as one of the greediest expenses cheats
Bercow, as might have been expected, has sustained the old culture of corruption, while following in the footsteps of his appalling predecessor and failing to hold the executive to account. And then there is the case of the Speaker's pension.
It's generosity - £80,000 a year, with about half of it available the moment he or she leaves office - has long been a scandal. Two years ago, the Senior Salaries Review Board in the Commons recommended it should be sharply reduced.
Speaker Martin blithely ignored this recommendation. So, I can reveal, has John Bercow. And the Speaker's pension can be changed only through primary legislation - which needs the Speaker's assent. A full two years after the review board verdict, the anomaly of the Speaker's salary persists - a symbol of the institutional contempt Parliament still feels for ordinary voters.
Consider this: Bercow is still a young man, but if he loses his seat at the General Election - which is very possible - he will enjoy an extremely generous parliamentary pension for life for a job he held for barely a year.
So what are we, the voters, to do at the election? Do Labour supporters hold their nose and stay loyal, even though in Redditch that means returning bent Jacqui Smith, the venal MP who disgraced the post of Home Secretary. I hope not.
Do Tories follow the advice of Cameron and vote back Bercow in Buckingham, thus signalling their approval of his disgusting pension arrangement? I hope not.
All I know is that if I had the great good fortune to live in lovely Ullapool, I would feel very tempted indeed to cast my vote for Jean Urquhart - and signal my solidarity with her contempt for everything Westminster has come to stand for. 

Liar Byers hops aboard ANOTHER gravy train 

Weak: The investigation in Stephen Byers' claims has been half-hearted
Weak: The investigation in Stephen Byers' claims has been half-hearted
Fifteen years ago, Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler launched the most feeble political investigation in recent history which then cleared crooked Tory minister Jonathan Aitken of corruption charges. Aitken later went to jail.
Last week, Butler's successor Gus O'Donnell launched the second most feeble investigation. Within 24 hours of being asked to investigate the wrongdoings of Stephen Byers, O'Donnell gave him the all-clear. 
Former transport minister Byers was being investigated after Channel 4 Dispatches showed him boasting to an undercover reporter that he considered himself a 'taxi for hire' at a rate of up to £5,000 a day.
He also claimed in the programme that he had struck a secret deal with the current Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis, to get the train company National Express out of a loss-making contract. When Channel 4 later fronted him up, he denied ever speaking to Lord Adonis about National Express.
Yet the hapless O'Donnell appears to have failed to ask Byers to explain why he contradicted himself in this way. Furthermore, O'Donnell's cursory inquest failed to get to the bottom of the relationship between Byers and National Express.
The key to the connection lies in National Express's then boss Richard Bowker. After leaving National Express, Bowker moved to the Middle East, where he now runs the Union Railway in the United Arab Emirates. So it comes as little surprise to learn that unpublished Channel 4 footage shows Byers boasting to the undercover interviewer that he, too, was off to a 'remarkably well paid' job in the UAE - with none other than Union Railway, run by his old mate Richard Bowker.
 
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They are all on the make, I am sick in the stomach as I have no idea who to vote for. I so desperately want the Labour out, but than I think about the Conservatives and my stomach churns. It might be the Greens for me...
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wouldnt vote for any of them. there all cut with the same cloth.they will say anything to get elected.once there in its back to the pc nanny state agenda.
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It appears the new labour tactic of gaining votes through mass immigration is working. In these politically correct times, the opposition dare not speak out on real concerns in fear of losing votes. The fact that our unelected prime minister and failed government are still in with a chance of winning the election is an absolute disgrace.
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We can add to this no EU referendum, immigration, the state of the armed forces, dumbed down education, the list seems endless. We can't be fooled forever.
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i am amazed and staggered at the at you journalists,my wife and I are both in our 70s and either listening or reading about the recent activities of the political scene, not one of you have mentiond who got us into this mess in the first place,we know the recession has been global. but who left us so skint, sold of the gold etc now brown bleats trust me to get the country back on its feet, is it not the words on cambell and mandelson coming out of browns mouth ? I think so fethering their own nests who voted them in anyway . I just wish i could the history pages of 30 years from now i feel they would be verr interesting
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Labour have shown themselves to be incompetent, with their hands in the till, why should people compare David Cameron with these thieves? he hasnt done any wrong, because of Labour,people mistakenly think all politicians are like corrupt Labour.Who wants another 5 years of Brown and his communists ?
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