How Cameron has taken transparency to a whole new level

The fallout over the ‘cash for access’ scandal continues, though it is not clear what will come from it all.

Both Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw will vacate their seats in May, but there are no guarantees the episode will lead to greater transparency.

In fact, if anything, everyone seems to be acting more suspiciously than ever.

For example in last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions David Cameron admitted that, as well as being the Prime Minister, he is also the MP for West Oxfordshire.  

He said: “To be honest, I do do constituency work every day, but I would mislead the House if I said that I spent more time on my constituency work than being Prime Minister. That is worthwhile reflecting on.”

Why is that worthwhile reflecting on? What is he actually saying – that it should be a surprise that being Prime Minister of the United Kingdom takes up much of his time?

David, you are the Prime Minister – in charge with national security, foreign policy, the Treasury and pretty much everything else. Of course you spend more time on that. We know that. You don’t need to reveal it, like you have us lined up in a dusty library from a murder mystery.

This is one of Cameron’s particularly infuriating habits – admitting to things that we already know he does, in an attempt to seem extra honest.

But you can’t be extra honest. You are either honest or not.

Still, he has ‘admitted’ to three things in the last week alone. First, the day after his confession at PMQs he admitted he wasn’t interested in fashion. Then he confessed he relies on his wife for support. After that he conceded he enjoys watching TV box sets.

But the best example remains pasty-gate – when Cameron started babbling about the last time he had a pasty, when he clearly couldn’t remember.

We all knew he couldn’t remember, and why would he? There is nothing wrong with not being able to name the last time you had a pasty.

'You can’t be extra honest. You are either honest or not.'

Yet for some reason, a part of Cameron feels compelled to answer, compelled to continue and pretend he remembers, even in situations when it’s weirder that he would.

The next thing we know he is standing there, jabbering on about a train station.

He had started off the announcement with: “It’s about having a sensible set of VAT arrangements where the boundaries are sensible.”

Fine. I mean, that’s a weird sentence but you’ve said it now. Stop there.

But he can’t. Unlike Osborne, who just said he couldn’t remember, Cameron had felt obliged to add more ludicrous details to his story.

“I’m a pasty eater myself, I go to Cornwall on holiday, and I love a hot pasty.”

Ok Dave, most people don’t talk about pasties like they’re the new member of an Alcoholics Anonymous group, and to be honest it seems suspicious that you are still adding details given that no one has doubted you, but fine.

You once ate a pasty, we accept that.

But no. It still wasn’t enough – he still wanted to admit to something.

Unprompted he continued: “I think the last time I bought one was from the West Cornwall Pasty Company… I seem to remember I was in Leeds station at the time and… umm…. I seem to remember the choice was to have one of the small ones or the large ones and I have a feeling I opted for the large one, and very good it was too.”

By the end of this, you start doubting all of it. He might not even really be Prime Minister.

In the end, you start to assume that if he is confessing to the small stuff all the time, he would definitely tell us if there was something important.

But the worst bit is that as well as ‘admitting’ to doing things we already assumed he does – like eat a pasty then forget about it – he insists on denying doing the things that we can actually see him doing.

We are left in an absurd situation where we are expected to nod along when Cameron divulges, with a look bordering on guilt, that he likes Game of Thrones, while also having to endure his outrage whenever a medically trained professional accuses him of privatising the NHS.

Still, both Straw and Rifkind could probably learn something from all of this – instead of denying any wrong doing, why not confess to doing something right?