The theft of public money by Members of Parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege. It is rare because not one political reporter or commentator, those who fill tombstones of column inches and dominate broadcast journalism, revealed a shred of this scandal. It was left to a public relations man to sell the "leak." Why?

The answer lies in a deeper corruption which tales of tax evasion and phantom mortgages touch upon but also conceal. Since Margaret Thatcher, British parliamentary democracy has been progressively destroyed as the two main parties have converged into a single-ideology business state, each with almost identical social, economic and foreign policies. This "project" was completed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, inspired by the political monoculture of the United States. That Labour and Tory politicians are now revealed as personally crooked is no more than a metaphor for the antidemocratic system they have forged together.

Their accomplices have been Westminster "lobby" (parliamentary) journalists and their editors who have "played the game," wilfully, and deluded the public (and sometimes themselves) that vital, democratic differences exist between the parties. Media-designed opinion polls based on absurdly small samplings, along with a tsunami of comment on political personalities and their specious crises, have reduced the "national conversation" to a series of media events, in which the withdrawal of popular consent - as the historically low electoral turnouts under Blair demonstrated - has been abused as apathy.

http://lewrockwell.com/pilger/pilger78.html