As the parliamentary-expenses scandal drags on (and on) in the U.K., there are signs that the consequences are becoming increasingly unpredictable — and, judging by some conversations I’ve been having with people back in the Old Country, possibly just a little alarming. As a Tory MP (not one implicated in the current scandal, and not one known for overstatement) texted me recently: “things are torrid here.” That puts it mildly.

Via Instapundit, here’s a must-read piece by Amir Taheri asking whether Blighty is on the brink of a revolution. In the end, he concludes, no, at least in the conventional sense:

“England may not experience a classical revolution with barricades and gallows in public places.”

Well, phew…

Taheri then concludes thus:

[England is] certain to witness a major re-shuffle of political elite with a new prime minister, new government and a House of Commons where, for the first time since 1945, a majority of members will be newcomers.

That’s becoming increasingly plausible. The first “real” clues will come from imminent EU and local elections.

But something with wider implications than the immediate future of British politics can also be found in Taheri’s piece:

According to Plekhanov, one of the architects of the Russian revolution, revolutions happen after a society has experienced a period of uninterrupted prosperity followed by the sudden shock of a severe economic crisis.

That’s a rather harsh description of Comrade P, who may have been venerated by the Soviets, but in reality broke with Lenin a decade and a half before the revolution. Nevertheless, his observation about the revolutionary possibilities inherent in a break in a period of rising prosperity are worth taking seriously. Taheri dismisses them thus:

Nevertheless, like all Marxists, Plekhanov was wrong in assuming the primacy of economic factors. Revolutions do not happen because of economic crises or even widespread poverty. Revolutions happen when a system suffers a major loss of political legitimacy.

Well, we could debate the former (I don’t believe either in any “simplistic primacy of economic conditions” hypothesis, but the underlying idea of the crucial importance of economics-and socio-economic status is not so easily discarded). We can agree that widespread poverty does not necessarily trigger revolutions, but that fact doesn’t work to disprove the point that it is the abrupt change in economic conditions that are so dangerous, not least (of course) because such transformations can so often operate to destroy the political legitimacy of the system that had previously made that prosperity possible.

Food for thought, that . . .