The revelation that a senior civil servant was working for Greensill whilst still at the Cabinet Office, to which Lex Greensill was an adviser, has escalated interest in this whole affair. That David Cameron could have been unaware of these facts when he went on to advise that firm after leaving office seems extraordinarily unlikely. That conflicts of interest were created on what has been called supply chain finance, which never has been and never will be required by the UK government for reasons I have already explained, seems very likely.
What this says about Cameron is that he is a man of exceptionally poor judgement, and remarkably little ability if he really thought that what Greensill was doing was of any real value to government. It also very strongly suggests him to be a man driven by greed, willing to compromise himself in pursuit of financial wealth. One might say, one of his class then.
What it says of the late Jeremy Heywood, who apparently sanctioned this, is that his halo might have slipped somewhat.
More generically, and importantly, it says that the proper boundaries, which have always been essential for the maintenance of trust, the upholding of financial controls and the elimination of the risk of corruption, appear to have been considerably eroded, and with apparent official sanction, with the decided whiff that the relaxation was in pursuit of personal gain being apparent throughout the process.
I stress the conditional elements in that last paragraph. What appears to be the case does need to be proven. What is wrong is that the authority to which the government is answerable - which is parliament - does not have the automatic right to investigate this matter but will instead require approval of a vote to do so. That this is the case simply increases the risk that there will be both corruption and a cover up facilitated by a government inquiry that will diligently investigate and then answer all the wrong questions, at the end of which matters will be allowed to progress as they already were because that will suit the interests of all who might gain from similar arrangements in the future.
The slight silver lining in all this is that it is always corruption that kills Tory governments in the end. Well, that and the incompetence that it reveals. So maybe, just maybe, this exposure and those still to come on the sheer scale of private sector looting of the public purse during the Covid crisis will bring the end to the series of inept and now seemingly corrupt governments that we have suffered since 2010.
But that cannot be assumed to be true. The corrosiveness of corruption is such that each episode increases the level of abuse that is tolerated. The boundary of what is considered normal creeps until activity once considered utterly unacceptable no longer shocks, meaning that it then falls within the boundaries of matters if still not acceptable then where sanction is unlikely, resulting in the chance that the abuse succeeds increases, considerably.
This scandal is of that type. What has happened is utterly unacceptable. All involved know that. But those rules only apparently apply to Labour governments. The Tories have successfully lowered the bar with regard to their behaviour. After all, we all know they are only in it for gain, so the allegation of hypocrisy as well as corruption cannot be made against them, because we know that profiteering is what they do. And in the process standards in public life fall when the unethical run government, at cost to us all.
Unless this pattern is broken there is no chance of this ending well.
The trouble is, there is little indication of what might end it.
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PPE.
Cameron/Greensill Investigation must promote ’Build Back Better’ by including Philosopher (Rupert Read) Politician (G Brown, J Major, C Lucas) Economist (M Mazzucato, K Raworth, A Pettifor) + accountancy (Prem Sikka) & tax (R Murphy) experts & lawyer (G Miller, J Maugham).
A journalist’s tweet described Boardman as “establishment” & “independent” = gorgeous contradiction. Maybe he will only redefine corruption so that life can get “back to normal”?
I can see Heywood being won over by Cameron’s ‘nice but dim’ persona though – can’t you? The old ‘Government needs private expertise’ argument/bollocks that we know has enabled private sector thinking to dominate policy.
The more I think about this, the more I reflect on Labour’s 1997 election win – the Thatcherites must have hated it and decided that in the future – if they got in again, even their own sleaze would not bring them down, they would:
1) Develop a fixed term act of parliament act so that they could behave outrageously (insulate themselves from Parliament)
2) Settle the EU problem in the party by getting rid of the pro-EU elements and leaving the EU (united front)
3) Court and cultivate a wider range of rich national/international donors to help pay for out spending on on-line messaging, sowing confusion etc.
4) Appoint a leader whose personal presentation was one of enlightenment thus hiding the mal-intent of what they really wanted to create – a Thousands Year Tory Reich.
My view is that all of this has been planned. It’s too good to be true otherwise.
You may well be right
Brittania Unchained was part of that
“What is wrong is that the authority to which the government is answerable – which is parliament – does not have the automatic right to investigate this matter but will instead require approval of a vote to do so.”
And of course the government has instructed its backbenchers to vote this down. So there won’t be anything resembling a proper inquiry into this example of Tory corruption, just Johnson’s laughable effort which as you’ve previously pointed out Richard is rigged to ensure it arrives at the conclusion Johnson wants, just like the Sewell report.
And as an article in the excellent The New European points out this week, the view from Ireland, which had its fair share of corrupt politicians in the past (e.g Charles Haughey) is that they’re astonished by the almost total acceptance of Johnson’s own corrupt behaviour, which is barely remarked on by the media and political commentators in Britain.
Jennifer Arcuri who was given preferred status on 3 separate UK trade missions when Johnson was Foreign Secretary, and a 6 figure contract of government money when she was having an affair with Johnson
Johnson who was Foreign Sec. at the time.
Symonds spending £200k on refurbishing their flat at Downing Street, when the official limit is £30k. And of course, his lies, including the ones about there being no border in the Irish Sea, no paperwork following Brexit, which have led to the situation in NI.
And yet, where’s the fuss, where’s the outrage in Britain (or should that be England?). What do all those who voted Tory in 2019 have to say about this? We are becoming a corrupt, authoritarian, nationalist state like Hungary or Poland. With the complicity of our pathetic ‘free press’ and an electorate who, well, you tell me why this corrupt, incompetent government of liars still has so much support?
The acceptance is to me incredibly worrying
Richard, thinking back to the 2019 election, it really is appalling that so many in the electorate thought voting for Johnson and the Tories was preferable, or a ‘lesser evil’ than voting for Corbyn and Labour. We’d both acknowledge that Corbyn would have been a very poor PM, for a number of reasons.
But worse than Johnson? Would Corbyn have been this corrupt and dishonest? I don’t think so. Would he have given £37 billion (!!!!!) to an organisation like Serco to piss away in developing a next to useless Track and Trace app?
Are there so many voters (in England) who just think all politicians are corrupt so they’ll vote for the clown? Or were they so taken in by smears and character assassination by our rotten press that they voted for Johnson just to keep Corbyn out?
I’ve been reading (wrestling) with Philip Mirowski’s book ‘Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste’ (2013) about how Neo-liberalism avoided its comeuppance after 2008.
This book is occasionally like walking in a heavily wooded forest, and then entering a clearing or beautifully illuminated glade where you come across something you have never seen before in all its glory (remember that I might not be as well read as people like John S Warren so take that last statement with a pinch of salt!). So here is what Mirowski (especially from Chapter 5, p.239 has revealed to me (wait for it – drum roll!!):
Agnotology: the study (and practice moreover) of how ignorance and doubt is spread in society.
Mirowski gives examples of how agnotology has been practiced in science, PR and advertising and highlights the methods cigarette manufacturers (but also think how climate change denial has been working) also worked along agnotological lines to supress the knowledge about tobacco’s link to cancer.
Cigarette manufacturers even funded beneficial medical studies (avoiding lung cancer of course) in order to be associated with such positive activities to further create a picture of being ‘benign’ organisations in the minds of the public. The idea was to create a form of ‘cognitive dissonance’ in society which leads to uncertainty: on one hand these people are selling death to the public; but on the other they are funding valuable research into diseases and giving grants to poorer countries etc., etc. Are they good or bad people? ‘Well, I don’t really know……….??”.
Now…..think about how Putin runs Russia. It is well known that his Government funds some of the opposition parties and that they may also have stirred up tensions in the former Soviet region, created artificial crises so that are seen riding to the rescue. People fall for it every time. It’s hard for them to know who is saying what?
Think about modern ‘Think Tanks’ – as we know here, how many of them have got questionable funding, decanting their rubbish into society, causing more doubt and confusion; The Great Barrington Declaration for example. What was that about really?
Mirowski accuses orthodox economists (Neo-liberal of course) of the doing the same in his book – noting how economists since 2008 created obfuscation about the causes of the credit crunch – economists are accused of deliberately not agreeing on the causes of the crash, or creating useless specious dissent in order to put people off the scent.
Think about how Trump ran his Government and his adherence to ‘alternative facts’? Think about the messages being bled into society about UK Government debt and who from? Think about the European Research Group (ERG) sounding like a serious, pious research body but in fact nothing but a group ‘swivel eyed loons’.
Mirowski points to the consequences – with so much doubt, there can only be stasis and indecision because no one is really sure – especially at the ballot box. And so what you get is TINA, and then Timothy Snyder’s construct of ‘Inevitability Politics’ comes more sharply into focus.
And all of this agnotological practice is turbo charged by the internet and the untaxed/corrupt wealth that funds it.
So maybe this is it – we are living in the ‘Age of Agnotology’ – an age of mass mis-information. In order to keep us where we are, and to prevent a more courageous age.
Remember that word folks ‘AGNOTOLOGY’. In your neighbourhood since 2010.
SOTD – even Peter Oborne in his book ‘The Assault on Truth’ (2021) p.17 points out that Johnson lied about Corbyn. How much of this went out on the internet and sullied him, God only knows.
Even the BBC has come across agnotology:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance
Thanks
How much if that is quotes?
I ask as I wondered whether it should be reposted – but heed to know I am not breaching copyright too much
It reads like you…..
Thanks PSR, you’re doing a lot more reading than I am, I have to say. Although I suppose I don’t need to read Oborne to know what a liar Johnson is. Maybe Agnotology explains a lot. It certainly comes to something when people in areas that suffered from deindustrialisation under Thatcher now vote the Tories in in preference to Corbyn, who, for all his faults, has to be considered the lesser of two evils compared to Johnson.
Oh right – well, I’ve not quoted directly Richard – I’ve summed up examples of the cigarette companies and climate change, Think Tanks and economist agnotological behaviour from Mirowski’s book, Chapter 5 pp.239-246 (the beginning of – there are more examples to come, it’s a long chapter).
This book was written BEFORE Trump so I made that linkage myself, as I did the linkage with Snyder’s theses on ‘Inevitability politics’ and TINA, Putin’s Russia (thank you Adam Curtis – Bitter Lake and/or Hyperindividualism), but also Snyder, Belton, Burgis), the misinformation about UK Government debt and the ERG’s role in BREXIT, plus the Great BD. Mirowski is only talking of how economists have employed agnotology in his book but I saw/heard of the same techniques in these areas through my reading and reflecting.
Mirowski also says that agnotological practice was also present in the Iraq war.
I have to say that agnotology as a practice is an infernal one – one of its core components is duplicity in the name of control. A Government, corporation can be on both sides of the argument but those digesting the output may not have a clue that they are being manipulated by a single source.
Marowski quotes this chilling exchange with a Bush aide (pp.242-234) to illustrate the mind set that I’m sure is also quoted in the film ‘Vice’ about Dick Cheney:
‘The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality”. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “We’re an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ………and you, all of you will be left to just study what we do” (quoted from Ron Suskind, ‘Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George Bush, New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004).
It’s gob smacking stuff. Forgive me but I’m just a working stiff who finds time to delve into these matters – I hope this helps. But I’m sold on it. The agnotology paradigm seems to make sense to me.
It makes sense to me
[…] blog commentator PSR posted this comment on the blog yesterday, responding to my lament on falling standards in public life. I think it worth sharing more broadly as the idea referred to – of agnotology – makes a lot of […]