As I mentioned yesterday, I put out a series of questions relating to corruption on Twitter over the last 24 hours. I retweeted the opening tweet four times during the day. The polls are still open as I write (just) but by this morning more than 3,000 people had voted, slightly to my surprise as I had not tried doing anything like this before.
I rather hoped that when designing the questions I was not too leading, but I have to accept that my Twitter audience may not be representative of all of society. Nonetheless, the overwhelming evidence of strong, and very consistent opinion on some issues was clear indication of real concern. This was especially true when a couple of questions were deliberately included in the hope of showing that consistency was unlikely on all issues, which proved to be the case.
The opinion that our government is corrupt seems to be overwhelming:
The consensus would appear to be that we have a corrupt government and that this is the responsibility of the Prime Minister.
What seems to also be clear is that people think Covid 19 has been exploited to permit corruption:
That last statistic is worrying: people feel that too little is being done about corruption, although there is a range of opinion on who should be acting.
Jo Maugham comes out of this well but most people do not think we should be relying on crowd sourced law enforcement:
The question on whether corruption was to be found elsewhere got only half the responses of the first question. There was no 'I don't see this problem elsewhere' box because Twitter only allows four choices. I am reading the non-replies as saying that.
There is widespread agreement that the Opposition should be making a big deal of this:
Comments suggest that the 9.2% would never have vote Tory anyway.
So what does this say, given that I stress that this cannot be considered a representative sample, although it may reflect opinion on what might broadly speaking be considered to be the left of centre?
First, this is a big issue.
Second, people are fed up about it.
Third, it has the capacity to seriously hurt this government.
The suggestion that this government is anything but corrupt can, I think, be dropped now. There is widespread belief that it is.
More than that, all political opponents of it should now be saying so, time and again, most especially after yesterday's government whipped vote against a proper inquiry into the Greensill affair.
The government has gifted the reason for its own downfall to its opponents. Now they should take advantage of it.
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Addressing the point “who should do something about it”: parliament, Labour, the media, the police.
Police
As a previous post has shown, the police are, to all intents and purposes, the enforcement arm (bouncers?) of the state. They are and have been institutionally corrupt for decades. They might tackle individual cases of corruption in the body politic (for “a bit fo fun”) but – not widespread ones – for the simple reason: why upset the paymaster.
Parliament
I assume that this was put in as a joke. 80 seat toryscum majority – parliament as currently constituted is functionally incapable of investigating gov corruption, given the 80 seat majority
The media (as seen/experienced by most Uk serfs)
A wholly-owned*/controlled* (*delete one as you see fit) part of the toryscum party. Thus functionally incapable of doing anything.
Labour/Liebour
So far close to silence apart from Starmer asking some questions this week – & non-answers from Mendacious Fat. The problem with Liebour is they have never got their heads around MMT, toryscum have (but not saying) which leaves Liebour in a difficult position – since I doubt if they understand what is going on. Maybe I’m wrong.
The opening sentence could be changed as follows:
“The opinion that the Zimbabwean government under Mugabe is corrupt seems to be overwhelming”
I see no difference, none, between the UK now and Zim under Mugabe: the use of security forces as a means of oppression, control of media, declining output, printing money, rising trade deficit. Yeah ended well in Zim – & the joke is, when talking about MMT, toryscum always wheel out Zim as an example of what happens when you print money. Well this is what they are doing, and the printed money is being used in a grossly unproductive fashion for favoured state clients (snap – just like in Zim) and it will end up in tears.
Mugabe = Mendacious Fat – they both want/wanted to be loved and will use any level of intimidation/force/leverage to make sure they are.
“It’s convenient cover” is surely a derivation of the “Yes” answer, no?
The combined total is still unanimous though.
The answer to the question of who should hold the wrongdoers to account is the crucial one and shows how far down the rabbit hole the abject subjects of this country have been led over the last 40 years.
Duh – the Media gets a low vote!
The fact is that pillar of the State has been fully captured and wrangled into degradation over the decades to the point that it is wholly editorially controlled and staffed in its senior positions by agents of the state and deepstates.
No amount of Limited Hangout , supposed ‘revelations’ , designed to control the narratives can hide the fact that our MSM is utterly shite.
It has no initiative or integrity any more.
It is merely a mouthpiece for Propaganda, Nudge, Scapegoating and plain barefaced Lies under cover of fake ‘personalities’ that we are supposed to trust.
It lost whatever chance it had to be trustworthy by its own sabotaging of the phone hacking Leveson Inquiry and his recommendations being not just shelved but buried with Extreme Prejudice.
To mutilate a quantum physics question – If a tree falls in a forest and no-one hears it does it make a noise?
If we do not hear, see and read our daily totems of ‘trusted’ news with actual investigative news published without Fear or Favour by its own GateKeepers, it does not matter a jot – what a dodgy police inquiry, under a dodgy CPS, with a dodgy DPP that a dodgy Government appointed and works in cahoots with, a dodgy Opposition in a dodgy Parliament with a dodgy Speaker – does.
Labour should note two things:
1) That they have the opportunity to exploit the Tories weakness ruthlessly about this, as they too have had their weaknesses ruthlessly exploited in 2019. Forget about being ‘nice’.
2) Note how the Tories are sticking together? If the Lefties, Blue Labour, Jewish members and God knows who else makes up this malfunctioning, failing party could remember who they are there for and put on a united, unified front then maybe things might change.
Mind you, I won’t be holding my breath.
Labour should “note” only one thing: that their support of the corrupt FPTP voting system is the ONLY thing that lets corrupt Tories into power in the first place.
Ditto inaction on climate, ditto the UK Covid catastrophe, ditto the likely break up of the UK. I could go on an on, but you get the picture.
Labour’s treacherous undermining of our democracy to the almost exclusive benefit of the Tories is the root cause of all these ills. They seriously need to look themselves in the mirror.
I responded to most of your poll questions on twitter, but I found one or two difficult to answer, particularly the one on ‘Should we rely on the GLP to bring the government to account?’. Obviously the answer is ‘No’, because there should be accountability mechanisms in place in our constitution; judicial review should only be one of them. But the mechanisms which exist have no teeth and the government just thumbs its nose at them. Are they even taking any notice of the findings against them in the judicial reviews which the GLP has ‘won? The fiction that the government is self regulating is fed to us.
Some time ago I signed a petition asking Parliament to set up an independent body to oversee adherence to standards in public life. At the 10,000 signature mark this reply was sent to all who had signed:
“Existing measures provide appropriate independence in Ministerial Code investigations, recognising the Prime Minister’s constitutional role in advising the Sovereign on the organisation of Government.
The Prime Minister customarily updates and issues the Ministerial Code upon assuming or returning to office. This reflects the constitutional position that it is for the Prime Minister alone to advise the Sovereign on the appointment, dismissal and acceptance of resignation of other Ministers.
The Ministerial Code sets out the Prime Minister’s expectations as to the standards of behaviour for Ministers. As such, the Prime Minister is the ultimate judge of the standards of behaviour expected of a Minister and the appropriate consequences of a breach of those standards.”
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/561476
It’s laughable, isn’t it? The (corrupt) PM is the ultimate judge of standards…
This is not to say that I disapprove of the GLP at all. I’m am deeply grateful that they are doing a job on behalf of UK citizens which no-one else is ‘able’ to do. And I put my money where my mouth is..
I missed the tweets, and though your Twitter followers are obviously self selecting, it is still utterly damming.
The takeaway for me however is quite how useless the Opposition and the media are on this, or at least how widely this view is shared. The Opposition’s silence and the media’s silence is on the face of it mystifying, and it erodes trust in them just as much HMG’s corruption itself.
Full marks to Jolyon and Richard, but when these (and a few others) are the only people raising their voices on this, we are on a dark place.
All over PMQs and “Have I Got News For You” and The Guardian. Very much a niche market obviously.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/14/pm-struggles-to-keep-head-above-water-as-barbs-from-keir-starmer-pierce-blubber
I doubt the general public has ever heard of The Good Law Project so “82% of respondents thinking it’s doing a Good Job” suggests an extremely niche response.
So?
I become heartily sick of politicians and other corrupt individuals defending themselves by saying that they “complied with the law.”
The law is the bottom line with respect to any action. If you fall below this line then you become a criminal because you have broken the law. However there has to be consideration of the moral position which people in authority and more especially government should be held to account to.
Consequently just saying that you are not a criminal really is not good enough in this situation and as I say these people should be held to a much higher standard.
Only snag with the last sentence is that there IS no opposition.
My opinion of the Labour party is the same as my opinion of the Conservative party.
Both are corrupt to the core, the system is built to be corrupt, to continue that corruption, and to punish those who fail to join in with the corruption.
Should Labour ever form a government again in England, nothing will change.
The Tories have shown the way, Labour will follow. There may, perhaps, be a little more scrutiny from the press, since the majority is Tory owned/controlled, but probably not.
The only glimmer of light on the horizon, in my view, is that when Scotland becomes independent, the English press will be all over anything that even hints of corruption, to prove that Scotland cannot make it, and to show others (Wales) the folly of ‘going it alone’.
This will hopefully keep Scottish politicians slightly more honest, for a few years at least…but, all power corrupts etc…