No one of sound mind can, I think, work out the reasoning of Lord Geidt when deciding to very largely exonerate Boris Johnson of all charges relating to the funding of the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat in letters published yesterday.
By refusing to reopen his original inquiry and by permitting himself to only consider whether his own original work was misleading because he had in turn been mislead by Johnson, Geidt was able to conclude that his original work was probably flawed but could stand only because he was able to conclude at the second time of asking that Johnson had inadvertently mislead him because he had changed his phone and so apparently forgotten events that any reasonable person could have recalled and was thus not guilty of misconduct even though if he had been candid in the first instance he would have been so.
And if you think that sentence convoluted, so was Geidt in what seemed to me his determination to absolve the Prime Minister from blame. When a person appointed to uphold ethics wriggles in that way it appears that signals are actually, and maybe inadvertently, being sent that something is profoundly wrong with the ethics actually being evidenced to be in use.
However, that is not the issue of most concern to emerge yesterday. This WhatsApp exchange has caused most interest:
What was or is The Great Exhibition? No one seems quite sure. But the possibility that some sort of trade or bargain appears to be going on is hard to ignore. Nothing is,of course, proven by messages without context, but reasonable questions can be asked, and we well know that this Prime Minister is unlikely to answer them, or at least honestly. He has, after all, only told falsehoods to parliament five times this week and refused all opportunity to correct matters. The result is that whatever he said we would not probably believe him.
And that is the real issue here. We have a prime minister who lies, persistently. The evidence of that is overwhelming. That he must be aware that he lies is certain, unless of course he is unable to identify a lie, in which case he would be unfit for office in any event. As a result Johnson has reduced the status of politics (which was already pretty low) to the point where credibility ceases to be an issue and it is becoming accepted by some in society that the only reason for holding office is to advance a person's self interest.
I was interviewed by a journalist from the Wall Street Journal yesterday, who asked why I thought the UK's reaction to Covid was so exceptional in a European context. My suggestion was that this was down to the special relationship we have with the USA. The result of that is that we, like the US, seem to now have around 30% of the population who will support a leader whose sole objectives are the maintenance of power for themselves at cost to democracy itself and the due processes associated with it. In the process they are willing to ignore the consequences for society at large since they act only in the interests of a tiny elite. Extraordinarily (unless you are a student of propaganda) they can achieve this by persistently lying, which is exactly what they do. That there is obvious evidence of harmful consequence, even to those who support them, appears at present no impediment to their progress.
The unusual duration of the interview suggested the journalist felt I had opened a rich seam, in which I explored themes around Rand, Hayek, the Mont Pelerin Society and its influence, and more. I felt I had been forced to face a truth. It is that, as President Biden noted yesterday, we face a common existential threat. Quite literally, democracy is in peril, with the risk coming from the deliberate destruction of the truth through the propagation of falsehoods that are intended to undermine faith in the body politic as a whole, aided and abetted by the undermining of due process. Remember that even the rule of law implicit in the power of the jury system has been questioned by ministers this week.
We need to worry. It is widely acknowledged now that the US is teetering in the brink of fascism. But so are we. But are we willing to stop it, or are a rather ugly 30% winning?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
I worry, too.
I am also intrigued by Lord Geidt’s motivation. Why is he so keen to avoid stating the obvious? Is he a genuine public servant (army, royal household etc.) who can’t even entertain the idea that a PM should lie so brazenly… and therefore will always see something else? Does he know the PM is a liar but feels it would be too damaging to the “establishment” to call it out? Or is there another reason?
To the public at large he is now a laughing stock.
Agreed
Geidt will now be seen in the same light as Hutton if the infamous Hutton report. A total whitewash, discrediting the whole process.
Good point
he has written his own footnote in history
40 years ago Lord Denning made his infamous statement to the effect that to believe the “Birmingham Six” you would have to believe the Police committed perjury, were violent, extracted false confessions etc.
The “establishment” protect their own – still.
Richard wrote “No one of sound mind can, I think, work out the reasoning of Lord Geidt when deciding to very largely exonerate Boris Johnson of all charges relating to the funding of the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat in letters published yesterday” and Clive is understandably intrigued by Lord Geidt’s motivation. It seems clear to me (in football parlance) that “he took one for the team”. The Tory party is openly motivated by, infatuated with and profligate with money, just as it is with power. My strong suspicion therefore is that Geidt will be compensated handsomely, either financially or by some other accommodation, for destroying his own reputation and credibility. His career as a public servant is surely damaged beyond repair and any future comments/opinions/actions by him will be seen as untrustworthy and irrelevant.
Well put….
When it was announced the Geidt would review his original report in the light of the (now infamous) WhatsApp message, I commented to a number of people that the actual ‘reinvestigation’ would probably take a day or two, but that coming up with the excuses and a form of words to explain them that still got Johnson off the hook would take several weeks. As you rightly say in your blog, that’s what we now have from Geidt: a whitewash.
The sad and dismaying thing is that everyone can see this is the case. Johnson’s explanation for ‘forgetting’ the message is so ridiculous (given the topic of the exchange) that we can see he’s lying, and again, as you and many others have been highlighting since the publication of the actual exchange between Johnson and Brownlow, worse still (but not to someone like Johnson, obviously), this looks like a quid pro quo exchange (i.e. you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours).
Of course, this further undermines any belief in politics in the country. But then Johnson and the Tory party can look across the ‘pond’ and see that Trump – who lied thousands of times while he was President and continues to do so (indeed, has done his whole life another simil) – continues to poll well amongst Republican supporters and indeed has almost the whole of the Republican Party in thrall to him and his cult of personality).
“Of course, this further undermines any belief in politics in the country.” Agreed, and this undermining is deliberate and ongoing.
Excerpt from the Preface to ‘Democracy and Its Crisis’ by A.C.Grayling (ISBN 978-1-78607-289-4)
“This book is about the failure of the best political system we have: democracy. And it is about how to put it right.
‘Democracy’ has been given many meanings, and the word ‘democratic’ has even been used to describe political systems that are anything but democratic, those typically known as ‘The People’s Democratic Republic of X’. But one system of democracy – representative democracy – was painstakingly thought out and constructed with the aim of making democracy really work, and was applied in almost all of what we think of as the ‘liberal democracies of the Western world’. But in at least two of its leading examples in today’s world, the United States and the United Kingdom, representative democracy has been made to fail. Notice these words: ‘made to fail’. I argue that if the ideas that underlie the concept of representative democracy were properly and transparently applied, democracy would truly be, as Winston Churchill claimed, the least bad of all systems. But it has been made to fail by a combination of causes, all of them deliberate.”
Grayling wrote and published this in 2017, in response to the Trump and Brexit affairs, among others. That Johnson managed to become PM in the first place is a sore indication that the failure of democracy is well advanced.
(Richard: I inadvertently posted one part of my comment before it was complete).
So, continuing on a US theme and where politics in that country is headed now, lies have become an integral part of their politics and party system, and Trump and his acolytes ‘Big Lie’ has undermined the faith of many (40% apparently) in US democracy, it’s worth watching these two clips from last evening’s Rachel Maddow Show. The first is with the historian of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder. The second is about what happened in Congress in 1856 – the beating nearly to death of anti-slavery Senator Sumner by a pro-slavery congressman – and what happened afterwards. There are direct lessons to learnt here about where US politics may go next and they aren’t good. And both clips have relevance to the UK where, as I was taught many years ago, what happens in the US usually happens here five years later.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Thanks
It felt curtailed!
Ivan, Susan Webber aka Yves Smith has a slightly different view of the possible future trajectory of the US. Because most of its institutions are so dysfunctional and many officials so maladroit, although a core of the Republican Party appears to be going the fascist route, she thinks that the US might well become a failed state instead.
So, the scenario we have here is of the UK as a fascist state and the US as a failed one. One question then becomes: How can Europe protect itself?
Very good question with Poland and Hungary in its ranks
Black is the new white.
Is this the first sign that society is breaking down? To maintain their power, they have to move dictatorship to preserve the wealth of those they represent. We have climate change on the horizon, how will they save themselves from that? It appears that those with enough money are indeed off in search of a planet B. Rather than save our lovely planet here – they think they can have something better on a new planet ruled by them! Most people around me are not happy – we have been effectively closed down for 2 years (this time without compensation) and working in isolation with nothing but bad news appearing daily – I wonder what will be the outcome of that? Then covid is again taking so many lives. Some cannot have the covid jab which is not acknowledged anywhere.
Agreed Richard – democracy does seem to be in danger as never before. You highlight the ‘cultural’ front – the glorification of power as in ‘you know I’m lying, I know I’m lying ‘- and thats part of the appeal. But also there seems to be a deadly serious demolition of the remaining few and very frail ‘rules’ that exist in the creaky British constitution. Again, much of it is apparently driven by an organised network with a hub in the U.S. Disenfranchising voters, gerrymandering boundaries, undermining the judiciary, criminalising journalists and peaceful demonstrations , planting political placemen in supposedly independent institutions, etc etc.
It has long been recognised that the system only works if politicians are ‘good chaps’- a Royal Commission, or ‘Beveridge’ – type reports are presumably not feasible .
A discussion about the German constitution concludes ‘A strong
constitutional framework that secures an effective separation of powers, protects an independent judiciary and enables democratic participation is able to endure attacks as long as the foundational belief in democracy endures’.
A folorn hope?
I have to have hope
‘The path to fascism’?
I think we are there anyway don’t you? It’s just that its a very modern British style of fascism isn’t it – none of that vulgar stuff about uniforms, swastikas, marches, brown shirts etc.
No – that’s too honest for us that is. In this State, bad actors can all too easily use the respectable institutions that we have (had?) to have their wicked way with us. Those Hugo Boss SS uniforms – so attractive to the English upper class – are just a little too telling for us. But its also so typical that the Right should warn us about Trotskyist cells here and there whilst they create such cells themselves at the very top of society in their interests.
No, what we English are particularly good at is assimilating things like fascism or neo-liberalism (we get politics like this by subterfuge instead) without anyone really noticing aren’t we and as we are past masters of hypocrisy anyway – especially in a mass-distracted society with its mobile phones, daytime TV and 24/7 You-tube mis-information service.
Hannah Arendt’s view that there is always a section of any national population that is ripe for the ‘banality of evil’ (ably updated by Tim Snyder) I think is spot on and this section of society does not help the progressive cause.
I think that we already there – our NHS and social care services have been operated like concentration camps anyway don’t you think? The concentration camp system was designed to remove all vestiges of humanity from people – to remove status, citizenship, rights etc. The underfunded/Covid wracked NHS has the potential to do the same although it was never designed to do that.
The NHS was supposed to be part of a social insurance system that created a return to the country in the form of healthy, well educated and motivated citizens who would help Britain defend herself and compete and cooperate in the world and deliver a standard of living beyond mere existence. Instead its been turned into a drain on society and become a blunt instrument to deliver increasing disgruntlement with the State to enable increasing privatisation.
In fascist Britain – NEED is a weakness. We are not supposed to need anything from anyone including each other or in our darkest times (as Ayn Rand, the great Fascist philosopher insisted) . Because it means that some other people have to care and do something. Although that phenomenon is far from dead in our wider society, it does not exist in Government because this Government has promised/is intent on giving that sentiment/responsibility away to the market for profit instead.
The army of abused and forgotten people (the precariat) along with a bunch of really well off who can afford to buy themselves out of any problem are what holds us back together with those still blinded by nationalism or aspiration and who should know better. Yes – some people ARE stupid unfortunately. But they are also exploited.
It’s a heady brew. But I think that we already there. The fascists have already arrived. It’s not about stopping them growing. It’s about removing them before they remove us for good. Because they have the capacity to do that.
The other reason why I think Fascism is already here is because of Fascism’s link to wealth generation; German fascism made a lot of German companies/corporations very wealthy – the Nazis were good for private business. When you look at it like that, what other conclusion can you honestly come to when we consider how Covid and BREXIT have been handled?
Corporatism is deeply worrying…
I think the neoliberalism of Hayek et was partly conceived as a way to prevent a recurrence of the totalitarian (inc. Nazi-fascist) disasters of the 20th century – ironic that there is now a pincer movement between Patel-style xenophobic (populist) authoritarianism and a nationalist/religious individualist libertarianism. Both right-wing. Johnson and his brand of post-truth celebrity hubris seems to be an effective lightning conductor for both.
A few years ago Johnson laid a wreath on the Cenotaph upside down. I concede that it is not the most serious offence but the BBC in their reporting of the day’s events, used film of a previous wreath laying.
I seriously question they would have done that for Corbyn, Blackford or Swindon.
We are not just up against a political party but, to use the American term, a deep state too.
Geidt is an employee of the government (one that has been pointed out many times before is susceptible to corruption) so whatever moral or ethical principles he may or may not have, his primary motive for his own future and credibility us to somehow smooch over and underplay the various factors pointing to Johnson’s complete arrogance and brushing off of the charges of misleading the public over the finance of the extravagantly wall papered flat of No 10/11 Downing Street. The only way to have dealt with this problem of ensuring compliance with the “ministerial code” is to have a completely independent and known neutral arbiter to decide on cases. if we had had one other gross avoidance of the code such as Priti Patel’s proven bullying would not have resulted in her and other miscreants still retaining their posts and the resulting forced resignations of senior civil servants. That government ministers are questioning the jury in Bristol letting off the Colston 4 for criminal damage to a statue glorifying a vicious colonialist and slave owner just shows the depth of the ethical vacuum that exists in this government.
The simple fact is that the ministerial code is written by the prime minister and in that case if the prime minister does himself say that he has not breached it then as a matter of fact he cannot have done so because he can always re-write it to exonerate himself with regard to any action that he undertakes. Geidt no doubt knew that and acted within that constraint, but compromised himself forever as a consequence.
I’m working on a paper called representative vs participative (government). The latter being democratic (in the original Greek meaning of the word) the former being open to all sorts of abuse, as the USA & UK have discovered. Deliberate lying is all part of the “representative gov” game. Thinsg will only change once serfs decide enough is enough. However, since gov’s control the levers of violence, change is very unlikely, it would require knowledge on the part of serfs, knowledge that govs are very keen to supress.
On an unrelated and hopefully more light hearted note, Mrs Trussed appeared in a Euractiv article and the temptation to BTL was too great to be ignored. Please don’t drink or eat while reading. (I note that Euractiv is almost the only news outlet that allows stuff like my BTL – none of the UK organ of news allow such stuff which reinforces the points in the previous para.).
https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/britain-warns-russia-over-ukraine-were-working-on-high-impact-sanctions/
Let us know when it is done
Ditto.
I suggest the issue is not so much we have a PM who lies constantly but that we have an electorate stupid enough to elect him. He’ll go away eventually but those gullible voters will still be there. What horrors will they be infliciting on the rest of us next?
There is no evidence that Geidt is struggling with a learning difficulty and yet he is willing to do something so crass and transparently absurd that he really has no concern for his own reputation, since the comment that he is now a public laughing stock is precisely the consequence. This is Animal Farm logic. All pigs are equal, but some are more equal than others. In other words, the arrogance of your own elite’s bubble protects you from the necessity of behaving rationally, leaving behaving ethically entirely off the agenda. It really underlines the pre-fascist state of English politics. The comparison with the US is not merely valid, but a necessary wake up call to the many reasonably intellectual people who still believe this is about political errors of judgment, rather than an orchestrated plan to undermine public belief in democratic institutions.
More to do with protecting the old boy network I’d think. When the going gets tough and you know it’s going to get worse, as it will, it’s time to form the wagons in a circle. Geidt’s done that, and within his clique of overgrown schoolboys he’ll no doubt be congratulated and rewarded for doing what he’s done. What you and I think doesn’t matter, just as, in their eyes, we don’t matter as a class, existing only to be exploited. No-one should be surprised by Geidt’s behaviour, or any similar behaviour to follow.
I do wish we would just try to get on with Russia instead all of this sabre rattling.
Screw the U.S.A – Europe needs to get on with Russia – it’s as simple as that. We should just try to wipe the slate clean, go back to basics , apologise for not helping Russia more sympathetically when the wall came down, admit our mistakes publicly, recognise the trouble our ‘wonderful ideas’ caused them and just try to get on with them.
Believe you me – the Russia that exists today is because of the West’s adherence to bad ideas about economics and a lack I’m afraid of principles as well.
We made contemporary Russia. Now we need to help them re-make it and put it right. And that also starts at home – with us.
We hear today that the attorney-general is minded to appeal the verdicts in the Colston Statue case. This questioning of a jury verdict does, of course, constitute a blatant undermining of a basic principle of the rule of law. No surprise there, then.
We next face the calls voiced most loudly by the MP for Romford, Andrew Rossindell, for daily broadcasting of the national anthem by the BBC, a practice ended with the advent of 24 hour broadcasting. This constitutes a clear example of simple-minded sing-a-song-and-wave-a-flag patriotism for simpletons.
Both of these matters are straight out of the right wing playbook.
Things really are beyond a laughing matter. And a senior lawyer has just observed on C4 News that the proposed curbs on protest in the new Criminal Justice Bill are getting very little attention.
In the words of the song ” There Could Be Trouble Ahead”, particularly if juries acquit protesters on a regular basis.
I can remember a time when the national anthem was played at the end of cinema shows and orchestral performances. In the cinema case there was normally a mad rush to the door between the end of the last film and the start of the anthem. My brother in law is a bassoonist and he always said that the great advantage of his instrument was that you were not required to stand during the performance.
The Lords’ G*I*T’s.
Look at all who have been elevated recently and these who haven’t (nobody raised a petition that raised hundreds of thousands of ordinary people’s signatures to stop the last Speaker of the House automatically getting his peerage – the current Speaker didn’t say a word. I expect he knows he won’t get his if he was as unhelpful to the fascists; yet he finds it within himself to SUPPORT the ex PM getting a major gong a decade after ‘serving’, while filling his boots!)
Clare Fox the arch a Revolutionary Communist ( from university to agit prop to Brexiteer to Lords under Tories who apparently hate Commies – thats a career)
Michelle Mone the racist WhatsApper allowed to get away with it and pocketing millions in Covid spivving.
The whole bunch of Gits.
They are feasting upon our not yet dead Body – yet apparently 30% are too brain dead to notice or care, as they are being consumed.
Its the other 70% i am interested in. Half appear to be equally deluded with the fake choice of Opposition. The other lot have been massaged into apathy and dont vote.
Either we get through to them to be imaginatively subversive or the coup state we live in will happily march us into another hot and cold wars whilst still letting the population being self deluded ‘democrats’.
I came across this book today by Nancy Maclean. Democracy in Chains: the deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America
There is a podcast on Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer on Amazon Music. Well worth listening to her argument in the context of our own increasingly fragile democracy.
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bea0475d-fc51-4ba0-94f6-28181fd38855/episodes/8eba4c81-2f81-42d8-8b73-90b1ba6606b9/PITCHFORK-ECONOMICS-WITH-NICK-HANAUERHOW-THE-RADICAL-RIGHT-WEAPONIZED-IDEOLOGY-WITH-NANCY-MACLEAN?ref=dm_sh_RDZV9R97f42TR1h1mKhmUPupc
—
The book is brilliant
This is a systemic failure not a cultural phenomenon and one which the political establishment in its entirety, both here and in the US and France amongst other places, have been complicit in bringing about.
Richard, for want of a better place to put it, have you seen the Independent Business report today on cost of living quoting a £1660 pa hit on someone earning £30k pa? Seems to be fact based. What recession! Brexit boom here we come!
Half is fuel
NIC could be more than £250
And the rest is food and petrol
Easy to see..
Democracy in this country has always been ‘fragile’ because it was based on restraint by all sides. The Right and the rich not getting too greedy; the Left and the poor not resulting to arms (Clem Atlee asking the men of Stepney (was it?) to ‘calm down’ and break up.
So, each side got their legitimacy from not going too far.
Any pretense of that has now gone particularly on the Right who after 2008 – arguably the final straw in terms of market fiascos – have been fighting a rear guard action because they know the game is up. So now they’ve put all their cards on the table and are playing for keeps. Why pretend anymore? In many ways at least Thatcher moderated Tory policy when she went too far.
This lot – aided by another factor – that of the adoption of Neo-liberal/libertarian theories in the main opposition party – have no idea what moderation means – look at the way they joyfully went about ripping up New Labour’s better legacies – I mean they behaved like unruly victorious thug soldiers who had just broken into the palace, defacing and stealing as they go along.
The Right and their backers have so much to lose – in many ways their reaction is understandable but remains of course unacceptable.
But in many ways the fact that they behave like this and are so extreme is something that we can draw comfort from – they are going down but kicking and screaming and will fight dirty because this is the last of their days.
I don’t know how long this will last, and I suspect our democracy will/has become even more American when you look at how the Tories are funded (the promise of American democracy has been destroyed by money for a long time – it’s a busted flush). But I honestly hold that what we are seeing a result of change already taking place and the rich in particular being threatened by that.
All we can do it cling on I suppose and be in the fight where it suits us.
Would you let us know if/when the WSJ article appears?
I have not seen hint of it…..
Paulhenry, most people have not the time , interest or energy of politics in their lives. But it’s a different matter with the pound in their pockets, so many have little or no wriggle room. The impact of a sharp rise in the cost of living (and devaluation of saving) is going to hit many homes hard. The sight of those increased fuel bills will be a shock to everyone. Someone is going to have to be held accountable. Politicians and the Government will likely find themselves first in line. Who else? Expect unrest.