Yesterday's sacking of Nadhim Zahawi by Rishi Sunak following an investigation by the prime minister‘s ethics adviser tells us more than any of those three people might like.
The ethics advisor, Sir Laurie Magnus, played a minor role in this episode, because it turns out that Zahawi's tax affairs were not within the scope of his inquiry. All that he was allowed to investigate were the attempts that Zahawi made to cover up the fact that he was subject to HMRC investigation. That was, however, enough to suggest multiple breaches of the Ministerial Code, but it also suggests how sensitive Sunak is to any issue relating to tax avoidance.There are issues that he would rather not address, and this is clearly one of them.
But this was not all that the episode had to say about Sunak. He said when appointed that he would lead a government based upon integrity and competence. Anyone seeking to contrast himself with his immediate predecessors had to say that. What is now clear is that this was not true.
Sunak was warned about Zahawi's tax affairs many months ago and took no apparent action. The issue was in the press from last July, and he ignored the warnings. Sunak's willingness to overlook what must, to him, have looked like routine risk taking to manage tax affairs is a powerful indication of how far removed from the normal experience of life of almost all those he governs our prime minister really is. His judgement must be questioned, simply because he has not got the life experience to form the judgements that his position requires. As ever, the Tories chose the wrong person for the job.
So, what about Zahawi? There is literally nothing that arises from this episode that speaks to his credit. For months he claimed that he was not subject to a tax investigation. Let me assure you, if you are subject to such an investigation you most definitely know that to be the case, not just because HM Revenue & Customs spell it out very clearly in the correspondence that they sent to you personally, but also because any even vaguely competent tax advisor would also make clear the significance and reality of that issue to any client whose affairs were subject to enquiry.
In that case Zahawi's denial speaks either of a man who is ignorant, or stupid, or who was so keen to deceive that he will even deceive himself in pursuit of denial of the truth. One of those things, must have been true, or alternatively he was simply not telling the truth. It has to be said that the ethics advisor recognised the last: he questioned his honesty.
Without it mattering which of these possibilities, unattractive as they all are, was true what we also know is that Zahawi was willing to use the law to try to oppress others who were telling the truth. He threatened litigation against anyone who questioned his tax affairs. He said that the press was smearing him. He even continued with this line after he was sacked, making clear that his failure to silence the press was the only regret that he had with regard to this matter.
In my opinion this is the clearest indication of the crisis that we now have with the people now in government in this country. Not only are many of them, like Sunak, out of touch with reality, many others are, like Zahawi, unable to realise that they are not in public office to advance their own self interests.
The very nature of public officeholding requires the person in it to be held to higher account than they might be otherwise. Zahawi used his very best efforts, and fortune, to try to prevent this. It was his wish that the press be silenced.
There are, of course, political creeds that endorse the silencing of the press, opposition, and all comment on those in power. None of them are attractive. All are anti-democratic . None respect the fact that the media is an essential component of a free society.
Zahawi clearly had no such sentiment about the press:He clearly thought it was their job to leave him alone whatever he might do. By this action he revealed his political preference, which seems to be wholly opposed to accountability. The failure of the prime minister or his ethics adviser to address this aspect of the affair only adds to the concern that we should feel about it.
If Labour, as the official opposition in this country, is to appropriately react to the harm we has done by this affair there are two issues that it needs to address. One is tax avoidance, and I will deal with that in a separate comment. The other is a libel laws.
As anyone who goes anywhere near publishing on current affairs knows, the risk of being sued for publishing what you honestly believe to be the truth is very high in the UK, and much higher than it is in almost any other equivalent so-called democracy. The burden of proof in the UK lies upon the person making the comment. The public interest defence for making comment is extremely hard to win in a UK court. The accused need only say that the accuser was wrong, and is not obliged to prove it: the demand for proof falls upon the person making the suggestion.
The consequence, as we will know, is a very large numbers of stories that should be published if we are to hold those in power to account never see the light of day. As a consequence abuse takes place. And this whole situation is compounded by the fact that those in power do, very often, happen to have considerable wealth with which they can defend their position and those making the accusations do not. As a consequence the hierarchies of power in this country are reinforced by our libel laws.
In my opinion Zahawi is unfit for public office. He can disagree, but he cannot dispute my opinion. However, when it comes to facts he can still challenge anything that I and others might say knowing full well that he has his wealth on his side as a means to secure our silence, which he so obviously desires. If we are to have a proper democracy this has to change. Those who are seeking to honestly hold to account those who hold public office must be able to do so without fear of being ruined for simply having told what they believe to be the truth.
We will know if Labour is in favour of upholding a free press, truth and democracy if it says in response to this sacking that it will change the libel laws if and when it gets into office. Like many others, I am watching them.
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Yet another dishonest and discredited Tory Minister exits. Others remain in role. If Zahawi had a moral compass he would resign as an MP. There is an insightful article by John Harris about Tory sleaze in the Guardian today.
We need it to be mandatory that MPs disclose a full 5 year’s (say) tax returns. We have only to look across the Atlantic to see the necessity of this this. If MPs don’t wish to be open and honest then don’t stand for the job.
This and any similar circumstances should automatically trigger a by-election. How fair is it on his constituents that they should be asked to suffer him, a man deemed by his own party to be so dishonest as to be unworthy of office, as an MP for the next couple of years? How can he function in his role? The answer is he can’t, and the mechanism needs to exist to propel him automatically from all and any public offices, for good.
I am suspicious of tax lawyer Dan Niedle’s role in this. He has always been Right wing. Was this a setup by Johnson to get revenge on Zahawi?
No
And Dan is a Labour supporter, albeit definitely on the right of the party
But I doubt he worked with Tories on this
A good piece by Nesrine Malik on how the British elite has morphed from landed gentry to today’s financial high rollers
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/30/england-old-boys-club-zahawi-wealthy-network
Agreed
Malik’s reference to the nineteenth century writer on corruption, John Wade (1788-1875), nd his observation that: “Government has been a corporation, and had the same interests and the same principles of action as monopolists.”.
It is older that thet, and we can find a better high-level source; the Scottish Judge, Lord Braxfiled, in his summation to the jury in the trial for sedition of Thomas Muir (1765-1799) in 1793, made this candid statement on the nature of Government in Britain: “A government in every country should be just like a corporation; and, in this country, it is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented”.
It had, however changed more even than Braxfield realised; the City of London and the power of finance had long established more than a foothold in the structures of power. The monopoly is exercised by a network of interests; dominated by the power which money uniquely can focus with laser precision to fixing recalcitrant problems (small or large as required). The network does not only determine outcomes, but only because it is a network brough together to exercise power, ensures it establishes ‘the culture’, and determines what behaviour is acceptable, and even what counts as ethicl standards. We have been re-creating this rotting structure in Britain (all you do is repaint over the rot to give the impression that the smell of the new is sufficient to persuade us the air is fresh); and refucing to smell the stench beneath: for a long, long time.
I really hope we get a change in the libel laws but won’t hold my breath.
I’m not convinced a lot of the media really care about it mainly because it is used by their allies to crush people they have a joint interest in silencing. (Plus major outlets do so little investigative journalism anymore they don’t really think it’s as much of an issue for them)
Yes you’ll see Private Eye bang on about it a lot and the odd piece in The Guardian but that’s it.
And the reality is a lot of the media have made liberal use of the same libel laws.
If you work for a major outlet then you will get support over stuff like this, whether to fight it or to pursue your own libel case. It’s the smaller outfits such as yourself that are most at risk (Dan Neidle showcasing this exact thing)
It always saddens me to see liberal media types bemoan the rampant lawfare in this country then turn around and cheer on a colleague or celebrity they like absolutely crushing some minor blog writer or twitter account.
The media are largely client media these days, offering overt or sometimes disguised PR for their corporate masters. I include the Guardian and Private Eye in this. I’m sure the Guardian and deeply suspicious that Private Eye simply offer up token sacrifices on occasion to keep a gullible public convinced justice is being done and will be done and we should therefore go about our business down the mines and up the chimneys in good cheer when it absolutely isn’t.
I think you ate very cynical
But I also think cynicism is required
It isn’t just cynicism. The BBC has just reported this on its news website: “A review of the BBC’s reporting of government financial policies has said it is not biased towards one particular political position, but ‘there are things that put impartiality at risk’.”
The BBC report goes on to argue, ‘There are weaknesses due to “gaps and assumptions’, which ‘can lead to output that appears to favour particular political positions’, it said. It added: ‘Curiously these lean left and right. That makes a charge of systematic political bias in this area hard to sustain.'”
Remarkably they go on to confess the following: “‘We did not find evidence of wilful bias, but breaches of broad impartiality can arise nevertheless. For example… we think too many journalists lack understanding of basic economics or lack confidence reporting it. This brings a high risk to impartiality. In the period of this review, it particularly affected debt. Some journalists seem to feel instinctively that debt is simply bad, full stop, and don’t appear to realise this can be contested and contestable.’ Several such assumptions ‘seem to lurk like this either unnoticed or uncorrected’, they added.” And then goes on, “Others that outsiders observed in BBC coverage were: ‘more public spending is good’ and ‘tax cuts are good.'”
I will pass over the fact that the BBC seems to me to allow too many mere Lobbying operations, representing highly biased sources, to parade on the BBC as if they were founts of speciailist intellectual or academic wisdom. This is quite outrageous, and probably is not the fault of journalists alone.
Part of the reason for this fiasco is that journalists do not seems to realise, or do not wish to expend the required effort to understand the serious weaknesses in the discipline of economics (especially on money), and too easily take economists at face value, by providing ‘economics’ with an intellectual credibility that the state of the discipline frankly does not deserve.
I am reading this as part of my evening entertainment
I sent an email to my MP about point 7 of the ministers private interests. The response I got today was that MPs are not bound by the freedom of information act. That needs changing as well, if it is true.
If it is true, how did we get so much information about Zahawi?
That was sown to Dan Neidle , who stuck his neck out
Just seen this
I think it has some relevance to the theme as it is about the accuracy of a free press
web page Review of BBC economic coverage finds concerns but no systematic coverage
quote They wrote: “We did not find evidence of wilful bias, but breaches of broad impartiality can arise nevertheless.
“For example… we think too many journalists lack understanding of basic economics or lack confidence reporting it. This brings a high risk to impartiality. In the period of this review, it particularly affected debt.
“Some journalists seem to feel instinctively that debt is simply bad, full stop, and don’t appear to realise this can be contested and contestable.”
Several such assumptions “seem to lurk like this either unnoticed or uncorrected”, they added. “Others that outsiders observed in BBC coverage were: ‘more public spending is good’ and ‘tax cuts are good.'”
There is more. But many of us have long noted the BBC does not give us the full picture and seem to support government positions, or, at least, does not challenge them.
Thankfully we have this blog. To misquote the sixties sit com it may not have the width (of reach ) but it has the quality. You have to be a bit old to recognise the quote.
I will be reviewing this
Thanks Ian
Next Tory to be sacked? Not an MP, unfortunately, but high up in the party hierarchy and should know better.
https://leftfootforward.org/2023/01/tory-party-treasurer-is-raking-it-in-from-russian-oil-industry/