Boris Johnson claimed yesterday that the UK is not remotely corrupt. The guffaws of disbelief could be heard all around the press conference to which he made the comment. The media has clearly decided that the time has come to expose the sleaze in which many members of this government appear happy to participate. But, parliament and the activities of one party within it, are not (as yet) sufficient indication to suggest that a country is really corrupt. Is there other evidence to support the case?
The answer is that there is, of course, plenty of such evidence. Let me offer just three examples, all of which indicate that corruption is systemic, which as far as I am concerned is the key indicator required to conclude this argument.
The first batch of evidence comes from the systemic bias within legislation over the last decade in favour of those with wealth, whilst penalising those who have to either work for a living, or who depend upon the state for their income because of their inability to work, much which is beyond their own control. Austerity it was a code name for this attack, but there were, of course, particular incidents, from the bedroom tax, to the cut of £20 per week in Universal Credit. These, though, were the highlights: behind the scenes there was the steady cut in social services and the withdrawal of care, most especially in people's homes, and the cut in the funding for all those services on which people with just enough income to make ends meet relied, from education, to healthcare to social infrastructure. Everything was designed to squeeze living standards, while simultaneously, as I noted recently, there has been a systematic programme to boost the well-being of the wealthy.
Inequality in the UK has not risen by chance. It has increased because of a deliberate policy. There is a deliberate plan to increase the wealth of a few whilst oppressing many. If that is not a programme of corruption, I do not know what is.
Second, whilst this has been going on there has been another systematic programme, which has been of underfunding our tax authority. Over many years HM Revenue and Customs has seen its number of staff reduce, its offices close, its support to those who need help reduced, and its ability to retain staff capable of undertaking complex tax audits reduced significantly. The consequence has been all too apparent. Those with wealth are subject to substantially less scrutiny now than they were in the past. The Board of HMRC has, since the time of its creation and the time that it adopted a structure that mimics that of a private corporation rather than a public service, been responsible for overseeing this programme which is focused much more on tackling benefit fraud that it is on collecting the proper tax due by those with wealth. The fact that tax is still used as a mechanism for attracting inward investment to the UK via, for example, what I consider to be the deeply racist domicile rule, only exacerbates this political corruption of the tax system of the UK. The absence of effective taxes on wealth simply reinforce this. This too is systemic corruption.
Third, there has been, despite government claims to the contrary, a significant increase in the corporate opacity of the UK. When I began my accounting career every company had to declare who owned it. Admittedly, the names given were those of the legal, and not the beneficial owners but they had to be supplied. In addition, a full set of audited accounts had to be put on public record. Over the last 30 years this has changed, with Labour being as much to blame in this case as the Tories, but with the process having advanced considerably in recent years. Over 90% of companies in the UK are not now audited. The same number do not need to file a full set of accounts on public record, and most do not, meaning that they can avoid disclosing anything about their trading activities, and usually do. What is more, whilst companies are now required to disclose the beneficial ownership of their shares that is only the case for holdings of greater than 25%. It does not take a great deal of ingenuity to find a way to structure a company so that no one appears to own more than 24.9%, and then no disclosure on ownership is made at all. We have, as a result, gone seriously backwards since David Cameron made his commitment to greater corporate transparency. Such is the way of corruption doublespeak. And in the meantime, the tax rates of companies have tumbled as their share of overall income in society has increased. Those who can capture the benefits of society for their own gain are doing so, and increasingly unaccountably.
Johnson's government's corruption matters. It is indicative though of a much greater problem that has existed for the last decade of Tory rule. This is a party dedicated to securing benefit for a few at cost to the many, and which wishes to do so unaccountably. All that is becoming apparent is that this is the case, and extends deep into our hierarchies of power.
So, is the UK corrupt? All the evidence suggests that under Conservative rule that is exactly what it is. The real question is whether anything will be done about it. It is time that the electorate were very angry but that is not apparent, as yet.
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At least the word “corruption” is replacing “sleaze” and at least there were “guffaws of disbelief” at the denials of corruption.
Broad recognition of the problem is a start.
I agree Clive, at last the weasly, cowardly use of language to describe this government is beginning to change. Just as I’ve always been annoyed by people calling Johnson ‘Boris’, or ‘Bojo’, which is buying into his BS ‘clown’ schtick, so I’ve been infuriated by the refusal, unti very recently, of the opposition, most of the press, the Beeb, and too many of the electorate to call a spade a spade when it comes to this government.
It was great when Dawn Butler stood up in the Commons and called johnson ‘liar’. Starmer and Labour are actually now saying ‘corruption’ instead of sleaze, (which is too weak a word to desribe this government). A pity it’s taken so long for the penny to drop.
Thank God for organisations like The Good Law project to whom I now make a regular donation for revealing the corruption behind the awarding of huge PPE and other contarcts to companies due solely to said companies links to the Consevative party.
The problem of course is we are now suffering the consequences of this corruption. Listening to The today program this morning the situation with the NHS is terrifying; even life critical calls are taking hours to answer and ambulances are queueing for hours.
Why? Because Covid hasn’t been got rid of, winter is always a tough time for the NHS, and, very importantly, there’s a huge backlog of cases due to Covid. And one of the many reasons for this government’s failure to properly tackle Covid was the corruption and nepotism involved in handing out contracts for PPE and the risible Track and trace system, from which some people will have got very rich indeed.
“Whether anything will be done about it?” I think we all know the answer to that.
All I can say is ‘well said’.
We’ve been aping the U.S. for far too long, although I suspect that the project to roll back the promises made from 1945 started as soon they got rid of Clem Attlee.
You can attribute the ‘double speak’ you mention to our friends in the MPS – no doubt about that.
But for now, the bogey man is still ‘the extreme left’ when in fact I think too few know that it is extreme wealth that’s the problem.
Yes – this is a corrupt country, in a corrupt world corrupted by extreme wealth.
Any system where billions of pounds goes missing, and yet no-one who had that money in their keeping went to prison as a result AND where those who had nothing to do with this have to suffer the consequences can only ever be corrupt and beyond redemption.
I agree wholeheartedly.
A further example, although it is close to the second point raised by Richard, is the continued maintenance of a third of he world’s tax havens. The existence of them is not per se illegal, their maintenance in the face of what the economy is experiencing and what a majority of the people are experiencing – benefit cuts and raised NI, makes it undoubtedly corrupt.
I decided it was getting too long to add them in….
Of course it’s always possible that Johnson & Co really don’t see it as corruption or even sleaze. More a case of them getting what is theirs by right of birth.
Their moral compasses only have one direction – marked ‘ME’ – and the needle always points directly to it.
Pilgrim, there are 185 acronyms using MPS. Which one do you mean?
The Mont Pelerin Society Ken – a pro-active group of Neo lib agitators, ultra Liberals and rather unhinged market idealists assembled in the post war period who hatched a plan to hobble States from delivering a better world for their citizens and enabling the rich to call the shots.
The Tory’s constant undermining of our institutions is profoundly concerning.
The rigged appointment process for the new Chair of media regulator Ofcom.
“an interview panel deemed Mr Dacre “not appointable” just a few months ago.
But that’s not stopping ministers, who are now shamelessly pushing to appoint Mr Dacre by adjusting the requirements of the role and re-running the recruitment process with a different interview panel. The ad for the role now includes an amended person specification, from which the requirement for the Chair to work “collegiately” has been removed.
Dacre is being allowed to reapply, even in the face of calls for him to be banned from doing so by a number of Conservative MPs.
https://goodlawproject.org/news/paul-dacre-a-rigged-appointment/
Thank goodness for Jolyon
With a totally subdued media, BBC utterly cowed, privatised Channel 4 etc etc under Dacre I don’t think Jolyon will be heard by anyone other than those who subscribe to the Good Law Project. I expect the law will be changed to ensure bloggers come under Dacre’s jurisdiction, and complaints orchestrated.
This is the ultimate corruption. Tell me that Johnson and his backers don’t have a plan to ensure permanent rule.
Much like Trump has ensured with his appointment of rightwing judges, America will be unable to return to any sort of decency, so it is with the UK.
I do often wonder for how much longer I might be able to write this blog?
I have a slightly different definition of corruption.
It seems to me that the sole duty of any government is to ensure the safety, security and well-being of its citizens. How that should be done is a political decision. Making decisions about whether it should be done and which specific people should be protected while others are exposed, is corruption.
That is what we have had now for too long.
A very fine analysis, primarily because it deals directly with the core propaganda tool that political policy is not, of itself, corrupt, because it is the consequence of a lawful process by an elected government and the SOCIAL consequences are merely matters for public debate. It has always been important for the elite to relegate morality and ethics to a secondary role and, above all, to label them aspirational or, at worst, utopian. We would all like a fairer society, but you have to live in ‘the real world’. It is said directly in just those terms, but it is always present as the underlying narrative. In the long term, this tactic (strategy?) induces public acceptance, from which we get “they’re all the same”, “that’s how it is” and “there’s nothing you can do about it”. In other words, it produces the ultimate enemy of democracy, APATHY.
What MMT does is to provide a LOGICAL and achievable means to place social consequences at the heart of the engine of all social consequences, the economy. That is why it is deeply subversive politically, because it threatens directly extreme wealth disparities and it is wealth disparities that all of the policies you analyse are designed to protect and enhance. Choosing examples like you have illustrates this, but it is important to bear in mind you could have selected a dozen other similar policy areas. Anti-union legislation, shrinking the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency and virtually abolishing legal aid are obvious examples. The strategic objective is identical, an unregulated environment in which wealth and power can be wielded arbitrarily without transparency and the accountability that is the ultimate enemy of privilege.
Good morning Richard. Your comment “I do often wonder for how much longer I might be able to write this blog?”
Not wishing to add to your worries but (as before) I have to mention the plight of your fellow blogger Craig Murray. Craig is still languishing in Saughton jail; incarcerated on the pretext of ‘jigsaw identification’ when accurately reporting Alex Salmond’s defence case in that politically motivated prosecution. I’m sure Craig would appreciate it if your readers were to show solidarity with him via the excellent EmailaPrisoner.com website. His (political) prisoner number is 157095 in HMP Edinburgh. Unfortunately, Craig has to handwrite replies so I’ve compromised by not requesting a response to the mundane drivel that I write. Not having access to a computer is only one of the many indignities inflicted on someone who has been a tireless critic of corruption wherever it is found. I much appreciate your writing but…take care, Richard. Awrabest, Ron Arnott.
I see no link between my situation and Craig’s
I do think he was foolish in taking the risks he did, and it was not the right hill to die on, to use a metaphor
I have never been much persuaded by him; his actions confirmed my opinion of poor judgement
Here is the Good Law Project’s take on this.
TIME TO STOP THE ROT
The UK may be the only democracy in the world without a written constitution – a ‘higher’ law or code to which all others must conform.
Until now, we haven’t seen the need for binding rules. We’ve relied on self-restraint. We’ve trusted politicians to behave themselves. We’ve assumed that only ‘good chaps’ – as Lord Hennessy memorably put it – will rise to high office. And those good chaps won’t need to be told how to behave. Being good chaps, they will know what the rules are and they will obey them.
But what happens if the people running the show aren’t good chaps?
What you get is what we have. Bullying of regulators. Stacking of boards. Challenges to the independence of the media. Criminalising civil protest. Restricting the right to vote. Attacking the independence of MPs. Challenging the judiciary, curtailing its powers and reversing its decisions. Abandoning the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. There are well-sourced rumours of political interference in operational policing decisions. And, let us not forget, we have a Prime Minister who unlawfully suspended Parliament.
All of this is before we start on the tidal wave of sleaze engulfing the Government: VIP lanes for the politically connected; vast payments to politically connected middle-men; procurement fraud going uninvestigated; failures to declare conflicts of interest by MPs; and the misleading of Parliament by the Prime Minister.
Sitting above all of this is a set of problems, arising not so much from how some politicians behave but from how the world now is. Our politics feels more divided. We seem to have less in common, and the idea we all want the same things for the country feels less secure.
The truth is, the world our rules were made for no longer exists.
What does this mean for the idea that Parliament is supreme – has absolute power? Is this conception of democracy consistent with a first-past-the-post system that can, and often does, give unconstrained power to a Government with a minority of the popular vote? And if MPs are coerced into voting with the Government, who gets to play the constitutional trump card of Parliamentary supremacy? MPs accountable to voters, or the Executive?
At the heart of all of this is a simple truth: you don’t need a constitution to protect you against good chaps because they’re good chaps, and a constitution that can’t protect you against bad chaps is no constitution at all.
Meanwhile, what remains withers and weakens. What is left is less and less able to command public confidence. Trust in politics – and ultimately in democracy – is the victim.
A responsible Government would respond with a process for a new British Bill of Rights. A smart Opposition would demand one.
https://goodlawproject.org/news/time-to-stop-the-rot/
If only we had a smart opposition
I guess we’ll have to wait and see whether Labour can redeem itself when the conclusions of Keir Starmer’s Constitutional Commission (led by Gordon Brown) are published.
Given Brown’s predisposition against the people of Scotland do not hold your breath
A fair comment, we can but hope.
One need not look any further than the county you live in Richard for corruption. It’s not just in Cambridgeshire CC that corruption exists, it’s systemic in many local authorities.
Private Eye Rotten Boroughs Issue 1560 12 Nov – 25 Nov 2021
Cambridgeshire county council. like many other local authorities, is under severe financial
pressure. But the the Council’s beancounters and with the approval of auditor EY have come up with a nifty way to make the authority’s balance sheet look much healthier than it is
In draft accounts for the financial year 2020- 21 , CCC counts among its “income” £200 million of central government grants under the City Deal programme which is intended for infrastructure projects under the umbrella of the Greater Cambridge Partnership. Alas, this overstates the council’s income for the year by, er, £160m. The City Deal money is due to be paid in £40m tranches every year until 2024-25.
The government’s new Leveling Up department doesn’t want to pay it all in one go: reasonably. it wants to monitor progress year by year to ensure the money is spent wisely. Only the first £40m of the £200m had been received by the end of the financial year in
March. There is no guarantee the other £160m will be paid at all.
This is a deliberate misinterpretation of the code of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa ) by which public bodies are supposed to abide. It ignores the fundamental accruals concept of accounting explicit in the code – That is matching revenue to the period to which it relates. One accountant consulted by the EYE said: “lt’s like a person on a £30.000 salary inflating it by a factor of five before completing a loan application because he wants to borrow a large sum or money he cannot afford to repay. It’s no good saying that he expects his employer to pay his salary for the next five years, then asserting that his annual income is £150,000.
Another accountant with long experience of public finance said: “This is blatantly
wrong. I can understand the enthusiasm of the auditors to go along with this given the consequences in relation to ·going concern’ are likely to be significant. That does not excuse their behaviour though. The matter should be referred to the Financial Reporting Council – the auditors have failed in their duty of “professional skepticism”.
The council’s comprehensive statement of income and expenditure for 2020-21 reveals a deficit of £ 18.4 million- but that includes the non existent £160m in the plus column. Take that away and the Council’s actual deficit is revealed as an eye-watering £178.41m. No wonder they needed to cook the books!
I need to read more about this…..
Richard, you wrote, ‘Over 90% of companies in the UK are not now audited.’ Did you mean the accounts of over nine-tenths of UK companies are not audited, or that they do (must, surely?) audit their accounts but are no longer required to make them publicly available via Companies House? Clarification would be welcome.
Over 90% are biot audited
There is no audit requirement for small companies
This thread is a bit old and this comment might not be read by anyone…… but I loved this letter in the Guardian today.
Some jobs are not just jobs….. and being an MP is, I think, on that list.
“As a newly ordained curate, in receipt of a stipend, it was made clear to me that I was not being paid to do a job: I was being paid so that I didn’t have to do another job (Letters, 11 November). MPs with ears to hear, let them hear!
Rt Revd John Saxbee