{"id":89839,"date":"2026-02-07T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=89839"},"modified":"2026-02-07T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T08:01:00","slug":"how-can-we-maintain-the-right-to-hold-the-powerful-to-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/02\/07\/how-can-we-maintain-the-right-to-hold-the-powerful-to-account\/","title":{"rendered":"How can we maintain the right to hold the powerful to account?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a slight sense of being overwhelmed this morning.<\/p>\n<p>We have lived through a tumultuous week.<\/p>\n<p>Through it all, attention has been paid to the wrong things.<\/p>\n<p>Mandelson is not the victim here, as he implies <span style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">in a notice issued to the press yesterday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenational.scot\/news\/25834517.full-secret-notice-peter-mandelson-just-sent-uk-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">which The National published<\/a><\/span>\u00a0despite explicit instructions not to do so. Mandelson enabled his own fate.<\/p>\n<p>So, too, did Keir Starmer. His claim that he was conned is as laughable as Mandelson's demand for privacy. Starmer knew what he was doing. He showed indifference to the victims of Epstein by apppinintg Mandelosn. All the links were known. He revealed his indifference through his actions. Ignore his words.<\/p>\n<p>And to shift scene, let's also be clear that Trump revealed through his actions this week, by portraying the Obamas as monkeys, his own deep-seated, innate and politically charged racism, which he also denied, saying people had misunderstood him.<\/p>\n<p>The reality is that no one misunderstands anything here.<\/p>\n<p>Powerful (but clearly morally inadequate) men want to play the game of power for their own advantage and then plead immunity from responsibility for the consequences. That is what we are seeing. And what they obviously still think is that they can get away with it.<\/p>\n<p>What is also clear is that whilst they might have done so at one time, precisely because most of the 'fourth estate', or mainstream media, is too spineless to hold anyone to account for what they do any more, social media is not, and that is where the anger has swelled.<\/p>\n<p>The need for this alternative media has never been stronger. Without it, the corruption we can all see would be very much worse.<\/p>\n<p>But then ask three questions.<\/p>\n<p>First, who owns most of the social media platforms?<\/p>\n<p>Second, how easy would it be to turn them off?<\/p>\n<p>Third, when is that likely to happen?<\/p>\n<p>The link between people, politics, power and accountability hangs by a perilous thread right now. It is that threat that I find overwhelming. Those who might politely be called the bastards are so close to winning because can we really rely on the Tech Bros to let us critique what is happening in the political sphere? I don't think so. Bezos is already gutting The Washington Post. These people will seek to gut social media next.<\/p>\n<p>And that's one reason why I continue to blog independently of other platforms, and might need to think about where I host this site. I need to preserve the opportunity to publish for as long as possible. The noise from social media, which might just be all we have to hold the powerful to account, has to be preserved in a perilous world. My question is, how do we ensure that happens?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a slight sense of being overwhelmed this morning. We have lived through a tumultuous week. Through it all, attention has been paid to<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/02\/07\/how-can-we-maintain-the-right-to-hold-the-powerful-to-account\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,14,106,235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-corruption","category-politics","category-politics-for-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89840,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89839\/revisions\/89840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}