corruption

Ralph Miliband on Labour’s last year in opposition

But that was in 1963, sixty years ago. Due to some personal reappraisals of my politics, I have been looking at the writing of Ralph Miliband and was pointed at an article he wrote in the run up to the 1964 election, called “If Labour wins”, republished in the New Left Review. I found it worth reading to observe the parallels between then and now. Wilson’s Labour were leading in the polls, the Tories had suffered the setbacks of Suez, and the Profumo affair and replaced a popular and powerful leader with a patrician land owner who was not even an MP arguable a stalemate choice between the then two leading Tory candidates.

This article contains a number of quotes from the article, as they speak for themselves, although of course I can’t help but comment. I have collected the quotes and comments into pieces on culture and comedy, economics, foreign affairs, corruption, campaigning and hope and the Labour left. … …

Going down, the UK’s reputation

Transparency International report that the UK drops five places, in their Corruption Perceptions Index. Daniel Bruce, their CEO, blames public procurement corruption, the questionable and partisan decisions on the levelling up fund grants, the multiple breaches of the ministerial code, and the growing visibility of cash for peerages and the crony funding of the Tory Party.

Daniel Bruce’s comments do not mention the reputation of the Police which will have fallen given the proven criminality in the Police, its growing reputation of a return to institutional racism to which they can now add misogyny as illustrated by the harsh policing of the Sarah Everard vigil, herself a victim of illegal police violence, and the dismissal of the Met Police commissioner for losing the confidence of the Mayor. We can also add their persistent failure to satisfactorily pursue Johnson over the Arcuri affair, other issues of corruption at City Hall and even the slow progress on Partygate.

The last time I looked at this, I said, “ Prof. Daniel Hough also finds it strange that we score so well but observes that TI are mostly interested in public sector corruption and so the cesspit that is the City of London’s money laundromat and the secrecy of the London property markets do not count against the UK’s score.” …

New Britain, new Britcon

Gordon Brown’s Commission on the constitution of the UK has finished its report. Much of the press focus on the proposal to abolish/reform the House of Lords but it is much more comprehensive than that. I originally wondered if in its way it is as ambitious as the Chilean constitution that failed to win approval in 2022. On reading it fully I conclude that it is not. They do however, propose a new constitution, with entrenched individual rights, of health, education and housing and a duty of the state to ensure no-one is poor. For all their controversy in this country, these rights are commonplace around the world. I summarise the report, commenting on parliamentary sovereignty, the devolution settlements, money and cleaning up Westminster, and make a comment on their civil service reform processes. There's more overleaf. ...

Are Transparency International wearing rose coloured specs?

I find it hard to believe that Transparency International, the world's premier anti-corruption campaigning organisation have marked the UK as having improved on 2020 in their most recent Corruption Perception Index and have the UK as within the top 15 countries. So I ask why might this be? This article looks at the issue of lags, TI's focus on the public sector, press bias via ownership, and some private sector scandals. I finish by asking, if they mark the UK so well despite the evidence, how much worse are the others?, ...

Ukraine, war & Britain

I wrote a piece two days ago, focusing on what UK citizens and residents of good will should do about the war in Ukraine but feel I need to clarify.

I congratulate the Ukrainian people and their armed forces for the defence they have put up. It proves to me that the UK, because that is what I know , was fooled by the hybrid war conducted by Russia who weakened the UK’s will to resist its imperial adventures and defend its own democracy. Russia funded the Brexit campaign and much of the Tory Party; Brexit is a massive weakening of the European self defence capability as we can see by the EU’s speed in responding to the Russian invasion compared with the UK’s pedestrian pace. Russia’s propaganda presented us with a view as to the invincibility and overwhelming numeric superiority of the Russian Army. This imbued in some British people, including me, a moral cowardice. This cowardice, equivalent to appeasement in the 30’s will have been reinforced by the moral subversion of NATO due to its US led adventurism in the Middle East.

NATO is the only alliance that can act but to call it a great achievement is hubristic and sectarian overstatement. Today’s NATO is not the same organisation as it was thirty years ago. The need for NATO will be proven if Sweden and Finland seek to join but all its fans need to recognise that the US is not the reliable and generous ally it once was. Trump explicitly questioned the US commitment to Article 5 and Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was not agreed by NATO.

The Ukrainian state is not pretty, it has the 3^rd worst record in front of the European Court of Human Rights, and is judged by the EIU democracy index as a Hybrid State. In terms of both metrics the Russian record is worse. NATO member Turkey is the second most frequent breacher of the ECHR. But the Russian invasion is a war crime which it seems will now be investigated by the ICC. Good!

Throughout this we must not forget the brave Russians who are expressing their opposition to the war.

At home, a government that speaks for me must

Implement effective sanctions
Set up effective and generous refugee acceptance programmes
Purge itself of Russian funded corruption
Develop a defence policy that defends us against real threats not fake ones.

I would add that we should rejoin the EU but that will not happen until it ceases to be a partisan issue, however this will take much less than 50 years. …

What is to done about the Ukraine in the UK

Writing a piece on the invasion of the Ukraine is taking longer than I expected, the big issue is now quite simple, Russia should not have invaded the Ukraine; it’s a war crime and yet the response of British politicians has been, on the whole juvenile, selfish, narcissistic or cowardly. The rest of this article, overleaf looks at the glacial pace of the imposition of sanctions, the corrupt receipt of Russian money, the dreadful defence policies, and a failure to welcome refugees. In addition, I mention the need to offer solidarity to the nascent Russian ant-war movement. I also call out Starmer's über factional and misplaced response. Use the "Read More ..." button for the rest of the article ...

A short history of the British constitution

How have the British ‘improved’ their constitution over the last 100 years. I have a look but conclude with how the Government is riding roughshod over what puny safeguards exist. I look at parliamentary sovereignty, suffrage, the parliament acts, the impact of the EU on the constitution, human rights act, the House of Lords and supreme court, and finally the Prime Minister. I conclude with a sad cry to do better.

Impunity and contempt in Government.

Is it worse under Johnson? The short answer would seem to be “Yes”. None of the controls on Governments are law, they are all based on conventions and Parliamentary Sovereignty means that they are not permanent. (The recent habit of previously prohibited retrospective legislation and emergency parliamentary/legislative schedules also strengthens a Govt. and thus a Prime Minister’s hand.) But, it’s the shamelessness of Johnson and his Government which is the danger to democracy.

Respect for Parliament and politicians had been damaged by the expenses’ crisis but the Brexit referendum and its aftermath further damaged Parliament’s political legitimacy often at the hands of MPs who showed extreme cowardice in the face of the tumbrils pulled by UKIP’s donkeys.

The British people were fortunate that the decision to order the longest prorogue in modern times was able to be overturned by the courts even though the government argued that they didn’t have the power. Parliament also ripped up a further control when the SNP¹ voted in 2019, to agree an election for reasons of sectarian advantage and fatally undermined the fixed term parliament act.

Since the election, there have been number of breaches of the ministerial code, involving money, influence or vote buying. This article from Yorkshire Bylines, dated March 20, details breaches by 11 cabinet members. There have also been an egregious corruption of the procurement process where they are now being pursued by the good law project, with the crowning glory the pursuit of the £37bn spent on a track and trace system that has never worked. The ‘levelling up’ initiative, once called Regional Policy is also the subject of both controversy and legal review being characterised as pork barrel politics.

The current troubles aka partygate were started by Johnson and the Tory Whips’ attempts to rewrite what limited controls remained to save Owen Paterson, once the MP for Shropshire North from sanction for lobbying. The list of breaches is so long that Transparency International are calling for the Ministerial Code to be made law. This government has also has a series of breaches by most publicly Cummings and Hancock, of covid safety regulations culminating in today’s heavily redacted Grey Report, cataloguing 20 inappropriate events while the public could not visit relatives in care.

This impunity is reflected in policy making by Priti Patel as Home Secretary, not only did May kick her out for off-piste foreign policy and breaches of the ministerial code, she was taken to tribunals for bullying and the Home Office is being sued by its own watchdog for breaching the withdrawal agreement as it applied to EU citizens in the UK. This impunity was also shown in the trade negotiations led by Lord Frost with the threats to break the agreement in contradiction to international law and the threats to void the Northern Ireland Protocol.

There is a culture of impunity running through this government, underpinned by Parliamentary Sovereignty, a fake definition of national sovereignty and a party majority in the Commons reinforced by what would seem an unwillingness of the police or other regulators to investigate crimes committed by govt. ministers.

We have no basic law nor it would seem today a police force willing to pursue wrong doing in Whitehall.

ooOOOoo

This was originally written as part of a longer article, but I have decided it doesn’t fit in that article and so here we are.

[1] The SNP gave Johnson a 50% majority in the House, and were quickly followed by the LibDems and then Labour split with many of them voting for the election. There is an alternative view that the FTPA transferred the power to call an election from the PM to parliament and parliament just decided not to go through the vote of confidence, the requirement for a supermajority and a waiting period. …

A step too far?

Johnson’s in a bit of bother, and it’s not his Johnson this time, at least as far as we know. The outrage that has the media’s attention is that he is accused of having said, “No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” This is disgusting but almost as bad is the fact that this has been kept hidden for over 6 months.

When you add to this, the Greensill Fund affair and Cameron’s lobbying, where it seems the Tories are ready to let Cameron hang out to dry, the failed and extortionate priced track and trace system (£37bn and counting), shipping contract to a company without ships, the lobbying for favoured tax status and contract for ventilators to a company that’s never made them, the failure to acquire PPE for NHS staff and many more. To this we can add the creation of a No 10 press suite which they no longer plan to use, the murky finances of the redecoration of the No 11 flat, and the resurrection of the Arcuri affair (narf narf), this Govt. is the epitome of corrupt although it doesn’t seem to have come through in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index yet, although they identify the pandemic as a major global threat for corruption. For more on corruption and impunity see, “Corruption Britain has reached new heights under Boris Johnson’s government” at the New Statesman (£). …

Technology lessons

It seems the police have found insufficient evidence to prosecute Boris Johnson for misconduct in a public office with respect to his alleged relationship with Jennifer Arcuri and decisions taken by the Mayor's Office to support her business. His day-time visits to her home, presumably during working hours, were, it seems, for 'technology lessons'. It seems that some emails seem to be unavailable, possibly in contravention of the Mayor's statutory record keeping rules and duties. The rest of this blog looks at alternative legal approaches to investigating if wrong doing has occurred. It looks at how good good IT Security controls are needed to allow essential audit questions to be answered.

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