{"id":7151,"date":"2023-02-03T12:12:15","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T12:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/?p=7151"},"modified":"2023-02-03T14:37:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T14:37:03","slug":"uk-democracy-in-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/uk-democracy-in-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"UK democracy in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>TI <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transparency.org.uk\/uk-corruption-perceptions-index-2022-score-CPI\">published <\/a>their review of the world in 2022, and the UK falls seven places to join not so salubrious company of <strong>Qatar<\/strong> (-5), <strong>Myanmar<\/strong> (-5), <strong>Azerbaijan<\/strong> (-7) and <strong>Oman<\/strong> (-8).. This is followed by the Economist&#8217;s publication of <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1B2Wte8WnPTOOGzZZEwBkos25aDosGRT6\/view?usp=share_link\">their Democracy Index<\/a>, where the UK maintains its place in the rankings which I find strange. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>I last <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/how-democratic-is-the-uk\/\">wrote about the DI in 2018<\/a>, [ &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/deptford-dave.medium.com\/how-democratic-is-the-uk-cf74178dfa08\">on Medium<\/a> ] and have further notes on <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/measuring-democracy\/\">Measuring Democracy<\/a> on this wiki. The DI reflects the Economist&#8217;s bias and for instance has very few poverty tests, as the being poor is the biggest barrier to political inclusion. Much of the DI uses the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldvaluessurvey.org\/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp\">World Values Survey<\/a> which has just released its 2022 report on the UK. I need to rework my numbers. I <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/are-transparency-international-wearing-rose-coloured-specs\/\">commented <\/a>on last year&#8217;s TI report on my blog where I note it is a lagging indicator and is light on private sector corruption. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Certainly 2022 was not a scandal or corruption free year although wikipedia is light on the subject, so I found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2022\/jul\/01\/scandal-timeline-tory-sleaze-boris-johnson\">the Guardian<\/a>, &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.walesonline.co.uk\/news\/uk-news\/three-years-21-scandals-full-26106331\">Wales Online<\/a>. The Guardian catalogues the Downing St. wallpaper affair, partygate, and the numerous Tory MP resignations and suspensions for sexual misconduct and the article is dated June. The PM&#8217;s ethics advisor, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2022\/jun\/15\/boris-johnsons-ethics-adviser-lord-geidt-resigns-after-partygate-grilling\">Lord Geidt resigned<\/a>, following the resignation of his predecessor over the Braverman bullying affair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On top of this we have Cash for Honours &amp; Cronyism. Evgeny Lebedev, the son of a Russian oligarch and a former KGB officer, was nominated and received a life peerage, and Paul Dacre, the ex-Editor of the Daily Mail was nominated after being rejected on the previous list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have the exposed tax affairs, Rishi Sunak and his wife who had a US Green Card and non-dom tax status respectively, and Zahawi who had to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2023\/jan\/15\/nadhim-zahawi-to-pay-millions-in-tax-after-dispute-over-family-finances\">make a penalty payment to HMRC<\/a> for &#8216;forgetting&#8217; to declare a \u00a327m transfer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s not forget the the now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2022\/jan\/12\/use-of-vip-lane-to-award-covid-ppe-contracts-unlawful-high-court-rules\">famous and illegal PPE fast lane scanda<\/a>l. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The controls are conventions not laws, and even when they are laws, as in partygate, the police seem reluctant to pursue Ministers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>While writing this I looked <a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=list+of+uk+political+scandals+in+2022\">to see how scandal ridden<\/a> the UK was in 2022, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_political_scandals_in_the_United_Kingdom\">the wikipedia article<\/a> has only the Chapman Pincher affair, the Wales Online article could easily act as the source\/citation for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TI published their review of the world in 2022, and the UK falls seven places to join not so salubrious company of Qatar (-5), Myanmar (-5), Azerbaijan (-7) and Oman (-8).. This is followed by the Economist&#8217;s publication of their Democracy Index, where the UK maintains its place in the rankings which I find strange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[140],"tags":[1446,1105,141,181],"class_list":["post-7151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-corruption","tag-democracy","tag-politics-2","tag-uk"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/whitetable-vote-unsplash-brandspeople-cropped.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7156,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151\/revisions\/7156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}