Andrew Rawnsley wrote this in The Observer yesterday:
Once upon a time, Britons would have been astonished and appalled to find scandal simultaneously bespoiling their royal family, prime minister and largest police force. We are less shockable now. There's a good reason, which is that there is much less naive reverence for institutions than there was in the past. There's also a bad reason for our diminished capacity to be scandalised by scandal. We have become wearily accustomed to seeing the public trust betrayed. Where once jaws would have dropped, grotesque misconduct in public life often provokes no more than a fleeting furore or a resigned shrug. That makes us part of the problem, too. When we expect to be let down, we settle for further decay. The British won't get better service from their institutions until they start demanding it and so insistently that they can't be ignored.
I added the emphasis.
I agree with Andrew Rawnsley. As I argued yesterday, corruption is now so pervasive that the blind eye that we have turned to it has now led to the possibility of war.
But it is worse than that, serious as the situation in Ukraine is.
The weary tolerance of tax abuse as if it is normal has led to the corruption of public standards to such an extent that it is normal to think people are going to break rules.
The deliberate provision of opacity, which has become such a feature of UK company law over the last thirty or so years (and Labour is not without blame here) has been accepted as if dirty dealing behind closed doors is acceptable.
The idea that opaque financing is acceptable has led to the presence of think tanks whose funding is unknown on television, providing who knows what causes with platforms for which they need not account.
The idea that Russians can pay small fortunes for tennis matches with the prime minister has become a joke, and not a cause for concern.
That cash can be used to acquire access is considered normal.
Corruption has become endemic in the UK in other words and is a pandemic around the world.
And underpinning it all are the accountants, lawyers and bankers who think that their first job is to undermine the rule of law by finding ways to avoid the impact of regulations for their clients.
When will those pursuing these professions say that this practice is no longer acceptable?
When will we see action by them to promote transparency and not opacity?
When will the avoidance of regulation be considered professional misconduct within these professions?
These are questions that those professions need to answer, because the three of them are at the heart of the degradation of values in public life in UK and around the world.
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The corruption of the media is perhaps the most sinister of all. It’s complicity has enabled the degradation of everything else.
On my last visit to the UK I ran, as I boarded the plane to leave, a gauntlet of newspaper headlines screeching about hundreds of thousands of migrants rushing to enter the country before freedom of movement came to an end. Volkischer Beobachter stuff in English. My skin crawled and it was a great relief to leave. I wondered what the chances I’d ever visit again might be. That is, it crossed my mind that I might not. Certainly not this side of the catharsis that the current government is soliciting.
And guess who is complaining about the floated proposal to stop the “golden visa” for rich Russians and other billionaires?
Lawyers.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/20/golden-visa-lawyers-call-for-uk-to-rethink-blanket-ban
I am sure the accountants and bankers won’t be far behind. And do you think it will actually happen? Or forcing transparency on Companies House (actually promised by Johnson yesterday)? Etc.
I tweeted on this one…
This is why wider knowledge of MMT is desirable in my view – because if people know what is possible, hopefully they will expect more, not less.
That’s why attempts at public education on these issues must persist.
Rawnsley has no right to be lecturing us now. This has been so obvious for so long, the finger must begin to point at the political fabric of a society that so steadfastly refuses to be shocked, still less act; no matter what. In the case of the Londongrad Laundromat, even for those who refused to see what was already alarming and beginning to form, most of all the politicians; the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 in London, in public, and with a dose of polonium, wrote the appalling script out in garish neon lights, for all to see. What did Britain, and everybody then allow? They brought in Golden Visas in 2008; within two years of the assassination. You couldn’t make it up, only because the deeply unappetising nature of Britain today is only too real and disturbing.
Serious issues are swept aside by sound-bite, question-begging, self-contradictory government explanations, hurried into empty policy decisions which are either of no substance, or obviously irresponsible; that the media typically then parrot and promote. And the whole dreadful misinformation bandwagon hastily moves on to the next phony script, before the scam is found out. That is our reality; and there is the ground for why we are so often caught not by the original bad decision, but the ex-post cover-up; we now live in a political world primarily caight in an endless train of of ‘cover-up’ exposure.
The PM is currently using every trick in the media playbook to play for time, play to popular neoliberal prejudice and prevarication to hang on to office. Now he isn’t going to resign, even if he receives a Fixed Penalty Notice, and the test is now – as he jumps around from crisis to crisis, offering quick ways out of Covid, he is trying to measure whether a weary public hasn’t noticed, or has forgotten his trnasgressions and he can survive it all: by putting himelf first, and above all – above Britain; which has now been reduced to being a bit-part in Johnson’s vulgar career expectations. Do not say you have not been warned who and what comes first in Johnson’s Britain.
“for why”!! Where on earth was that excruciating misuse of language born? I can’t believe I actually wrote the words. Apologies to anyone reading that, who had just finished lunch. I trust your digestion will recover; or you didn’t notice; or didn’t read the comment.
Rawnsley asks the pertinent question:
“These multiple crises in multiple institutions have features in common. One overarching theme is a paucity of high-calibre personnel. Where are the leaders with the quality and strength of character to infuse the organisations they head with decent values?”
I would suggest that when making money is seen to be more important/worthy than making society, such leaders will not come into public life.
How that is to be turned around, I do not know. The basis for a just society is surely equitable treatment yet, as The Corrupt are the legislators, such decency won’t come from the Law. The rebirth of Trade Unionism won’t rise through the management stratum.
Will it come to pitchforks and torches?
Maybe, but I do not promote the idea
Thank you John for also pointing out Rawnsley’s selective memory of how we got here. It started quite frankly when the Left was twisted into knots by Neo-liberalism and being intensely relaxed about making money (or something like that).
It was
Unfortunately, our left is still conflicted in that way
They still think they need hot money
I concur – I’ve seen nothing from Starmer to say otherwise.
PSR – Starmer does claim Labour are different now. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/20/will-the-tories-hand-back-russian-cash-as-putin-threatens-war
But whether they actually do anything when (if) they get the chance, who knows.
I have just registered an overseas registered company / UK branch with Companies House. Interestingly, Companies House not only don’t collect information on Persons with Significant Control of such companies, they refuse to do so. This was the Company House reply when I attempted to register this information:
“PSC’S are not notified to Companies House in respect of Overseas Companies. The only officers recorded are a directors, secretaries, permanent representatives of the UK establishment and (optionally) persons authorised to accept service in the UK.”
Absurd, isn’t it?