Month: November 2022

It’s The Political System, Stupid!

Consider this quotation from a highly respected contemporary journalist:

“It made me wonder when roguery stopped being roguery and became sleaze…? When is a politician ‘colourful’ and when is he a national scandal …? We were so ambivalent about our politicians that we took our cue from the way they were being presented. If certain incidents in their career are presented as funny, warm, delightfully roguish, then that is what they are. [There is a danger of] giving permission for a culture of fixes and favours and drinking and debauchery, to be understood as colourful rather than dark”.

You could be forgiven for thinking this is a piece about former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for it reflects his pattern of political and personal behaviour exactly. It is in fact drawn from a recent book by Fintan O’Toole, We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 (Head of Zeus 2021), in part analysing, with chapter and verse, the extremely corrupt transactions and abuses of office by Charles Haughey, Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), and his Deputy Brian Lenihan, in the early 1990s and earlier.  O’Toole recalls Richard Nixon’s press secretary explaining events connected to the Watergate scandal: “this is an operative statement, the others were inoperative”. That also seems to fit exactly the many recent reversals of position by the Johnson and Truss governments here in the UK. The newly minted Sunak administration threatens to be a collection of reversals of reversals, a consigning to the Conservative political dustbin of recently operative statements now casually dismissed as no longer operative, in the attempt to undo the damage of the reckless Truss / Kwarteng demolition ball.

I’ll come back to the corruption bit, but we are also talking extreme incompetence here. As Prime Ministers, Chancellors of the Exchequer, and Cabinet Ministers come and go with dizzying speed and regularity, even well informed political commentators are left clutching their heads, scarcely knowing what to make of it all. One such, Simon Jenkins , points out that in the past decade, Britain has seen five Prime Ministers, seven Chancellors, six Home Secretaries, and ten Education Secretaries: “it has been government as a joke” (Guardian, 8 Nov 2022). Let’s imagine for a moment what this must be like for the staff of a major department of state like the Home Office, at all levels, constantly pulled from policy pillar to administrative post as they struggle to respond to ever wilder and more unrealistic directives from the top. And what must it be like for the country’s thousands of teachers, constantly asked to do the impossible with dwindling resources, as an ever-changing cast of  ministers seek to impose their – often experience-free – personal prejudices on state schools. This did not go too well with Gavin Williamson, did it? Or Michael Gove? And to find an Education Secretary who had actually taught in a comprehensive school, you have to go back to Estelle Morris, in 2001, under Labour PM Tony Blair. Here are the last 6 Education Secretaries, covering the Johnson-Truss-Sunak premierships:

 Be Careful What You Wish For

The latest stage in the ferrets-in-a-sack upheavals that constitute the Tory party red in tooth and claw, is already giving rise to deluded claims of a new dawn of competent, sleaze-free governance. Two cautionary judgements here:

Firstly, the new PM, Sunak, is remarkably inexperienced. An MP only since 2015, only in government for a total of 7 years before his electorate-free coronation, he held a very junior ministerial post for six months in 2018-19, before elevation to the Treasury, first as Chief Secretary under Theresa May, then Chancellor under Boris Johnson. His main claim to fame while a rookie Chancellor was support for business schemes related to the Covid-19 pandemic. These are still being presented (and often accepted) as a success; but the total loss to the taxpayer through crime and administrative error in relation to these schemes was an enormous £5.4bn (HMRC Annual Report 2021-2022). One such scheme was Sunak’s much vaunted and personally publicised ‘Eat Out To Help Out’ scheme. A London School of Economics assessment in February 2021 judged that this cost the taxpayer £70m through fraud and error, while ‘any economic gains from the scheme may have come at the cost of more infections’.  We must hope that the former Chancellor’s elevation to Prime Minister induces him to be a bit less careless with the country’s money. His wealthy background (the richest member of a Cabinet full of wealthy members) has produced several tin-eared gaffes, not least his public boast that he had used a government financial support scheme to channel funds away from deprived urban areas to prosperous constituencies that just happened to be held by Tory MPs. Seemingly blind to any notions of poverty and inequality, it seems likely that he will spearhead another austerity drive set to match the disastrous Cameron/Osborne one. It also seems certain that he will ditch many of the pledges he made while campaigning against Truss for the party leadership. He has made yet another U-turn on the environment: now he would not go to the international Climate Change Conference in Egypt, being not really interested in climate change; but oh no, now he would be there, because Boris Johnson had announced his intention to go and was thought likely to upstage Sunak (he did). More obsessional ferrets-in-the-sack stuff when the country is crying out for stable policy and decision-making, not to mention a more focussed grip on environmental issues.

Secondly, while Sunak has promised a new dawn characterised by competence and integrity, he would seem to have fallen at the first hurdle here, with his attempts (surely doomed) to rescue the flawed Suella Braverman, returning her to the Home Office from which she had been compelled to make an ignominious resignation over what have been described by senior Tories as ‘serious breaches’ of the Ministerial Code of Ethics. Back at her desk again, presumably hastily cleared of the effects of Grant Shapps (have several personas, will be anybody for a week), she now stands accused of a punitive approach, entirely lacking in either morality or compassion, to the housing and welfare of asylum seekers. So much for a new dawn of public integrity. As for competence, it’s clear from Braverman’s ministerial record as Attorney General under Johnson, where she defended UK international law-breaking in relation to the Brexit agreement, and her aggressive stances during both her incarnations as Home Secretary, that she is permanently a political accident waiting to happen.

Meanwhile the accident-waiting-to-happen that is Gavin Williamson has duly happened, for the third time. This time he jumped but was very probably pushed. The evidence of his vicious tendencies has come mainly from senior Tories, as well as some hapless official in the Ministry of Defence who was advised to ‘slit your throat’. This is a reminder of another such bit of nastiness when Pritti Patel was Home Secretary, bullying Home Office staff and her own Permanent Secretary, who resigned, the Government agreeing a substantial pay-off rather than see the dispute go to an embarrassing public tribunal: more taxpayers’ money down the Tory drain.

What is it currently with British Prime Ministers? You wait for one for five years, then suddenly three or four turn up at the same time. All seem significantly lacking in good judgement, morality, or social awareness. The jury must as yet be out on the judgement, morality and compassion of the latest version.  In striving to attach sticking plasters to the deeply divided and wounded Conservative Party, Sunak seems already to have taken unwise hostages to fortune; meanwhile many of the Tory ferrets are out of the sack. They’ll soon be lunging at each other in Parliament again, as they were reported to have done physically a short time ago.

Lest We Forget

Given the mid-summer madness that has characterised the Prime Ministerial game of Musical Chairs, and the feelings of anger, depression, and outright disbelief that now pervade the UK political system, it’s not easy to retain a grasp of what we might call ‘the long view’ of our governance system. The idea that ‘a week is a long time in politics ‘ has lately given way to ’24 hours is a long time in politics’. Each daily bout of chopping and changing, both of people and policies preoccupies both the media (all too often part of the ferret-fight) and a bewildered and increasingly fearful national audience inclined to lose trust in the whole system.

Clearly, we need to return, if we can, to a more stable political and administrative universe. But the Tory party now has so many skeletons in the political cupboard that they will be most reluctant to let them see the light of day. A real concern here is that the root causes of all that instability will be neglected and side-lined as the traumatised Tory party seeks to draw a veil over the contribution of their own fractiousness and internecine disagreements to Britain’s existing crises, i.e. Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and public ethics.  Proper scrutiny and accountability will be avoided. No lessons will be learned, for the language of ‘learning lessons’ implies admissions of failure.

(i) Brexit issues

Since Cameron’s petulant abandonment of responsibility for the shock result of the Brexit referendum, the Tory party, indeed all the principal Brexiteers, have been in outright denial about the detrimental consequences of this national act of self-harm. Johnson’s administration twisted and turned themselves inside out to avoid any such admission, first by constantly putting off and delaying agreed implementation dates. Johnson then escalated the crisis by breaking agreements that he had himself signed off, particularly in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol (a shameful breach of international law that was also signed up to by the then Attorney General, one Suella Braverman, supposedly a lawyer). This alone trashed the UK’s international reputation, while also earning a strong rebuke from US President Joe Biden, so wrecking any hope for Johnson’s much-paraded expectation of a favourable trade deal with America. It has also brought gridlock to the governance of Northern Ireland, mirroring the paralysis and incompetence in Westminster and Whitehall.

While the economic damage that can be attributed to Brexit lacks clarity, given the difficulty of disentangling this from the economic effects of Covid-19, and of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is no doubting the increased costs for businesses trading with the EU; or of the chaotic situation that now prevails in the fisheries and farming sectors over the supposed replacement of former EU support costs by the UK government; or of the undermining of major UK science collaborations with EU partners. None of this has been helped by the constantly revolving merry-go-round of Ministers responsible for these policy areas. This confusion has been heightened by the conflicts within the Tory government over the issue of scrapping an enormous range of existing EU regulations (yet another manifesto pledge now likely to be abandoned). But small mercies: at least PM Sunak has jettisoned Rees-Mogg’s absurd intention to cut around 90,000 civil servants; otherwise, there would have been no-one left to implement any pledges of any kind. It would be unwise to assume that any of the 2019 Tory election manifesto pledges, or those so freely thrown around during the Truss-Sunak contest, will survive. Therein, of course, rests the case for a general election, for this may be the only way of bursting the poisonous boil inflicting the body politic.

(ii) Covid-19 issues

In an earlier post I examined examples of dilatoriness, ineptness and corruption in the handling by Ministers, and many of their advisers, of Covid-19 decisions and their implementation. These flawed processes may have resulted in many thousands of unnecessary deaths, and considerable losses, in billions of pounds, to the taxpayers who must ultimately pick up the tab for such losses. These considerations make essential a well-structured and speedy process of accountability. There is a danger this process will inevitably become a political football. Those who are well aware of the mistakes they made, especially Prime Minister Johnson, his Cabinet colleagues, and many of their political advisers in Downing Street, have already done all they can to kick this football down the road. Johnson delayed for as long as possible the institution of an independent inquiry. In December 2021 he finally gave way to increasing pressure, not least from the bereaved families of thousands of dead victims, appointing as Chair Baroness Heather Hallett, a cross-bench (i.e. non-party) peer in the House Of Lords. Johnson issued agreed Terms of Reference only in June 2022. The Inquiry has announced that the first witnesses will be called as late as Spring 2023. Ambitious in scope, both in content and in relation to regional bodies the process of research, investigation, hearings, findings, and reporting may well take several years, by which time many people may well have lost sight of the original errors and failings.

(iii) Kicking it down the road

A worrying exemplar is to hand here, in the form of the Grenfell Tower disaster, when 72 people died in a major fire in a residential London tower block on the night of 14^th June 2017. That Inquiry launched in September 2017 has only now, in late 2022, concluded all its hearings, but still awaits the Chairman’s report, expected in 2023. Criminal prosecutions, if any, cannot be expected before 2024: a total of some 6-7 years. Robert Booth comments in the Guardian on 7 November 2022:

    “ a torrent of truth about failings that preceded the deaths of 72 people flowed before the bereaved: how ministers failed to tighten fire regulations; how the wealthy council landlord [Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea] cut costs with a switch to combustible cladding; and how materials suppliers cheated fire tests…. barristers cross-examined ministers about David Cameron’s ‘bonfire of red tape’ that allowed deregulation of fire safety in a way that contributed to the disaster. The cross-examinations were far shorter than those faced by firefighters”. It seems all too likely that highly culpable individuals and organisations will avoid prosecution in a case where almost everyone is found culpable, so that no-one can be blamed.

Doubtless this is the sort of outcome of the Hallett Inquiry into Covid-19 that people like Johnson and Hancock, and many others involved, will hope for: a detailed and complex inquiry in which ‘the system’ is found to blame, and individual politicians and officials ‘with one bound leap free’, so that only the families of more than 200,000 who died are punished. We can be reasonably sure that very many of those deaths were avoidable, when we look back to the many errors of judgement that bedevilled the political and bureaucratic response to the pandemic. In this case, the bereaved may have even longer to wait for social justice than those bereaved by the Grenfell Tower failures. Even worse, many of the principal players may well by be long gone from the political scene. Leading actors like Johnson and Hancock, guilty of multiple failures, both of public and private morality, and perhaps most vulnerable to critical findings, may not even be in politics anymore. Both are sufficiently self-absorbed and shameless not to care.

Let’s think of the future

People who would not normally mention politics to me are expressing anger and alarm at what they see. Some of these are older relations and friends who almost never comment on such matters. Meanwhile, young people such as my 16-year-old granddaughter convey derision and contempt if you mention Boris Johnson or Suella Braverman – but remain anxious about what their future holds. Surely, and if only for them, we can do better than this?

My main focus in this piece has been on government incompetence and ineptitude rather than corrupt practices, though the two threads often intertwine, along with issues of privilege and inequity. That will be the theme of my next blog, reflecting on the murky interactions of public contracts, public appointments, political donations, privilege, and the honours system and how we need to change these relationships.

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