Relatively keen supporter though I am of our relatively new government, even with its Lib Dem make-weights hanging round its ankles, I do wish for rather more coherence in its decision-making, some evidence, perhaps, that today’s policy-making has a heritage older than yesterday’s breakfast. I was going to say that it feels like watching a yacht tacking into a stiff breeze, but actually it is worse than that – it is like being on board a yacht tacking into a stiff breeze. Earlier this week, for example, the banks woke up to find they were subject to a new levy. Last week, we were going to sell all our woodlands to spiv developers who would chain them up before hacking them down; this week, we see the distant flutter of a white flag on this subject and, by next week, the government will probably be planting new woods. At this rate, we might even start building new public libraries instead of closing them down as is presently planned.
Standing in the street in a cold New York dawn last week, I found a tweet from the always quick-off-the-mark thebriberyact.com – “Bribery Act reportedly delayed again confirmed on the Today programme”. I tweeted back “So the most dishonest UK gov’t ever and most corrupt Parliament ever passed a UK Bribery Act and now this gov’t defers it”
A word or two or explanation might be helpful both as to the deferral and to the suggestion that the last government and parliament fell somewhat short of the accepted standards of probity. The latter actually needs little explanation. I have just started reading Peter Oborne’s book The Rise of Political Lying which begins by distinguishing between the personal dishonesty endemic in the last Conservative government and the dishonesty-by-party consciously adopted by Labour even as Tony Blair entered Downing Street, fresh-faced and expressly intent on cleaning up politics. The defining cartoon of his era showed him flogging ermine robes and coronets from a barrow; the emblematic quotation was his claim to be “a pretty straight kind of guy” which caused guffaws up and down the land, not least because he actually seemed to think we might believe him. If he is not thought of as the most dishonest man ever to have occupied Downing Street, that is only because he was succeeded by Gordon Brown. Together they presided over an era in which MPs and peers of all parties fiddled their expenses, lied as policy, sold influence and generally debased the currency of public life. There are only two in prison so far (one more than when I started writing this), but there will be more. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Chris Dale 
