no banker left behind
We have some very specific ideas about corruption in Britain. Essentially, it is still seen as being about dodgy-looking men exchanging briefcases full of cash while muttering assurances in overheated hotel rooms. Such notions are confirmed when the British public is treated to the spectacle of something like the recent Pakistan spot-fixing scandal, which the tabloids enjoyed because they hold mythical notions like ‘good sportsmanship’ in the highest esteem, and because only people from the wrong team had to go to jail.
For the most part, we are content to believe that Britain is Not the Sort of Place in which That Sort of Thing can occur. When it does, we can take comfort in the idea that the system is self-correcting after all, and we can always look to Russia or Nigeria to point to extreme examples of what we believe we are not. But other insidious forms of corruption have been so incorporated into the ways and means of our public life that we frequently cease to notice anything is wrong.
Recently, Liam Fox was forced to resign from his position as Defence Secretary after his links with Adam Werrity and neocon foundation Atlantic Bridge were exposed in the papers. In his stunningly glib and self-satisfied resignation speech, which began by comparing his own troubles to dead children in Libya for a ‘necessary sense of proportion’ – what, because he hadn’t personally murdered any kids? – Fox went on to stress the idea that the reason he had to resign was because: ‘it is not only the substance but perception that matters’. No, Liam: it is the substance that matters. Because what you did was corrupt.
Not that Liam Fox could be expected to understand this. Lobbying has been a mostly unregarded part of our political system for so long that it seems impossible any politician could ever see it as institutionalised corruption. Political parties have to get their cash from somewhere, right? And since nobody is willing to make the argument for more public money going straight into party coffers, they see no conceivable alternative to taking money from rich people with very specific interests.
(Similarly, the principal reaction of politicians to the expenses scandal was not shame but a weary bafflement that the public should be so concerned at them taking what they thought of as their dues. If the system could reward them better elsewhere [i.e. with a high-ranking job in the private sector] then it was only logical that politicians should be better ‘compensated’ for this loss in their real income. Curiously, this argument does not apply to lesser paid public servants.)
The modern politician does not have any problem serving the interests of the very wealthy because they see it as a natural extension of their duties to their constituents. So when David Cameron goes to China to petition the Premier on behalf of vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson, this is understood as being exactly equivalent to representing the interests of the British People. After all, James Dyson is a British Person who employs a lot of other British People, and who (we assume) pays more tax than you or I. So if Dyson could be said to count more than us, then Cameron is actually only doing his democratic duty in parroting Dyson’s concerns on an international scale.
Equally, going to Europe to directly and personally represent the interests of the City of London is totally fine because as the last decade has shown, our financial sector definitely has the interests of the rest of us at heart. On no account should any of this be understood as corruption. Because corruption would be paying somebody a lot of people to represent your interests ahead of those who have less money. And then where would be be?
