The spectacle of Boris Johnson telling delegates to the climate change conference in Glasgow that Britain was not a corrupt country caused quite a stir on social media. Usually nations which aren't corrupt don't feel the need to say so. The ones that are don't say anything for fear of reminding people that they are corrupt. I think he was exasperated that the hacks only wanted to know about Cox, Paterson and Johnson's clumsy attempts to protect one of his mates.
I agree with Johnson that in general Britain is not corrupt, at least in the way some other countries are. Palm greasing is quite routine in a lot of places. I know of European companies who slip a few hundred euro notes in between customs documents when exporting goods to Russia to avoid long delays at the border. This is unthinkable here but unavoidable there. Low level British officialdom is very largely, if not totally, incorruptible in my experience.
But it's no good Johnson using ordinary people as character witnesses. We may not be corrupt but he, his aides and many of his MPs are, as the front pages of our national newspapers have been trumpeting for the last few days. In fact when I think about it what little corruption there is, is limited to the people at the very top, the rich and those who don't need more money and often have grand titles like 'Right Honourable' before their name.
So it was with The Right Honourable Sir Charles Geoffrey Cox QC MP who was caught on a zoom call using his Commons office for private business, the kind that earns him close to a cool £1 million a year, strictly against the MPs code of conduct. He was a former Attorney General, caught bang to right but now emphatically denying guilt!
This morning former Health and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been on the Today programme saying after this scandal we will get more 'clarity' about the rules. It's not clear to me just how much more clarity is needed for senior MPs to understand that using parliamentary facilities to earn money is fundamentally wrong.
We must wait to find out if Cox didn't realise he was in parliament at the time the virtual business meeting took place or didn't realise he was earning money (his normal rate is £813 per hour +VAT). Either way one wonders if he's in the right business advising other people on rules.
Such is the wave of sleaze lapping at the door of No 10 that one Vice Chair of the Tory party has asked to step down believing he cannot defend the party any longer. Andrew Bowie, MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, an adviser to Theresa May, once serving as her parliamentary private secretary, will stay on until a successor has been found.
Johnson was always going to be a high risk candidate for the Tory party and so it's proving. He is rapidly becoming a millstone and I'm not convinced he will last until the next election. And not just because of sleaze although that is a stench that he will never lose from now on.
Richard Ratcliffe's hunger strike in Whitehall has captured the imagination of many on social media. Johnson is partly, if not wholly responsible for his wife Nazanin Zaghari's continued incarceration by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. It appears she may soon be released over a £400 million debt legitimately owed by Britain for tanks never delivered. If it turns out she could have been set free years ago had we settled the debt it will reflect very badly on him - as it should.
We are despised in Europe for being unreliable and untrustworthy - something unimaginable before Brexit and Johnson. A lot of bridges will need repairing when he and Frost are finished and I'm not sure the party of Heath and Thatcher and Major will ever recover respectability. The damage he and his party have caused to Anglo European relations will last for decades.
The economy continues to struggle with ONS figures released this morning showing growth now slowing due to supply issues (AKA Brexit) and the economy still 2.1% smaller than it was in Q3 2019. These euphemistically named 'supply problems' will continue to be a drag and will leave us behind faster growing G7 economies for years as Faisal Islam, the BBC's economics editor suggests. That is going to be a big problem going forward. One economist says, "the best of the recovery is now behind us".
Covid is still hanging around and the expected inquiry into Johnson's handling of it will be damning. I don't believe anybody thinks it was well managed and the NHS is still struggling to cope. The ambulance service is coming under severe pressure. Lives are being put at risk because of long delays in crews getting to patients, as well as more delays when the ambulances arrive at A&E but spend hours queuing outside, because the hospital is too overcrowded to accept the patient. This is third world stuff.
Johnson was always going to be a prime minister for the good times. Unfortunately for him there aren't any and many of the problems are either of his own making or have been made worse by him.
His popularity in the party is on the wane and I think it is just a matter of time now. The end has already started.
And finally, make of this what you will:
Understand that in non-Govt meetings in Paris last week, Frost said UKG is "waging a political & cultural war" and that if you want to know what he/key ppl think, ignore Whitehall - because it doesn't know; same for UKG embassies - because they're part of old regime
— Mujtaba Rahman (@Mij_Europe) November 10, 2021
Either Frost was 'tired and emotional' in Paris, on drugs or we are in far more trouble than anyone can possibly imagine. The government of the United Kingdom has been hijacked by our own Revolutionary Guard conducting a secret "political and cultural war."
What??
