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Tory Sleaze & Corruption threatens UK's ...

Tory Sleaze & Corruption threatens UK's Global Reputation

Feb 03, 2023

Right so for all the Tory dodginess and sleaze we’ve seen over the last year or so, Great Britain is now regarded as being MORE corrupt than ever before – wahay, well done Tories!

Our government has been so bent and corrupt we’ve fallen 7 places on the Global Corruption Perceptions Index, or CPI, to end up being ranked 18th on the list, one of only 5 countries to fall by more than 5 points, putting us in the company of countries such as Qatar, Myanmar, Oman and Azerbaijan.

Now the clue is in the name with this index, conducted by Transparency International, a global organisation who operate in more than 100 countries and work to expose and crack down on governmental corruption. Their annual Perceptions Index, is all about perception, how people view another country by way of conducting surveys and publishing the results. They score countries between 0 and 100 with 100 being the least corrupt and Britain now scores 73, it’s lowest ever ranking since the Index got a revamp back in 2012.

All the data is based on input from business leaders, executives, experts in things such as bribery, abuse of office for personal gain, that kind of thing, so its not random people off the street getting asked, it’s people familiar with corruption that take part. Think of it as a kind of poll of polls for sleaze.

Now at this point I might ask something like, ooh I wonder what they found, what issues arose, but frankly I think we can all name at least 5 issues without batting an eyelid, especially when you consider the data Transparency International sought opinion for ranged from November 2019 to October 2022.

Here's a few issues they’ll have been considering though, a number of the Tories greatest sleazy hits if you will:

This period in time covers the entirety of the pandemic, so the Tory illegal VIP lanes for PPE procurement stands out above all else for me, but there are plenty of others.

The last lot of Towns fund money was not distributed to where it was most needed. We remember Rishi Sunak bragging about that from before don’t we? When he ran for Tory leader saying how he took money from poorer areas to send to wealthier ones to a small group of Kent party faithful. That’s Kent, just in case you might think I meant something else. It looks like its happened again though in the most recent round of towns funding, but that’s outside of this date range of course, so we’ll save that for the next Index I suppose.

It's emerged that almost 40 breaches of the ministerial code have occurred over the last 5 years of which the vast majority fell within the date ranges being investigated here. Here’s a few of those. One related to the aforementioned towns fund distributions, £120,000 in donations taken from housing developers by the then Housing Secretary, Michael Gove. Approving a tory donors planning application just before a law change would have cost him millions, that would be Robert Jenrick and former Daily Express proprietor Richard Desmond no doubt. Meetings were held with a Chinese state owned nuclear power company with no record of the meetings being taken, that was Anne-Marie Trevelyan. Boris Johnson, where do we start? Partygate obviously, that implicates Sunak too, they both got fined, there was Lord Geidt’s resignation over Johnson letting Priti Patel off for bullying, his ambiguously funded holiday to the Caribbean, but there were less well reported issues with him as well, from not publishing his ministerial interests when required, which then implicated the man who went on to be BBC Chairman Richard Sharp. There was a verbal attack on Sadiq Khan, violating a period of purdah, travel cost abuses to Hartlepool during the by-election there, cosy chats with James Dyson constituting a conflict of interest. The list goes on and on and that’s just Bozo, I have no doubt whatsoever that you can name more, involving more Tories and indeed the evidence from Transparency International does. You can download all the data used in the Index from the Transparency International website, they are rather transparent about such things oddly enough!

Since then of course we’ve had the ongoing now investigation with Richard Sharp going to the BBC after helping Johnson with his taxes, something that has increased in prominence. The Nadhim Zahawi business, Dominic Raab and bullying, Liz Truss being Prime Minister full stop in all honesty, it’s not looking good for things to improve, but Transparency International provided guidance for the Tories to follow anyway, should they wish to.

They can restore integrity to public life by supporting the Public Service (Integrity and Ethics) Bill currently passing through the Lords, which would raise and improve public standards in office.

They can deliver on G7 commitments to stamp down on corruption and kleptocracy as well as appoint a new anti corruption champion, a role Sunak still hasn’t appointed since Johnson lost Dido Harding’s husband from the role. It has also recommended full disclosure of the VIP Lane, clearly implying and justifiably so that it has been one of the most serious issues and ensuring future procurement practices are open to tougher scrutiny.

But at the end of the day, do you honestly believe the Tories will act on this or just continue with yet more sleaze and corruption? I’m sure I know the answer to that, I don’t know why I even asked really!

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