To be able to live in the green and pleasant land of the UK is perhaps a special, if not unique, privilege in a world where the invasive viruses of corruption and hatred are fuelling division and conflict. Appreciation of that privilege may easily be lost in the rising media and social culture of complaint, fault-finding and gloom which have spread alongside the Covid pandemic. A spreading polarisation needs to be stemmed by peacemakers where care and tolerance and celebration replace the venom and desire to create and punish enemies.
CORRUPTION HAS BEEN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC FOR YEARS AND STILL INFECTS
The events of early 2022 are bringing home in spades the privilege of UK life.
Take Kazakhstan: protests erupted at the start of the year, the core reason for which seems to be the decaying living standards of ordinary people. Kazakhstan is perhaps the victim of the most commonplace corruption where the rulers and their cronies (the so-called elite, a totally inappropriate word for the corrupt) extract, or more accurately steal, the wealth of the country for themselves, keeping the people downtrodden and poor. Kazakhstan is extremely rich in natural resources, and Russia and China compete for control. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the previous President and possibly still the real power base, seems to have been forced to flee the country perhaps with others of the elite. He seems to have been the beating heart of corruption. (If news reports are correct, it is a blot on the UK that Tony Blair featured in a promotional video in 2020, praising Mr Nazarbayev’s leadership and vision). The remaining Kazak Government’s response to protests has been to quell them causing considerable loss of life, and has included the invasion of the country, by invitation, by thousands of Russian troops with an array of tanks and weaponry, sent by President Putin to provide stability.
Mr Nazabayev’s daughter, Aliya, is the subject of a Daily Telegraph article on 9 January “Kazakh Despot’s daughter with a £220 million fortune in London spree”. She seems to use the UK as a safe haven. There is no suggestion that the wealth was acquired illegally. It would be interesting however to know if possibly the ultimate source was state-owned assets. London seems an attractive investment location for many wealthy leaders and their acolytes.
How did so many leaders of nations, usually autocrats, become so wealthy in so many countries of the world? It does not appear that annual salaries are the source. Corruption and theft are commonly cited, while the vast majority of the populace are kept poor. President Putin is cited as one of the richest men in the world, but nobody can assess his true wealth. Many rulers survive and thrive by instilling fear, backed by brutality and usually a corrupt justice system if any, to deter dissent. Others might resort to brainwashing, enslaving or sterilising groups who do not conform, such as, it is reported, the Uighurs in China.
Various indices are compiled to measure levels of corruption in the various nations of the world. Corruption levels tend to increase as democracy decreases. Of course, no country is pure with no corruption whatsoever. However, in most of the numerous “failing” countries, people other than the elite live with poor education and generally significant poverty far beyond anything in the UK, with little or no hope of advancement. They are the victims of an elite who take the national resources for themselves, for whom power retention is a vital objective, and who suppress and silence by whatever means they see fit those who might represent a danger or resistance. Most of Sub-Saharan African countries, many in the Middle East, many in South America, such as Brazil and Mexico, and many in Asia are recorded as effectively systemically or seriously corrupt: which means a corrupt leadership prevails alongside the misery for the general population.
Early 2022 is also suggesting a level of instability internationally which it would be foolish to ignore. Leaving aside the numerous current inter-nation and civil wars in for example several parts of Africa and places such as Yemen, President Putin threatens an invasion of Ukraine. There the long-running conflict is reported to have killed 15,000 already, with barely a mention in UK news. He seeks confrontation with NATO. He, and China’s rulers in relation to Taiwan as well as through global expansion and territorial land grabs, are testing the resolve of the USA and Western Europe. They and other countries seek to destabilise democracies through cyber warfare at least, such as through the abuse of social media. The possibility of wars erupting has in recent times never been more prevalent. Are not hatred and corruption the sources of most international violence?
POLARISATION IS DIVIDING THE WEST
Hatred and corruption are also threatening Western unity, values and democracy. Early January 2022 saw the anniversary of the siege of the Capitol in Washington at the end of the Presidential election which was based on the lie that Donald Trump was the true winner. That anniversary prompted numerous commentaries on the sad and precarious state of U.S. politics, with a common theme being the risk of Civil War in the USA, as the Democrat and Republican parties are so polarised with little sign of reconciliation. Mutual hatred among members of these tribes seems to be rife. Donald Trump leads the Republicans, and it seems that the less extreme among them are too afraid to resist the corruption that lies behind the hatred he and his zealot followers provoke. An article in the Times of 8 January entitled “The Cancer in American Politics is out of Control” records that Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty of caring more about the triumph of ideology than the health of democracy. Trust in American institutions and the electoral process is undermined, and they are discredited. Democracy is characterised by respectful debate which seems to have been largely abandoned.
There seems little sign of leaders endeavouring to understand their opponents’ position, preferring to incite hatred. Gun ownership and a plethora of private militias on the Republican hand, with self-styled righteous causes on the Democrat other, with each side demonising the other’s point of view, are surely a potent cocktail for disturbance. While nobody is suggesting Civil War is likely yet, the fact the New York Times and Professors of politics at least discuss the possibility is frightening. Amanda Foreman in the Sunday Times of 9 January says, “talk of a US Civil war is overblown”, but she cites a 2020 Ramussen poll of American voters in which 46% said they consider a Civil War could occur in the next 5 years. Polarisation, ignoring moral values of respect and care for other human beings, and disregard for truth are threatening even U.S. democracy. The Capitol assault illustrated how easily rabble-rousing via social media combined with fomentation of hatred can overspill into disgraceful violence. But at the moment the USA is deeply divided with unifiers in short supply or too silent. Are similar seeds being sown in parts of Europe?
CORRUPTION IN THE UK
The UK is imperfect, like any democracy, but it remains the envy of most of the world, despite many efforts by domestic critics to belittle it. That envy is of the UK’s tolerance, rule of law, and freedom of the individual. It is not ruled by autocrats or an elite comparable to those referred to earlier. The checks and balances created by a free press, the democratic institutions, market freedoms, individual freedoms and a highly respected justice system make the UK attractive to those seeking a safer haven from the corruption and instability that characterise their home nations. Those who like to present the UK as a mess, chaos or as a declining dying nation do the majority of its people a great disservice. However, the polarisation that besets the USA is spreading in the UK and, like Covid, is a pandemic risk. The UK needs peacemakers domestically who listen and seek to understand their opponents, not cast them as enemies to be destroyed.
The January 2022 campaign to rid the UK of Boris Johnson bases its case on corruption at the heart of Government. The real recent UK success in decision-making around the pandemic means that the prize of reasonable normality and so economic recovery (albeit tainted by rises in living costs) is within tentative reach, perhaps more than any other Western country. Despite that, Boris Johnson may have lost the trust of the public and the confidence of Conservatives irretrievably. But no UK government is ever the epitome of virtue. Even if it is shown that events at No. 10 Downing Street, dubbed as parties, were technically work related and not in breach of the law, which probably Government officials believed, the judgement to hold them was foolish and has insulted many British voters. This, however, is the level of corruption and scandal which is concerning the British media, and so the public, so intensely.
It is worth recalling the many years of Government of prime Minister Tony Blair spanning the i990’s and the early years of this century: he is the most alike to Boris Johnson in his ability to appeal to the public, and they are perhaps the only two Prime Ministers with charisma since Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair presided over the most extraordinary scandals and allegations of corruption:
- Bernie Ecclestone, then owner of Formula 1, donated £1million to the Labour party and received an exemption from the ban on tobacco advertising.
- The steel baron, Lakshi Mittal made a £350k gift to Labour and received a Blair endorsement in a Rumanian business deal. He lent a further £2million to Labour to bail them out later.
- The “Cash for Honours” scandal in 2006 involved Tony Blair promising various business donors lordships in the House of Lords which were rejected by its Appointment Commission.
- The Hinduja Brothers, Indian multi-millionaires, financed Labour, and provided funding for the Blair pet project, The Millennium Dome. They got help with British passports, and Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair’s right hand man, resigned for the second time. (His first time was over an undisclosed loan from an MP to buy a property)
- Tony Blair’s funding impresario, Lord Levy, was arrested over funding scandals. And leave aside the Iraq war.
In most cases in this catalogue of alleged corruption scandals any connection between the funding and the favour were denied. They could have ended Tony Blair’s premiership, but they didn’t. Was that because he had the master of the dark art of press communication in Alistair Campbell? Or was it that there was no social media or 24-hour news? Were news broadcasters less judgemental? Teflon Tony has now been knighted, as befits ex PMs. Keir Starmer applauds his example and leadership.
The alleged corruption of the Boris Johnson Government hinges on relatively minor matters, and it is doubtful he deliberately broke any law. He has as yet not been found in breach of any regulation or code, although it is hard to believe some Covid guidelines were not broken by the organisers of the alleged parties. But even if Boris Johnson has committed no breach, the court of the British media has found him guilty. The most heinous matters so far revolve around events at Downing Street involving what could be regarded as social parties or as worker morale boosting events in the workplace. But his irreverence in allowing them, while foolish, is portrayed as not only a breach of law but a grave insult at least to the Covid dead and grieving. If he takes the British public for idiots, he is indeed a fool.
Whatever Boris Johnson’s fate, even if he should be tried at the Old Bailey, while there is of course some true corruption in the UK, people can breathe a sigh of relief that any identified Number 10 corruption is a pinprick in the context of the kind of global corruption that is destroying so many countries and putting peace at risk. However, the hatred and malice with which some have pursued the goal of destruction of the Prime Minister, often with dishonest exaggeration and assertion, is a far greater risk to the UK’s well-being than the offending events themselves.
Boris Johnson may at some point be proven to be the vampire and confidence trickster which Matthew Parris for one asserts he is in the Times of 8 January. However, the expressions of hatred, usage in Parliament of language such as “scum” and “liars” and conclusions and assertions of guilt, which are but casual opinion not fact, undermine the values of the UK which underpin its privileged status. Fomenting hatred is a corrupt activity. Perhaps one medium to counter and control the hatred is to appreciate the special privileges which UK citizens enjoy in a relatively uncorrupted land compared to most, if not all, countries of the world. In truly corrupt countries, the citizen worries about not upsetting the rulers for fear of their own and their families’ lives and freedoms; in the UK the public, understandably upset, and the media worry about whether people at work having wine and cheese or sausage rolls qualifies them for criminal prosecution and damnation. Let us be grateful. Meanwhile it is to be hoped that this Government, whoever leads it, will continue the recent success in controlling the pandemic, with as little disruption as possible, and to serve the interests of all people, in whatever way they may vote.
