Holes, spades, and generous gifts

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The first law of holes states that when you’re in one, you should stop digging. Like most laws, rules, regulations and probably gravity itself, it’s one that Farage seems to think somehow doesn’t apply to him. The more answers he gives about that dodgy donation of £5 million, the more difficult questions arise. He claims that he didn’t use any part of the £5 million to buy the £1.4 million house that he bought in 2024, and that he actually purchased that out of his £1.5 million fee for appearing on I’m a Celebrity. It didn’t take a lot of financial forensics for journalists to demonstrate that that wasn’t exactly true – that money remained in the account into which it was paid.

I almost hesitate to say this, but that might be a little unfair. Someone who suddenly finds himself £1.5 million richer can afford to spend £1.5 million more than he would otherwise have been able to spend: it doesn’t have to be the exact same pounds and pennies or come from the same account. That concept is one with which most of us will probably be familiar, albeit on a much smaller scale. A windfall of £50 might do nicely for a meal out, we might think, even if that £50 is initially used to pay a bill and the meal out comes a month or so later.

The problem for Farage in using that explanation is that what is true for £1.5 million is also true for £5 million, and adds to the need for him to explain that other little windfall. Whether it was for his security (as he originally claimed) or a reward for campaigning for Brexit, as he is now claiming, matters little (apparently, being paid handsomely for delivering a result which might benefit a donor only counts as proper corruption if the quid pro quo was spelled out in advance – a rather curious, not to say large, loophole). The bottom line is that a politician paid £5 million by someone (who just might benefit by rather more than that if said politician reaches a position of power) gives that politician an extra £5 million of spending power. Whether Farage did or did not spend it on security (and the change of rationale rather suggests that he cannot demonstrate that he did) is irrelevant to that basic fact – he had an extra £5 million to spend, unconditionally according to him, on whatever he wanted. And, on the basis of his latest attempt to ‘explain’ the basis of the gift, it was directly related to his political activity over a lengthy period. I find it hard to believe that even the UK could really dream up a set of rules which means that rewarding a politician for taking a particular political position is somehow a non-declarable gift, but I guess the investigation will tell us the answer to that.

In the meantime, if he didn’t own the company, surely someone would be trying to relieve him of his spade.

Enjoying the excuses

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Losing your anti-corruption minister in a corruption scandal is quite an achievement for any PM, let alone one who’s only just assumed office. In fairness, the scandal was some time ago and in another country, but nevertheless, there was enough rumour and innuendo doing the rounds to make someone at least question the wisdom. It needs to be said, of course, that it’s not at all clear whether the deal between Russia and Bangladesh actually involved corruption or not, let alone whether, or to what extent, Tulip Siddique was involved in it. The legal process in Bangladesh may or may not reach a conclusion about that in due course.

In the meantime, we can just sit back and enjoy the comical value of the excuses being put forward. Apparently, Siddique was only part of the group which travelled to Moscow to conclude the deal with Putin because she wasn’t seeing enough of her aunt. And only ended up in the picture with Putin because he invited her aunt to ask her family to step into the frame. I mean, who amongst us hasn’t found him or herself in the Kremlin on a jolly family outing, only to be invited at random by Putin himself to join a photograph marking the signing of a multi-billion contract? And then there’s the house she was gifted, which she claimed was from her parents, but was actually from a member of Bangladesh’s ruling clique. Again, who amongst us hasn’t been gifted a house without really knowing who the donor was, let alone where the money came from?

These are just everyday events of a completely innocent nature. For anyone who just happens to be related to the despotic head of a corrupt regime, at any rate. If the case ever comes to trial – something which is by no means certain – I’m doubtful that she will be convicted of any crime. Whether that means she’s a suitable candidate to return to ministerial duties is another question. Stupidity may not be an actual crime, but if there isn’t a test to avoid appointing those who are too stupid or naïve to be ministers, there certainly ought to be.

There are no longer any good chaps

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It remains more than a little hazy, to say the least, whether the PM declared his wife’s interest in a child care company before, or only after, he was challenged over the matter in a meeting of a committee of the House of Commons. And the reason for the haziness is that making a declaration isn’t the same thing as publishing the details. For ministers, it seems that, whilst they are obliged to declare everything, the government’s ethics advisers decide which bits should appear on the public register and which bits should remain a secret between the minister and civil servants. And the implication – although the fact that no-one has actually defended Sunak by putting it in these terms suggests that it might not actually stand up to detailed examination – is that he duly told the relevant people about the interest, and was then advised that it did not need to be made public. As I understand the position in relation to MPs, there is no such filter – they are simply obliged to declare, for a public register, any interest “which someone might reasonably consider to influence their actions or words as an MP”. In short, it looks as though those scrutinising the decisions of ministers are held to a higher standard than the ministers making the decisions, and that, on becoming ministers, MPs are magically exempted from the rules applying to others.

The basis on which the ethics advisers decide which interests need to be declared and which do not is even hazier. The current adviser had this to say on the matter: “To [publicly declare all interests] would represent an excessive degree of intrusion into the private affairs of ministers that would be unreasonable, particularly in respect of their family members. The list instead documents those interests, including of close family, which are, or may be perceived to be, directly relevant to a minister’s ministerial responsibilities”. It’s not helpful and doesn’t strike me as being particularly reasonable either. Assuming for a moment that the story which Sunak wants us to believe is true (whilst accepting that that proposition is at least open to question), and that he did declare the shareholding in the child care agency but the adviser told him that it did not need to be made public, on what basis did he decide that? He could not have known in advance, of course, that Sunak would announce a policy from which that agency (and therefore its shareholders) would benefit – but, by the same token, he could not have been certain in advance that Sunak would not do so either. And to ignore the specific and concentrate on the general: the same is true for all ministers in all governments. Unless you know in advance every decision which every minister in every government is going to take, you can never be certain that any specific financial interest will not gain a benefit from those decisions. It may be an “intrusion” into the private lives of ministers, but people who have chosen to put themselves in a position of taking decisions which impact on all of us should expect proper scrutiny as to whether the decisions they take are directly benefiting themselves or those close to them. And that is impossible to do without a full and public list being available.

It ties in with another story this week, about ministers being allowed to remain directors of companies after being appointed. It has long been accepted practice that anyone appointed as a minister should resign any directorships at the time of his or her appointment, but it isn’t a rule, and has been increasingly ignored since Boris Johnson became PM. The thread which binds these stories together is the fact that there are so few hard rules around how governments should behave; the English constitution, such as it is, depends on what historian Peter Hennessey called the “good chaps principle”, the idea that people in government are essentially honourable, honest, decent, and trustworthy. There is, though, no mechanism for ensuring that only “good chaps” get into positions of influence (the ascent of Boris Johnson demonstrating the point admirably) or of controlling those who don’t fit into that category once they get into positions of power. Depending on the fundamental honesty of those who govern us opens the UK up to corruption on the grand scale (see PPE acquisition, for example) with little redress. The system is badly broken, and probably irreparable as things stand. With a proper written constitution and clearer enforceable rules, we in Wales really could do better on our own.

Visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons?

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In a climate of increasing action against Russia and its oligarchs, Baron Lebedev of Siberia has said that it is crucial that "crucial we do not descend into Russophobia", a point supported strongly by Michael Gove, who said in an interview that we must avoid “an approach in the UK that said that everyone of Russian ancestry was somehow persona non grata”. They are right, of course, but in a classic piece of distraction, they deliberately miss the point, which isn’t about being anti-Russian at all. There are millions of ordinary honest Russians who don’t support what Putin is doing, and many other basically honest Russians who only support him as a result of being fed a highly controlled diet of propaganda. However, if we were to draw a Venn diagram with two circles – a large one denoting the millions of honest Russians with whom we should have no quarrel and a very much smaller one denoting that group of Russians who became very rich in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union and whose continued wealth depends on the tolerance of the Kremlin – how much overlap would there be? If the subset ‘honest Russians who just happened to make a fortune out of the end of the Soviet Union’ exists at all, which I tend to doubt, it would be a very small group indeed.

Gove has also argued that "There is a distinction to be drawn between the actions of parents and the actions of children", echoing a point made a few days ago by James Cleverly (walking proof of the fact that nominative determinism is not a thing) who said that “my father was a former chartered surveyor but I’m not, so what your father did for work is, I’m not completely sure, totally relevant”, in defence of the fact that the PM has elevated the son of a KGB agent to the House of Lords. I somehow doubt that they’d take quite the same attitude to the son of a bank robber who became rich because his father gifted him a large part of the proceeds of his nocturnal activities. Although that might, actually, be a better parallel. And, as an aside, where sanctions have been imposed on Russian individuals, they have very frequently been applied to family members as well, given the common practice of transferring assets between relatives. Rightly or wrongly, tarring the offspring with the same brush is the norm in this situation, not the exception.

As far as I’m aware, we don’t know the detail of how Lebedev père acquired his riches; we do know that most of the assets of the former Soviet Union ended up in the hands of very few people, and that that number includes a number of former KGB agents. And we do know – because one of them has told us – that at least some of the auctions were rigged and that a great deal of bribery was involved. And we also know that Lebedev fils owes his wealth entirely to the transfer of monies from Lebedev père. Dirty money doesn’t become clean as a result of being transferred from father to son (and neither does it become clean – which may come as a shock to some – as a result of being donated to the Conservative Party).

It is argued that Lebedev Senior is an outspoken opponent of Putin, afraid to leave Russia for fear that he won’t be allowed to return. Given that he reportedly offered to act as a back-channel for communication between Johnson and Putin over the Skripal affair, one might be forgiven for wondering how strong an opponent he really is. Oligarchs who seriously turn against Putin end up fearing rather more than living in exile. He is, at least, being tolerated. The question being asked is about whether Junior should remain a member of the House of Lords and allowed to continue to operate in the UK – the real question is why Senior has not been sanctioned at all to date. Not so much a question of whether the son should be punished for the sins of the father as whether the father is being excused because of the influence of the son. After all, the son has a number of close friends in influential places, and the current Prime Minister has often been a recipient of his largesse. Having a rich friend to fly Johnson to his villa in his private jet to attend ‘bunga bunga’ parties, after one of which the then Foreign Secretary was seen at the airport on his return journey looking “dishevelled”, “like he had slept in his clothes”, and apparently having difficulty walking in a straight line may leave the PM feeling somewhat indebted to the kind donor. It may also just possibly leave him open to the acquisition of kompromat. The real security risk might be a lot closer to home than Baron Siberia.

The source of the wealth of the Russian oligarchs didn’t suddenly become suspect when Russia invaded Ukraine; it’s been obvious and blatant for years. The acceptance of it as a normal part of life in the City of London has not been driven by any great moral principle, it’s more about greed and the desire to grab a share of the booty. Applying sanctions selectively and slowly tells us more about the extent to which the UK’s establishment has itself become corrupted by contact than it does about taking any moral high ground.

Identifying the transaction

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There is a scene in The Godfather where an undertaker asks a favour from the mafia boss which involves something ‘unpleasant’ happening to a third party. The favour is granted willingly and unconditionally, with a simple statement that, at some future date, the Godfather might well need a favour from the undertaker – and some years later, that is precisely what happens when the undertaker is asked to patch up the body of the Godfather’s hot-headed son before his mother sees it. Two unrelated favours, in a sense – but there is a transaction hidden there, and all involved know it, even if it would be difficult to prove to the standards of a court of law.

Political donations can work in a similar way, and the transactional nature of some of them is also very difficult to prove. Take the case of Alexander Temerko and his company, Aquind. Both have been making generous donations to the Tory Party and an assortment of ministers and MPs (including Welsh Secretary, Simon Hart) for some years, involving a total of £1.1 million. The money was always given as ‘no strings’ donations, of course, out of the heartfelt generosity of Temerko and the ultimate owner of Aquind, Viktor Fedotov (although the latter denies having any control over the donations). One of the other beneficiaries was Penny Mordaunt, who now seems to have incurred the ire of Temerkov by daring to campaign against a business project of his. His response was to describe her as an “absolutely uncontrollable woman” – clearly, he expected that she would be more ‘controllable’. I wonder what could possibly have led him to think that? This case has come to light because an MP has NOT done what was clearly expected of her – in how many other cases have MPs discovered that their views on particular projects just happen to align with those of donors?

The issue here is nothing to do with the nationality of those involved – Temerko is Ukrainian-born, as it happens, although with strong links to Putin’s Kremlin, even if Fedotov is Russian. The issue predates the current hostilities which are leading to some people asking more questions, albeit late in the day. Having said that, it’s always possible that oligarchs used to operating in a political culture where politicians do what they are paid to do may have greater expectations of subsequent compliance than those used to operating in a less overtly corrupt political culture. The question, though, is a broader one – the fact that there are no conditions imposed at the time of making donations to influential politicians doesn’t mean that a return favour might not be requested or expected, even if not until some years later; and politicians who accept large sums, especially from dodgy sources (and surely donations from companies with no obvious source of revenue ought to provoke a question or two, at least) should ask themselves why they are being given the money rather than enthusiastically accepting it because ‘no rules have been broken’. Might there just possibly be unstated expectations for the future?

Lawyers for Aquind have said that all donations were “entirely lawful, properly declared and have not been made in return for any special treatment”, and doubtless they are correct – there was no clear ‘transaction’ involved in any of them. The same thing could be said in relation to the case of the Godfather’s favour to the undertaker. But it doesn’t take a lot of thought to work out what might have become of that undertaker had he refused to return the favour when requested.

Growing bananas by the Thames

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Proving that there’s a direct causal link between a political donation and a favour granted is difficult at the best of times. The PM’s flat redecoration was funded by a man who was also seeking support for a pet project, and linking the two things in a single e-mail, as the PM appears to have done, inevitably raises the suspicion that there is a relationship between the two. Labour’s request that the police investigate is good knockabout politics, but is unlikely to be enough to ‘prove’, to the standard of evidence required by a court of law, that the one facilitated the other. The PM’s defence, through his spokesperson, is that the project never went ahead, so there was no corruption. It’s a bit weak, though – it could equally be argued that the ‘favour’ was giving the matter consideration. There is no doubt that it was indeed ‘considered’ before being rejected, and the question is surely whether publicly-funded time and effort would have been expended on even considering it if the request hadn’t come from a major donor.

There was a rather more clear-cut example of the relationship between donations and access last week, when another donor asked for his money to be refunded, apparently because it didn’t get him the level of access to ministers that he was led to expect. It comes to something when the degree to which donations and access are linked is regarded as being so normal that legal action can be threatened in an effort to enforce the implied terms of what might look to some as an essentially corrupt contract, or else demand repayment for default. But why does anyone think that rich people and businesses make large donations to a political party in the fist place? Whether the expectation is that they will get special favours, or merely that the overall legislative and regulatory climate will benefit them, is a question of degree not kind. An implicit quid pro quo is ever present, and is not a bug but a feature of political funding in the UK.

The UK is increasingly resembling a banana monarchy – like a banana republic but with a hereditary head of state. Whilst it’s true that we don’t actually have large scale banana production yet, that’s only because would-be banana producers haven’t yet bought sufficient access to the PM to be able to convince him that a giant banana plantation alongside the Thames is almost as good, in terms of his legacy, as a new garden bridge over the river. OK, the bananas wouldn’t grow alongside the Thames, but then we never got the bridge either. Some people made a lot of money from it, though. And isn’t opening up opportunities to make money what those large political donations are ultimately all about?

Putin's not-so-secret weapons

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The initial reaction of many to the announcement yesterday that the UK Government is giving Ukraine £88 million to, amongst other things, deal with corruption would surely have been laughter. But actually, it makes a lot of sense – the current UK government has, after all, become a world leader in the field of corruption. I can entirely understand how mere amateurs like those running Ukraine would be keen to benefit from the UK experience of being corrupt and getting away with it. Although the lessons might look on the expensive side, once they learn how to set up the right processes to funnel the training contracts to friends and donors at inflated prices, they will soon discover that the sum being given is nowhere near enough. As to how the UK will find this money – well, there are surely enough Russian billionaires in London willing to pay for a seat in the Lords.

That brings us to the first of Putin’s secret weapons when it comes to dealing with the UK’s threats. Those demanding sanctions against those Russian oligarchs who are bankrolling Putin are missing the point: the Tories have already been going after those same oligarchs for decades, usually in pursuit of political donations. What Putin knows is that any sanctions against the crooked oligarchs who maintain him in power will hurt the UK’s financial markets (and probably the Conservative Party’s coffers) more than they will hurt him. What the rest of the world refers to as laundering of dirty Russian money is actually, to the UK government, taking advantage of the Brexit bonus of not following the same rules as the rest of the world.

And his second secret weapon is that, apparently unbeknownst to Johnson and his cabal, there are people in Moscow whose English is good enough to read and understand the UK’s media output. And they therefore know that not only is Johnson a lame duck but also that nothing he says can be taken seriously, since it is almost certainly untrue. This one is more than a little dangerous, however, for the rest of Europe. Even if Johnson, in his delusional belief that he is leading for the whole of Europe on the issue, manages to hold a conversation with Putin without insulting him (there’s a first time for everything, but it seems unlikely), when he says that an invasion will be a complete disaster for Russia, does he really mean that it will be a huge success? (And can our friends have some of the reconstruction contracts after the event?)

Those arguing that we should forget all about the rule-breaking at Downing Street so that the PM can concentrate on the supposed threat from Russia are completely missing the point. There are few, if any, situations that the PM cannot make worse with effortless ease. Distracting him from foreign policy is exactly what the rest of the world needs the UK to do if it wants to maintain the peace in Europe. It’s our duty.

Securing the right to self-determination

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Not long after Thatcher won the 1979 election, the Tories’ support in the opinion polls took something of a dive, and Labour were ahead, sometimes well ahead, for most of 1980, 1981, and early 1982. In April 1982, the UK went to war against Argentina to restore the UK’s control over a colonial possession, and the Tories took a clear lead in the opinion polls which took them through the 1984 election and beyond. War was good for the Tories’ fortunes.

Whether sabre-rattling over Ukraine will assist the current Tory PM out of his difficulties remains to be seen; we can only hope that even Johnson is neither mad enough nor desperate enough to start a war with Russia. Whilst it’s true that a corrupt kleptocratic regime partly funded by crooked Russian billionaires poses a direct threat to the UK’s citizens, it is far from clear that Russia poses the same degree of threat. The biggest danger to the wellbeing of the people of these islands is a great deal closer to home.

Throughout the Cold War, the line which we were sold in the West was that it was a conflict between two ideologies. The idea that it was about freedom vs communism was always over-simplistic (Marxist purists might argue that it was more a case of market capitalism vs state capitalism, which is more a difference of method than ideology), but there is no question that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has become a capitalist country. Repressive, certainly. Corrupt, unquestionably – although the UK isn’t currently exactly a paragon of virtue on that score. Yet despite the increasing alignment of economic systems, the hostility remains. It tells us that, for all the talk about ideology and freedom, the stand-off between Russia and the Western powers is just a continuation of centuries of rivalry between the big powers – as it was, in fact, throughout the cold war. And the dispute over Ukraine is reminiscent of disputes of the past about different spheres of influence. Ukraine is little more than a pawn in the game.

One element of the dispute, as pointed out by Simon Jenkins – although the extent to which it is really the cause of the dispute rather than a pretext for grievance is another question – is the situation in the east of Ukraine where there are a majority of Russian speakers. They are seeking a greater degree of autonomy, but the muscular unionists (to coin a phrase) in Kyiv have refused to implement the Minsk II settlement which would have granted a degree of autonomy, as well as the outcome of a referendum in 1994 which would have made Russian the language of administration in Donbas, insisting instead on Ukraine remaining a unitary state using a single language. Some independentistas will have difficulty knowing which side to support as a result: should we support the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine when threatened by a large and aggressive neighbour, or should we support the right of the people of Donbas to govern themselves? For those of us who believe that the people living in any area have the right to determine their own future, the answer is clear. What is a good deal less clear is how those people can be given a meaningful opportunity to express their wishes in a free and fair vote. One of the few certainties is that war will not resolve that question. And I doubt that an unwinnable war with Russia will do much for Johnson, either.

Have we reached a turning point?

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The Tories are not the only party to have been accused of using peerages as a means of rewarding large donors; the legislation banning the sale of honours followed the sale of honours by the Liberal leader Lloyd George in the 1920s, and Labour had its own little scandal under Blair. The price may have increased by more than the rate of inflation, but then the Tories have long expected larger individual donations than the other parties. Their role is, after all, to represent the interests of the wealthiest.

In the strict terms of any police enquiry, the latest suggestion that becoming Tory Treasurer and donating at least £3 million virtually guarantees a peerage is not something over which Johnson needs to lose any sleep. The problem with the legislation, which effectively stymied any prosecution for Labour’s activities under Blair, is that the burden of proof is so high. Mere correlation between donating large sums and being ennobled, no matter how strong that correlation may be, isn’t proof of a transaction having taken place. It appears that, unless the prosecuting authorities can amass evidence that there was an advance agreement that if X gave £Y, then X would become a peer, then there is inadequate evidence to mount a prosecution. Nods and winks, to say nothing of the entirely coincidental precedent that the previous n treasurers were ennobled, don’t count. In effect, the bar is set so high that there is never any danger of prosecution as long as those involved are careful never to record anything. The legislation has been rendered irrelevant, and Johnson can continue to distribute peerages as he chooses. Inspector Knacker is unlikely to be banging on the door of Number Ten any time soon. Well, not for selling honours at any rate.

It isn’t as simple as just the legalistic question of a criminal offence, though. Last week, something changed. It’s not that the Tories became any more venal or corrupt than they have been for the past couple of years, although the Paterson affair was perhaps more blatant than previous issues. It’s not that Johnson became any more dishonest or mendacious; he’s been that way all his life and that’s not something that will ever change. No, last week, for the first time really, some of those who have naturally supported him / covered for him / repeated his lies as though they were true / made excuses for him started to turn against him. The media began to press harder, to draw more attention to the amoral morass which surrounds him, and to actively look for new angles to keep the story running. Some of his own MPs and other senior figures in his party started to call him out for what he is and to make it clear that their future support is conditional at best. It’s doubtful that he realises it yet – perhaps he never will, given his apparent ability to believe whatever he chooses to believe – but his position weakened considerably over the period of just a few days. Given the size of his majority, the only people who can end the current nightmare are those within his own party (although who knows what new nightmare they would then inflict upon us). They’re not there yet, but if the polls start to move significantly further against him, Tory MPs can be a ruthless bunch.

On which point, outside the Westminster bubble, the reality of the incomplete Brexit project continues to impact the lives of those whom the world king believes to be his subjects in ways which are almost universally negative. Heaping entirely believable accusations of corruption and sleaze on top has so far had only a minor impact, but as one of his predecessors (a certain John Major) discovered, momentum can build uncontrollably. His best line of defence at the moment is the general public perception that “they’re all as bad”. His problem is that using such a line means admitting that he is in any way ‘bad’ himself. It’s an admission that he is utterly incapable of making. We may yet get to look back on last week as the long-overdue turning point.

We need the freedom to be honest, not to join in corruption

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In 1984, the then Conservative Government set up six freeports across the UK on an experimental basis. The experiment was not exactly a huge success, and in 2012 the then Conservative Government scrapped them. The current Conservative Government now wants to try again, including overruling any objections from devolved administrations, and taking powers away from those administrations in order to implement their plans.

Contrary to what Brexiteers seem to suggest, scrapping freeports was nothing to do with the EU or the single market – EU rules allow freeports to exist, and indeed there are currently 72 such zones spread across 20 of the remaining member states. They were scrapped in the UK because they just didn’t live up to their promise. It certainly is true that in 2019 the European Parliament called for freeports in the EU to be closed down as a result of tax evasion and money laundering; there is no reason to suppose that freeports set up in the UK will be any more immune to such problems. It’s also true that EU rules on tax breaks and aid to industries in freeport zones were a constraint on what individual governments can do, and that in theory, therefore, outside the EU the UK is able to offer more incentives. That may turn out to be more a theoretical statement than an implementable one, however; there is (and can be) no guarantee that EU countries (and the same is likely to apply to other countries) will accept imports from zones considered to be effectively outside the UK customs area on the same terms as those from the UK itself under the Trade and Co-operation Agreement. And why would they? Why would anyone want to allow companies being unfairly subsidised and given tax breaks which they themselves can’t match to undercut their own businesses?

The government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility told us in no uncertain terms a fortnight ago that “…the main effect of the freeports will be to alter the location rather than the volume of economic activity” – in simple terms, they will move jobs from one place to another rather than create new jobs. And in the process, they will reduce the tax income to the Exchequer, at the same time as demanding extra infrastructure investment. The main beneficiaries from the initiative (according to the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe) will be the businesses and super-rich individuals who take advantage of the tax breaks they offer. And there is good reason to expect that they will provide new opportunities for secrecy, money-laundering, tax evasion, reduced regulatory control, and fraud. Put that way, it’s easy to see the attraction for the current government; freeports will directly aid the Tories’ cronies and funders. It’s also easy to see why the Welsh Secretary would be so keen to seize on another opportunity to roll back devolution.

It’s a lot harder to see why the Welsh Government would want to get involved, and the reticence being shown by Drakeford is wholly understandable. He does face two problems, though: if he refuses, he’ll be overruled and lose any vestige of control, and if freeports set up across the border attract companies to relocate from Wales, Wales will lose jobs and economic activity, for which he will then be blamed. But agreeing to host a freeport in Wales because England is doing so on our doorstep in Liverpool is more like the logic of an arms race than a sound economic plan. The better response to dishonesty and corruption on a grand scale is not to emulate it, but to escape its clutches. And that means more independence, not less.

Nothing to see here

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The traditional context for using the phrase “Nothing to see here. Move along now.” is the policeman given the responsibility of keeping bystanders away from some incident or other. It never means that there is actually nothing to see, merely that (s)he and those who stationed him or her there don’t want people stopping to see it. When the perpetrator of the incident uses the phrase, (s)he is either trying to hide what has happened, or else merely extracting the urine. And as Boris Johnson demonstrated yesterday, the two are not mutually exclusive.

His demand that people stop asking him awkward questions to which there is no truthful answer which does not expose his failure to follow rules, and no lie which can be made to fit the known facts (not that that is something which overly worries him), is based on his assertion that people at large are either not interested in establishing whether he’s followed the rules or not, or else simply don’t care. It amounts to saying that if electors don’t care how venal, dishonest, or corrupt he is, then opposition politicians and the media should just shut up and accept it as well. It plays to the popular trope that all politicians are only in it for themselves anyway, and has the added advantage – for him – of enabling him to tar others with his own used brush.

Sadly, his assertion that people don’t care has an element of truth to it. It is based on the results of opinion polls which show that, despite all his lies, bluster and evasion, despite presiding over one of the worst death tolls in the world due to Covid, and despite all the contracts corruptly awarded to mates and donors, if an election were held tomorrow, he would still win a clear majority of seats in England: enough to continue in government across the whole UK. He’s wrong, though, in claiming that it means that ‘people’ don’t care; what it actually means is that ‘people who vote for the Tories’ don’t care enough to change their vote as a result. To him, those two caveats might not be important – like Trump, he seems to believe that the only opinions that matter are those of people likely to vote for him. But his current majority, like any future majority in line with the polls, is based on a minority of votes which gifts him near-absolute power as a result of an electoral system which is unfit for purpose; the ‘people’ to whom he is referring constitute only a minority.

But even if he were right, even if ‘people’ in general really don’t care about how dishonest he and his government are, does that really mean that they should not be questioned or held to account? There have been major crimes in the past which many have almost admired for their audacity, but no-one seriously suggests that the criminals should not be prosecuted as a result. A democracy – even a partial democracy like the UK – in which governments are excused from breaking rules or even outright criminality because the electors don’t care is a democracy which is doomed. The opposition should care, the media should care, we all should care whether those we elect to lead us are honest or not. Whatever Johnson says, there really is something to see – and we should insist on seeing it.

Morality isn't just a question of obeying the rules

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When most of us want a holiday, we look to see what’s available within our affordable price range and then book it.  The Prime Minister, it seems, simply ‘lets it be known’ to his rich friends that he needs a break and that his partner wants to be by a beach, and one of those friends contacts his friends and finds a friend who just happens to own a suitable property where there just happens to have been a last minute cancellation and, hey presto, the PM and partner get a ‘free’ holiday in Mustique.  It helps that the person who owned the property also just happens to owe Johnson’s rich friend a favour anyway. 

Labour have been asking for details of who actually paid, which strikes me as completely the wrong question to be asking.  Probably, in effect, no-one has paid anything – the person who owned the accommodation where the PM and partner stayed has lost the potential rental for the period, but if it had been subject to a late cancellation, he or she may not have been able to find a new taker for the relevant dates, and may also have benefited from a cancellation fee anyway.  Those are details we simply haven’t been told.  But it’s all been, apparently, fully declared and no rules have been broken, so that makes it all perfectly acceptable.  Or does it?

The first thing that looks dubious to me is that the friend who arranged all this for the PM did so by calling in a favour from someone else.  He’s now done a favour for Johnson, so will he at some future date be looking to call that favour in as well?  And that goes to the nub of the problem with providing favours for those who are in a position to potentially take favourable decisions in the future.  Doing someone a favour isn’t actual corruption, of course, unless and until the person doing the favour seeks some sort of quid pro quo in the future.  The individual in this case may never do so but the potential is always there.  Keeping the PM sweet can’t do him any harm and he could always just ‘let it be known’ that certain policies might be of benefit to him without ever ‘asking’ for anything.

The second thing is the confusion between rules and morality.  Thinking back to the MPs’ expenses saga, claiming for moat cleaning and duck houses may well have been within the rules at the time that the claims were being made, but that didn’t make those claims right.  They called into question the good sense and judgement of those making the claims.  The moral of the story is that sticking within the letter of the law isn’t enough; there is a duty on public figures to consider how their actions might reasonably be interpreted by others.  Sadly, the only lesson that the MPs learned was that they needed to make the rules a little bit tighter.  But MPs and ministers can’t ‘outsource’ their judgement or their duty to be seen to be doing the right thing simply by obeying the rules.  Arguing that something is only ‘wrongdoing’ if it breaks a rule somewhere is an abdication of responsibility.  From a government with a moral vacuum at its heart, I suspect we’ll have to get used to such abdication.