Who needs honesty?

Tweet

 

It seems that ‘allies’ of the now ex-Chair of the Tory Party are briefing that he is very upset about being sacked and feels that he hasn’t had a fair hearing, despite all the PM’s talk of following ‘due process’ before sacking Zahawi. In truth, ministers always hold their jobs at the pleasure of the PM; the PM can hire and fire people any time he likes with no need for any explanation or process of any sort, as plenty of ex-ministers – in all parties – can attest. Sunak didn’t need to follow any process other than telling Zahawi he was out. Once he’d announced an enquiry, Zahawi probably had a reasonable expectation that the enquiry would take longer than a few days. Normal process in such investigations is that the investigations are drawn out as long as possible in the vague hope that the issue might go away. (Spoiler: it never does.)

The enquiry was never about his tax affairs as such, that was deemed out of scope. It was, rather, all about what he did – or more generally did not – tell the relevant people at the right time. Setting the scope in that way is revealing in itself – it means that for a minister to seek to avoid paying tax which is due is not considered a matter for the ethics advisor, nor a bar to serving in the cabinet, as long as he owns up to it before taking on any job. It’s a strange definition of honesty. He claims to have evidence that some of the claims about him not having told the right people the right things at the right time are wrong, and if he’s telling the truth about that (not an assumption that one should necessarily rely on in the circumstances) then he might even have reasonable cause for complaint about the conduct of the investigation. That still would not circumvent that fact that Sunak could have sacked him arbitrarily at any time anyway.

His underlying claim that he wasn’t dishonest, just incompetent, isn’t quite the ‘get-out-of-jail’ card that he seems to think. He might be better advised to start questioning why he is being held to a higher standard of honesty than has been expected of his ministerial colleagues, but I can understand why none of them might be over-keen to open that particular can of invertebrates. Pleading incompetence isn’t the only instance of people using curious arguments. After saying that it is right for Zahawi to be sacked for what the advisor clearly saw as a lack of honesty and openness, Tory spokespeople are lining up to say that he should not be forced out as an MP. But arguing that being an MP doesn’t require the same level of honesty as being a minister isn’t exactly a killer argument either.

Sunak must be starting to wonder whether Johnson didn’t have the right approach after all: don’t have an ethics advisor and don’t worry about ethics. Through his actions, Johnson has shown, time and time again, that he believes honesty to be an over-rated attribute in a candidate for high office and, for three years, Sunak was happy to go along with that approach. But then he appointed Braverman back into a job from which she was forced out due to a breach of the ministerial code, and his spokesperson today has declined to rule out a cabinet return for Zahawi in the future. Perhaps Sunak and Johnson aren’t really that different after all; Sunak merely lacks the insouciance, and the ability to lie directly and repeatedly, with which Johnson dismissed any and every ethical criticism.

Doing the right thing

Tweet

 

The Chair of the Tory Party told us over the weekend that he had settled the HMRC claim against him for unpaid taxes because it “…was the right thing to do”. It’s one of the few things that he’s ever said with which it’s hard to disagree – paying the taxes which are due under the law is, of course, the right thing to do. The wording of his statement – that he paid up “so that I could focus on my life as a public servant” – might reasonably be interpreted, however, as implying that it only became the ‘right thing to do’, in his eyes, when he was appointed as Chancellor. Prior to that, the impression he gives is clearly that he felt justified in arguing the toss. I suppose that starting to be honest about his finances once appointed Chancellor still makes him a tad more honourable than the man who appointed him to the role, who has never felt constrained to behave ethically whether in or out of office.

His statement, however, raises more questions that it answers (the Guardian has a handy list of those things which we still don’t know here). He clearly believes at this stage that he can bluff and brazen his way through the controversy by declining to provide any more information – that is, after all, the approach taken repeatedly by the man who appointed him Chancellor, and it worked well enough for him – until it didn’t. He has made it very clear that he will not be resigning, a statement which puts the ball back very firmly in the PM’s court. A quick resignation now might, just about, let Sunak off this particular hook, although it’s not the only one from which he is currently trying to escape. A refusal forces Sunak either to sack him or else to continue to defend the indefensible, and mire himself deeper in the sleaze pit which his party has become. It is a source of never-ending surprise to me that, despite all the past experience of PM after PM, the first instinct of all of them is to try and cling on to those they have appointed. It drags out the story and makes the ultimate resignation/ sacking look like weakness instead of strength. Do they really have no-one close to the PM telling him to act quickly and decisively to get rid of an embarrassment? That would be the core of any message from any serious PR professional, yet still Sunak dithers. He has two days before he faces Starmer at PMQs – does he really want to do so with all those questions still unanswered?

Who's really doing what Putin wants?

Tweet

 

Nadhim Zahawi is clearly a man of deeply and sincerely held views. Appointed as Chancellor from the Downing Street bunker in the dying days of the Johnson regime because of his deep and long term loyalty to Johnson, within 48 hours he was equally sincere in his belief that Johnson should resign. When the subsequent Truss regime imploded, he was one of the first to express his deeply-held view that Johnson should return as PM, and then last week he told us with immense sincerity that there was no chance of a Johnson return. It’s anybody’s guess as to what his position on the question will be next week, but we can be certain that it will be deeply-held and sincere. Or, at least, as deeply-held and sincere as any other views he’s expressed.

On which subject, he told us very sincerely yesterday that striking nurses are playing into the hands of Putin. If I understand his argument correctly (and who knows with Zahawi?), Putin will be delighted if the nurses manage to maintain or improve their standard of living, but deeply disappointed if the nurses do their patriotic duty and accept a drop in their standard of living (something which all of us, except millionaires like, er, Zahawi, are apparently obliged to do as part of our patriotic duty). Now I may well be missing something here, but if Putin wants the nurses to get a decent increase whilst the UK government wants their living standards to fall, doesn’t that rather make Putin look at least a little bit like the good guy here?

In truth, I doubt that Putin is actually much bothered about nurses or any other group of workers in the UK. His main aim in relation to those countries like the UK which are supporting Ukraine is to see the population demoralised to the extent that they force their government to stop supporting Ukraine. On that basis, given a choice between a UK government which grinds down standards of living and blames the war in Ukraine, or a UK government which acts to maintain the standards of living of its population regardless of events in Ukraine, it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to conclude that he’d prefer the former. By a large margin. But if the UK government wants the same outcome from the strikes as Putin, who is really playing into his hands?