Too many MPs have the wrong priorities, too many lack the right competence and too many behave badly: Guardian, 21st December

This country needs a new generation of trustworthy political leaders – in all parties – with the right priorities and the ability to lead

This is the theme of an article by Martin Kettle, assistant editor of the Guardian (right). Some of the points he made are noted below.

He reports that a week ago the Ipsos polling organisation published its annual “veracity index”, which measures the public trust in a list of professions. Nurses were top, with 88% “generally trusted to tell the truth”. Others who scored well include airline pilots, librarians, engineers, doctors and teachers. Lawyers, civil servants and the ordinary person in the street have majority trust too.

Politicians, by contrast, are generally trusted by a mere 9% of the public; in this country just one in 11 people trust politicians – 10 out of 11 don’t.

Politicians are the least trusted profession in Britain. This year’s figure is the lowest ever. Government ministers are scarcely any better, on 10%. Journalists, on 21%, well below estate agents, bankers and landlords, have no cause for complacency either.

Three glaring reasons for Britain’s political malaise shone out as a dark December afternoon unfolded. One is that too many MPs have the wrong priorities. Another is that too many lack the right competence. The third is that too many simply behave badly.

Priorities

On Tuesday, the House of Commons debated the Post Office (Horizon system) Compensation bill which goes some way to compensate victims of the Post Office’s 16-year wrongful prosecution of more than 700 post office operators over false accounting. The case is a national scandal.

But though there are 650 MPs at Westminster, a no time were there more than 17 MPs in the chamber to debate it.

MPs should spend more time on governing and holding ministers to account. They should be the parliamentarians they are, not the glorified local advice bureaux they have become.

Competence

On Tuesday, Rishi Sunak had his end-of-year session in front of the liaison committee of Commons select committee chairs. By any normal logic, this too is an important event. Watch the session, though, and you learn almost nothing at all about the big issues of the day – Gaza, Rwanda, the economy.

There should be more to the Commons chamber than the grotesquery of prime minister’s questions . . . the chamber ought to be the place to hold the nation’s attention, and currently it is not.

Behaviour: the 12th recall since 2019

On Tuesday, North Northamptonshire council announced that the recall petition against Peter Bone, the Conservative MP for Wellingborough, had been successful.

This will be the 12th since 2019 to be caused by an MP’s bad behaviour of one kind or another, ranging from sexual misconduct and bullying, to corruption, lockdown rule breaking and, in Nadine Dorries’s case, to a hissy-fit about not getting a peerage.

Parliament is failing us. Rarely has this country had more need of a new generation of national political leaders – in all parties – with the right sense of priorities, the right ability to lead and the necessary probity to be trusted. If the public does not believe what it is told and does not trust the politicians, confidence in parliament and government to solve problems that matter will not just remain low: it may even be destroyed altogether.

 

 

 

 

o

Broken Britain 47: the country’s democracy is in tatters – the 99% appear to be powerless

There seems to be no way of escaping from the destructive two-party see-saw and governments serving the interests of big business, which are – on the whole – environmentally, socially and economically destructive.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/votingreformteam

No party – as yet – has made proportional representation its flagship campaign pledge.

There are, however, cross-party/no-party organisations which include:

• Make Votes Matter, whose goal is the introduction of Proportional Representation in the House of Commons
• Get PR Done which adds that building a voting system in which seats won match votes cast would be a very good place for political reformers to start.
• and Councils for PR, a joint campaign by #getPRdone and #MakeVotesMatter.

 

 

 

o

Broken Britain 46: the Committee on Standards in Public Life calls – in vain – for an end to the ‘big donor culture’

 Their ‘big donor culture’ report may be read here.

On November 3^rd this site recorded that the call to end the big donor culture was being ignored by both Labour and Conservative politicians, but the evidence cited on that day mainly referred to Conservative politicians.

Two days later, Global Research reported that some 13 of the 31 members of Labour’s shadow cabinet have received donations from a prominent pro-Israel lobby group or individual funders provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).

It listed members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet as parliamentary supporters or officers of LFI:

• party leader Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner,
• shadow foreign secretary David Lammy,
• the former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Lisa Nandy, who is now shadow international development minister,
• shadow health secretary Wes Streeting,
• shadow business, energy, industrial strategy secretary Jonathan Reynolds,
• shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry
• and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is currently a parliamentary vice-chair of LFI.

Parliament’s Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) recommended a package of reforms to help to reduce the risk of corruption caused by pressure on political parties to raise funds.

It proposed an annual £10,000 cap on how much any individual or organisation could donate to a political party, alongside a 15% reduction in how much political parties can spend at national elections to reduce the demand for funding (full report).

Articles in the media, however including those in the Independent and Bloomberg, show that the committee’s principled recommendation has been totally disregarded.

 

 

 

 

o

A call to end the big donor culture ignored by Labour and Conservative politicians: “Worm-tongued servicers of oligarchical wealth”

In October BBC News reported that Sir Brandon Lewis MP, a former justice secretary and chair of the Conservative Party, has taken a second job advising LetterOne, a company set up and owned by two sanctioned Russian oligarchs billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven( below left). He is expected to earn in the “low hundreds of thousands of pounds”(FT) 

Under the sanctions, the current management may not pay any dividends or other money to its oligarch owners, or take any instruction from them, but Solomon Hughes  comments that  they are arguably stewarding the oligarchs’ assets until the sanctions end.

Last week it was reported that a co-founder of LetterOne, Alexei Kuzmichev, is being questioned by French police about allegations of violations of international sanctions, tax avoidance and money laundering.

Labour Party chair Anneliese Dodds said it was totally unacceptable for Lewis to join a firm owned by sanctioned Russian oligarchs: “It makes yet another mockery of Rishi Sunak’s promise of professionalism, integrity and accountability at all levels”.

But neither party is shy of accepting ‘oligarch money’ (Solomon Hughes)

Ms Dodds makes no mention of the fact that Lord Mervyn Davies, a former Labour Party minister who sits in the Lords as a non-Labour independent, controls LetterOne.

And Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy – the biggest earner in his party – has been offered funding from Lord Davies’ wife. Jeanne Marie Davies, who gave him £25,000 to be used towards paying for an additional member of staff for his office (Independent).

And – though MP David Lammy (right) quoted Keir Starmer’s view that by taking nearly £2m in donations since Boris Johnson took power in 2019, Conservatives have become “just as hooked on Russian-linked money as any of the worm-tongued servicers of oligarchical wealth”- he decided to accept the offer from the wife of LetterOne’s chairman.

Ending the big donor culture

In May, following revelations from the BBC and Evening Standard that Javad Marandi, a major donor to the Conservative Party, has been named in connection with court proceedings as a key part of an international money laundering operation, Transparency International recalled a report by parliament’s Committee on Standards in Public Life  which recommended a package of reforms to help to reduce the risk of corruption caused by pressure on political parties to raise funds.

It proposed an annual £10,000 cap on how much any individual or organisation could donate to a political party, alongside a 15% reduction in how much political parties can spend at national elections to reduce the demand for funding.

But articles in the media, including the Independent and Bloomberg, show that this principled recommendation has been totally disregarded.

Audiences in programmes such as Question Time and Any Questions frequently display the anger, distrust and lack of respect felt for politicians – as a class – by so many members of the public. British democracy is in tatters as the disillusioned electorate can see no way of escaping from the two-party see-saw and government serving the interests of big business, which are – on the whole – environmentally, socially  and economically destructive.

 

 

 

o

o

South Devon Primary: a plan that could transform our political system

British politics has lost the plot and George Monbiot (left) describes a plan that could help to deliver something closer to the democracy so long been promised and so long denied. He writes:

Political and electoral systems are designed to grant us a semblance of ownership and control, while depriving us of real power. The political parties that claim to represent us too often respond instead to the demands of the powerful: media barons, corporations and party funders. In extreme cases, such as the UK’s current government, they are reduced to corporate lobbyists, delivering the country to the most antisocial interests.

As recent opinion polls suggest, there is massive public appetite for changing the system, but this appetite is not shared by the two parties most likely to form a government.

The Labour leadership won’t commit to proportional representation, no matter how many party members demand it, because it sees itself as the winner in a winner-takes-all election.

So what do we do, desperate for change, but denied it by those who claim to act on our behalf? How do we take back control?

The answer, I believe, has been developed in Totnes and south Devon Can Totnes show minority rule the door?

In a prize example of what the democracy campaign Compass calls a “progressive tragedy”, the latest election predictions (aggregated from three different websites) show the Conservative MP winning on 34% of the vote, while the Lib Dems, Labour and Greens between them are expected to take 59%. The Tories have held this seat for almost 99 years, and the split progressive vote threatens to sustain their hegemony.

South Devon Primary is the name of the plan local people have devised to break minority rule.

Voters are invited to a series of eight town hall meetings, all held within a fortnight, in different parts of the constituency. At these meetings, the leading progressive candidates (likely, in this constituency, to be Labour, Lib Dem and Green) make their pitch. Members of the audience are asked to decide whom they believe is best-placed to beat the incumbent MP. At the end of each meeting, there’s a secret ballot with basic precautions taken to ensure no one from outside the constituency can vote and no one votes twice.

The primary is run by volunteers and depends for its success on their ability to excite people about the possibility of change and encourage them to attend the meetings.

The campaign has so far recruited 40 local ambassadors to talk to people in the constituency’s towns and villages.

When all eight meetings have taken place, the total vote is released. The campaign will then urge progressives to unite behind the leading candidate: not only voting for them, but leafletting and canvassing for them. Local people, in other words, will then be able to trust other people’s tactical votes.

The Conservative MP for Totnes, Anthony Mangnall (left), complains the primary will “restrict democracy”. It’s not clear why. In fact, it’s pretty obvious that it enhances and empowers democracy.

Campaigners in another constituency – Godalming and Ash, in Surrey, where the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will stand at the next election – are now adopting the model and several other constituency groups are interested.

The south Devon pioneers are offering their design to any constituency in which the Tories are likely to win by default in a largely progressive constituency. Of the 62 “progressive tragedies” in the UK, the campaigners estimate that roughly 50 could make good use of the strategy. Enough to swing an election.

This strategy offers more than just an end to minority rule. It also has the potential to undermine the power of dictatorial party leaders, of whatever persuasion, and return power to constituents. This simple, local idea, which enhances our trust in each other, could transform our political system. It will help to deliver something closer to the democracy we have so long been promised and so long denied.

 

 

 

o

o

 

Low-lights of the Labour Party conference selected from Open Democracy’s latest mailing

From events sponsored by American pharmaceutical companies, housing developers or arms firms to right-wing think tanks, lobbying was front and centre at the conference. 

• Just as it did a week earlier at the Conservative Party Conference, Policy Exchange hosted numerous events. It does not disclose its UK funders, but an investigation by this website in 2022 found it had taken cash from US oil giant ExxonMobil.
• Right-wing think tank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) said at a conference event on Sunday that it was set to announce a Labour peer as a patron.
• Audience members were removedafter objecting to the presence on a panel of Offshore Energies UK, an energy lobbying company that supported the Rosebank oil field development.
• Fringe events were sponsored by arms manufacturers, fossil fuel companies and a spy-tech firm. Other sponsors included property developers, the National Residential Landlord Association, cryptocurrency firms, and pharma companies.

Link to the article: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/labour-conference-corporate-sponsorship-lobbying-think-tanks/

 

 

 

o

o

Broken Britain 45: Alan Simpson

A catalogue of collapse

In his September article, former MP Alan Simpson summarises:

“On the eve of the autumn term, schools were notified they couldn’t re-open because defective concrete in their roofs put them at risk of imminent collapse. Around the country, GP practices open their phone lines and within moments queues of 40-50 people are hanging on for an appointment.

Hospital waiting lists grow because the government has failed to offer nurses and doctors decent pay, sufficient to retain and recruit. Rail services are disrupted for the same reason.

And all the while, Water Companies go un-fined for the untreated sewage they pour into our rivers and beaches.

He makes several recommendations:

• Instead of chasing stupid, planet destroying, international trade deals, regulations could be changed to favour more localised (and accountable) food systems. Examples of these can already be found within the European Slow Food movement.
• Business and industrial tax allowances could be skewed in favour of co-operatives and common ownership enterprises.
• Like others on state benefits (and those in full-time public employment) MPs could be required to have only the one job.
• Train operators could be limited to paying dividends and bonuses only if the trains run on time.
• And Post Office executives could face personal penalties (rather than bonuses) if the service fails to meet statutory delivery targets.
• The power of the corporate pound
• Everything in today’s Broken Britain works the other way round.
• Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the struggle to save humanity from self-propelled destruction.

But as the prospect of a Tory landslide collapse looms ever larger a swarm of corporate lobbyists are already offering Labour free advice on how to hold this broken game together. All live in (well financed) denial of the existential implosion they are creating. There may be an embargo on trade with Russia, but this doesn’t stop Gazprom from running a €100m/year lobbying budget. And every other part of the ‘oil-igarchy’ is doing the same.

Look around the planet. The centre ground is imploding. And wherever the Left has become marginalised or criminalised the political space is being filled, not by the centre but by the Far Right.

Next-Generation Politics

https://www.nextgenpolitics.org/blog/qml2j6g4obrhgvlerdduwtoae03vo1

Alan hopes that someone in Labour will grasp this. But is that enough? A large majority of the British public should call time on ‘pandering to the corporate rich’, and, as Alan writes, give the space to a ‘people and planet’ economics – a new politics.

o

o

o

o

o

o

o

Levelling Up fund: why do LAs prepare costly applications and ’jump through hoops’ for little or no return?

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) evaluation document describes the fund as a central pillar of the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda. It will provide £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025, . But Jack Shaw, a researcher into local government, who obtained the new figures, notes that  less than 3% of the levelling up fund was spent in its first year (Observer).

This year, £2 billion has been awarded (out of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund of £5 billion) to over 100 projects across the whole country. (Sustain).

Local authorities (LAs) spend an estimated total of £27 million on preparing a bid but many have been unsuccessful. This has led to the ‘begging bowl culture’ allusions of Conservative Mayor Andy Street (right) and ’a raft of Tory MPs’.

The Observer article adds that the government’s levelling up fund aimed at boosting deprived areas, gave the south-east of England, the most affluent region in Britain outside London, in the year to 31 March 2022, almost twice as much money (£9.2m) as the north-east (£4.9m), the poorest region in Britain by disposable household income. 

Local government sources estimate that some councils spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on preparing detailed bids to the Levelling Up Fund. Why are local governments preparing expensive bids for grants such as those listed below?

EXTRACT

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-up-fund-round-2-successful-bidders: January 23rd

Mayor Marvin Rees, Chair of the LGA’s City Regions Board, said: “Councils with limited resources are having to make difficult decisions on whether to risk time and money to make bids for additional funding, while facing increasing cost pressures.

“The remaining £1 billion of the Levelling Up Fund should be allocated on the basis of robust evidence of where crucial investment needs to land, rather than through costly competitive bids between areas for funds they may not get.

oOOo

 

Levelling Up fund: a comment from Stroud

Stroud District Council’s failed application for “Levelling Up” funding has prompted Mark Walton to ask why local authorities are being forced to compete with each other and jump through hoops to obtain funding:

“We have all contributed to the funds in question through our taxes. Yet severely underfunded councils throughout the country must go, begging bowl in hand, competing for crumbs from central government.

“Over the last 13 years local authority funding has been slashed and slashed again while councils have been given additional legal responsibilities with no additional funding, leading to many councils struggling to meet basic needs in their communities. We all complain about the state of our roads and yet most people seem to blame local authorities instead of recognising that it’s the government that is responsible by impoverishing our councils”.

He ends by saying that though most of the Levelling Up funds have yet to be distributed, we are expected to be grateful for the funds secured.  Instead, we should be angry at the systematic starvation of our councils and our public services and aim that anger where it belongs – the government.

 

o

o

o

o

FT readers suggest the UK and USA clean up their own acts before helping to establish an International Anti-Corruption Court

Lord Hain, former cabinet minister and anti-apartheid campaigner reports that on August 27^th, at the New Institute in Hamburg (above), a group of eminent jurists and lawyers will begin to draft a treaty to establish an International Anti-Corruption Court. (Financial Times).

In many nations kleptocrats have ravaged their populations for far too long, with corrupt leaders looting public funds for personal gain and thrusting their people deeper into poverty. Developing countries bear the brunt of this abuse. Money laundering causes a staggering $1.6tn in global losses annually, with more than $7tn in private wealth held in secretive offshore accounts — the equivalent of 10 per cent of global GDP.

A reader asks: “who would police it, given that political corruption seems commonplace in most countries? I hope they aren’t planning to run this out of Londongrad. Is England not destination #2 for laundered kleptobucks? After the USA and its wide selection of exploding debt instruments?”

Peter Hain (left) acknowledges that “London and UK overseas territories — from the Caribbean to Gibraltar — are infamous money-laundering hotspots, and our government should adopt a leading role in gathering global support for the IACC”.

Another reader adds: “Without the enablers – London lawyers, bankers, private wealth managers, tax and company consultants – it would be impossible to wash that corrupt money clean in the global washing machine that London has become. Could we please charge them with being accessories to corruption? That would solve the bulk of the problem in my opinion”.

Peter Hain agrees: “The UK must also do much more to regulate lawyers, bankers, real estate, accountants and other financial advisers aiding money launderers, enforce laws against foreign corruption and enhance transparency”.

Third reader: Maybe do something about the UK first, okay?

o

o

o

o

The Electoral Commission is to contact Barnes & Richmond Labour Club about its large donation to the Labour Party

Following Martin Williams’ report on analysis by openDemocracy, which shows that the Carlton Club has been channelling money to the Conservative Party and its MPs since the last election, Adam Ramsay (Open Democracy) reports that the UK’s election watchdog is probing a major donor to the Labour Party over an apparent breach of transparency laws. The central party did not respond to openDemocracy’s request for comment.

Barnes & Richmond Labour Club and Institute donated £598,000 to Labour in December 2022. The organisation is listed by the central party as an unincorporated association, a legal term for organisations that aren’t registered companies or other formal bodies. It doesn’t, however, appear in the register of unincorporated associations despite having donated more than half a million pounds to Labour. A spokesperson for the club said the central Labour Party hadn’t informed them of this rule.

The club has not yet accounted for the source of these funds, although its former secretary told openDemocracy the cash had come from the 2018 sale of the four-storey townhouse club building (above).

An Electoral Commission spokesperson told Open Democracy, “We are contacting the club to find out more information about this matter and their status and we will then consider what, if any, action is appropriate.”

Rose Whiffen of Transparency International said: “Unincorporated associations can be useful vehicles for local fundraising clubs to rally support for a political party in their area, but ambiguous and weak reporting requirements mean their financial arrangements are often kept from public view.

“Very few of these groups actually report the original source of their donations, making it far too easy for money of dubious origin to fund political parties. Clearly, [donors] should abide by the current rules, but to bring dark money out of the shadows, we need a significantly lower threshold for transparency over these donations”.

o

o

o

o

o