Newsletter

2021xi4, Thursday: Once upon a time…

Let me tell you a story. I think it’s about corruption. But do decide for yourself.

Jeremy Scott-Joynt

Nov 4, 2021 — 4 min read

Once upon a time, there was a man in Harare. His name was Edwin. He was a ZANU-PF member of Zimbabwe’s Senate.

Edwin had a friend who ran a business in his constituency. The business sold cars. Edwin’s friend was bidding for a contract to sell cars to the government. Edwin’s friend’s business paid Edwin a consultancy fee. Edwin talked to his colleagues in government, encouraging them to contract with his friend’s business. He didn’t say anything about his relationship with his friend, or that the business in question was owned by his friend, or about the money the friend’s business had given him.

Was Edwin acting corruptly?

I agree.

Oops. I’m sorry. I’ve got the story wrong. Try this one instead.

Edwin wasn’t in Harare at all. He was in Stoke-on-Trent. He was a Labour councillor. (And this is back in the days when 95% of Stoke’s council was Labour – when, as the sneering cynics might have unfairly said, you could get a monkey elected in Stoke if you strategically shaved them, stuck them in a suit and pinned on a red rosette.) Edwin’s friend owned a garage. Edwin’s friend paid Edwin some money to “advise” him on business. The friend wanted to pull down the garage and build flats. That would make him a killing. The friend’s planning application was becalmed in the planning committee. Without telling anyone about his relationship with his friend, or about the money, or about any connection he had with the planning application, Edwin spoke up in favour of the application.

Was Edwin acting corruptly?

I agree.

Damn. I’m really messing this up. Because both stories are true. And in both cases, Edwin got found out.

An independent arbiter, appointed by the assembly each Edwin was part of, and sticking to the rules that the assembly had agreed, investigated Edwin’s conduct. In the time after the conduct in question, each Edwin had lost his wife in tragic circumstances, so the arbiter in each case gave their Edwin every chance to defend himself, extending deadlines and giving him more leeway than would be normal. Both arbiters found their respective Edwin’s defence to be baseless - “stretching credulity”, as it described one of his claims - and his conduct to have breached the rules of the assembly. In each case a cross-party committee of Edwin’s fellow representatives agreed with the arbiter’s findings, and censured Edwin.

Hold on a minute, said each Edwin’s party – ZANU-PF in the one case, Labour in the other. This isn’t right. Edwin hasn’t had a fair say. Let’s press pause on this while we reconsider the rules we’d previously agreed were fine. Each of the two parties whipped Edwins’ colleagues to suspend punishment while – for however long it takes – a committee on which that party holds a majority thought again.

Each Edwin, of course, is still sitting. Still unpunished.

In each case, is Edwin’s party acting corruptly?

Hmmm.

I recognise I’m not being terribly subtle here.

Obviously I’m not talking about Edwin. And I’m not talking about ZANU-PF or Labour. Although if either of them did this, they’d be just as much in the wrong.

This isn’t about parties. This is about probity. About ethics. About the wholesale abuse of power for private advantage.

About, in other words, corruption.

Owen Patterson’s party (because of course that’s what this is about) whines about a lack of due process from the Standards Commissioner (whose report is here). From a party whose Lord Chancellor and Attorney-General want to make it so ministers found to have acted unlawfully can simply, administratively, change the law to suit their purposes, this is cant. Base hypocrisy.

For shame.

I also recognise that these are strong words. Stronger, I think, than I’d usually use.

A few days ago my old friend Max left a comment on a previous post on LinkedIn. He referred – approvingly, I should note – to my “blogrants”. For a moment I was taken aback. Do I really rant? I hope not.

Notwithstanding that, I realise I may have done so here.

But I haven’t spent most of my working life working against corruption elsewhere to nod and wink when I see it at home.

There’s a point to the story-telling method I’ve adopted above – and not only, as I’ve discussed before, because we humans respond to stories, not to bare recitations of fact.

It’s instructive, particularly in this country where we like to believe we’re cleaner than most, to swap out places like “London” or “the UK” and tell the same story as if it were in Harare. Or Abuja. Or San Salvador. Or Kabul. Or Moscow. Or Beijing. Or Beirut. Or any of the other places that we think we’re better than. It’s also important, if one is to have a shred of decency, to imagine how one would feel if it was – in political terms – the other lot. It’s like steel-manning the issue.

If it’d be corruption elsewhere, it’s corruption here. Not sleaze. Corruption. Names are important.

Call this what it is.

1140: a quick update, having finally got round to reading this morning’s Politico playbook from which the below info was taken. For the record, the following Conservative MPs voted against the party whip. They should be applauded. Some would say: well, they’re only doing what they should; where’s the credit in that? But this is like whistleblowing. They’ve put their careers in jeopardy. This is brave, and right.

Aaron Bell. Jackie Doyle-Price. Richard Fuller. Kate Griffiths. Mark Harper. Simon Hoare. Kevin Hollinrake. Nigel Mills. Jill Mortimer. Holly Mumby-Croft. Matthew Offord. John Stevenson. William Wragg.

19 Tory MPs voted in favour despite having in the past had complaints upheld. Not strictly speaking a conflict, but still fairly grubby. I won’t name them, since I guess they’ve a right to their opinion, however shameless it is.

Not so for the three Tory MPs whose alleged misconduct is still under investigation:

James Cleverly. Daniel Kawczynski. David Warburton.

I can’t put it better than Politico does: