Many years ago I was employed by one of the London Borough Councils in their Education Dept. to organise home to school transport for pupils who were entitled to it. This mostly meant making sure that children with profound physical and learning disabilities were taken safely to and from school. Our default mode was that we had to use the Council’s own internal transport service, their own buses, and only when this was fully utilised could we hire in external resources. That was fair enough, except that this was the days when trade unions were at the height of their powers. Many of our elected local councillors were trade unionists who worked for neighbouring boroughs and some of our employees were councillors on neighbouring boroughs. All very incestuous. Our internal transport service was quite militant and would walk out on strike at the drop of a hat, or would declare that the roads were not safe to drive on the minute we had an inch of snow. This was without notice, often in the middle of the day when children were already at school and we somehow had to get them home safely to concerned parents. Unfortunately, however much I complained about the service we received, and however much parents complained, it made no difference because the trade unionists on the Council were not going to confront the trade unionists who were employed by the Council. Now I tell you this because it was my first introduction, in my early twenties, to corruption in politics and it made me very angry. I also say this to show that corruption is not confined to one party.
What I see now, observing the national political scene, is corruption on a grand scale involving national government. There is a reason why businesses and business people give hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative party. Of course they want a legislative and regulatory climate that is favourable to business. But what we are seeing now goes way beyond that. Business people want something directly in return for their expensive private dinners with Prime Ministers and Chancellors. The scandalous use of taxpayers money to buy PPE during the pandemic through a fast track VIP lane of companies known to ministers is just one example. Some of those companies have now been shown to have earned outrageously large profits on those contracts. Is this value for money?
The fact that a MP was shown to be lobbying openly on behalf of one of those companies and the Prime Minister tried to shield him from any consequences just shows how far the rot has gone, right to the top. There was the infamous case of the Secretary of State for Housing who approved a planning decision in favour of property developer and Conservative donor Richard Desmond just in time to save him having to pay an extra £40million Council Tax levy. The said Secretary of State really did not think he had done anything wrong (although thankfully a court later disagreed).
Now you may be thinking that it will all be OK now because that Secretary of State was sacked, and that Prime Minister resigned. But what are we faced with now? Members of the Conservative Party choosing between two candidates for the next Prime Minister who have both served as members of that corrupt Cabinet. Do not expect any change there.
In the Greek myth of the labours of Hercules King Augeas had put off for thirty years cleaning his stables where 3000 cattle were kept overnight. They were so dirty that people said it was an impossible task to clean them. Hercules agreed to the challenge to clean the Augean stables in one day. I don’t expect that we can clean the filth and corruption from our politics in one day. But let’s not put off the task any longer. It is not impossible. We need a general election and a fresh start in our politics. We have had the same party in power for too long and the stench is becoming overpowering.