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Blackpool is a deprived north-western seaside town with England’s lowest life expectancy. As the UK heads into the general election, three Conservative MPs with adjoining seats in and outside the town have completed a bizarre hat-trick. Mark Menzies allegedly used party donations to pay off “bad people” who were threatening him. (He denies it.) Pensions minister Paul Maynard spent taxpayers’ money on party-political work. And Scott Benton resigned after offering to lobby for a fictitious company. Labour won his seat in last month’s by-election with a mind-blowing 26-point swing.
Picture what all this does to the remnants of public trust in Blackpool. Mark Butcher, the far-right Reform party’s candidate in Blackpool South, says there is “no integrity left” in either of the main parties.
Corruption is seldom discussed in this election campaign, but it’s on the ballot paper. Various pollsters have found trust in politics at all-time lows. A political system in that sort of shape needs to clean itself up, or be destroyed by Trumpian charlatans promising to drain the swamp. My new book, Good Chaps, asks how British politics got more corrupt, and what we could do about it.
I argue that postwar Britain was mostly run by upper-class men who had fought in one or other world war. These men were so-called “Good Chaps”, or, more precisely, public-service toffs. After private school, Oxbridge and war, they became senior civil servants, army generals and BBC bosses. Most took their perch at the top of the class system for granted, but they had also limped home from war with the belief that serving the British state, until death, if necessary, was the highest calling.
Even today, there are still many Good Chaps, male and female, doing their bit for Britain. The most famous extant specimen, the podcaster Rory Stewart, explained why he went into politics: “My father had fought in the war. My grandfather had been a doctor at the creation of the NHS. . . The only thing that had ever motivated me since I was a small child was the idea of public service.”
The Good Chaps’ codes forbade stealing. Britain in their era aimed to deter corruption with unspoken guidelines, rather than with vulgar written rules.
From the 1990s, Good Chaps began dying out. As memories of wars gave way to Thatcherite wealth-worship, the idea of public service came to seem a bit silly. Meanwhile, as London got richer, there were more plutocrats — including from Russia and elsewhere — able to tempt politicians. Political donations have soared this century. Frank Hester, the entrepreneur who said that Labour MP Diane Abbott made him “just want to hate all Black women”, has given the Tories more than £15mn. Labour, steaming to power, is attracting record donations too.
The next government has to clean up politics. The UK needs a system that can work even when staffed by Bad Chaps. That means replacing the Good Chaps’ unwritten codes with formal rules. The UK needs stricter laws on lobbying, on outsourcing of government work, the awarding of peerages and ministers’ behaviour. No longer should the prime minister have a hand in choosing the heads of watchdogs, from their own ethics adviser to the BBC. The PM can control the executive, but not the people who check on the executive.
Whatever shape the reforms take, they will cage Britain’s governing elite inside an unprecedentedly rules-based system. As the Roman historian Tacitus wrote, “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.” British government will get numerous laws. This will suck in many ways. More checks will mean more bureaucracy: more forms to fill in and more sanctimonious watchdogs questioning politicians’ sandwich receipts. In a breach of British tradition, “unelected bureaucrats” will supervise elected politicians.
Cumbersome rules will also slow down government. And, initially, they will mean more Bad Chaps get caught, meaning more scandals, and potentially more damage to public trust. But over time, the new rules should bed down into taken-for-granted norms. Officials will stop expecting to be free to jump straight from government to lobbying. Ministers won’t expect to throw state contracts to donors. Prime ministers won’t expect to save ministers who do. The red tape will start to become invisible, rather than feeling like a daily obstacle. New political norms will grow. Gradually, the UK should start breeding more Good Chaps again.
‘Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions — And What We Can Do About It’ (Profile) is out now
Follow Simon @KuperSimon and email him at simon.kuper@ft.com
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