Last week’s legal victories against the government for corrupt contract practices and Uber for trashing workers’ rights are hailed as successes, which of course they are. However, they also highlight the brokenness of British politics and how far we’ve slipped…
Both stories barely broke the surface as the UK
media continue to trot out Tory press briefings and staged photos of Boris
Johnson dressed up to imply that he personally developed the covid vaccines. In
fact the biggest ‘legal’ story appeared to be the divorce of a certain high
profile celebrity couple.
In a case against Uber it was decided that workers
are – well – workers – yay - entitled to workers’ rights. And in a case taken
against the government’s Secretary for Health Matt Hancock, a high court
judge ruled that covid contracts, many liberally doled out to Tory mates, were
handled illegally – this is the judgement here - Good Law Project v UBER This touches on the subject I’ve written about previously on this blog of
pandemic profiteering.
Sadly, these victories point to political failure of
the kind we’ve seen in the US for decades. Regulatory failures move those
suffering harm into the long, lingering expensive arena of litigation. And –
just like with the Uber case – even a victory can be complicated by the company
claiming – things have changed significantly during that long legal haul.
In the face of political failures – abdication of
responsibility – when politicians simply don’t do what they are elected to do –
i.e. GOVERN – society becomes necessarily litigious.
I would site as an analogy the main river that runs
through Edinburgh – The Water of Leith which I can just about see from the end
of my street. Several years ago huge, ugly, nature-wrecking alterations were
made to assuage the problem of flooding between Balgreen and Murrayfield. Many
mature trees were ripped up. After much local complaint, a handful of saplings
were chucked in. Many of those were vandalised or died as no further attention was
given. Some were ruined by the very supports that were initially put in to hold
them and which they outgrew. The area is now a vandalised mess and a
significant number of the remaining trees are dead or dying. A closed area which
used to be rich with bird life is now a mess of dog shit, sludge and rough
shrub where few birds nest because of the constant harassment of out of control
dogs. The over intrusive measures were required because regular management of
the river had not happened for many years.
This is what happens with populism and privatisation
and deregulation. Instead of management which is boring and long-haul and
requires dedication – you get simply short term reaction to problems which need
not have happened. Grenfell. If you need a better example of the absence of
effective governance and an aversion to regulation - look at the disaster in
Texas. Of all the states in the US, Texas alone is not part of any US national
grid – this situation was created in the 1990s so Texas could avoid federal
regulation – and boy did they. So much so that despite huge energy resources in
a wealthy state – no actual weather management of the energy supply was
undertaken. And the cold which sent Republican
Senator Ted Cruz fleeing to a Mexican holiday resort while his constituents
died, has happened before - in 2011 so the ‘it could not be predicted’ argument
doesn’t hold.
Here in the
UK we have our own history of deregulation and privatisation which began with
Thatcher and reached its zenith with Brexit. We will, in the years to come,
reap the grim rewards. An unregulated – (read ‘un-managed’) country will
inevitably rely more heavily on litigation than proper governance. This means,
in effect, that issues only get dealt with when things have gone wrong.
Single issue problems will – like the ruling against
Matt Hancock – largely be ignored or – like the Uber ruling – largely be
claimed to be irrelevant as the company in question say they altered their
working practices anyhow.
If you look down the list of failures on last
Tuesday’s post – many are about lives wrecked by government failure to manage
and a greedy desire for deregulation. Regulation
is about good governance and it protects us down here from the avarice of
them up there. It became a negative concept at about the same time as PC-
political correctness. A way the media has of gas-lighting - turning what is
there for the benefit of the vulnerable into something to be derided.
The legal wins listed are a sign of the times and
while the litigators are to be congratulated – the courts cannot fill the
enormous hole left by competent timely governance that many will inevitably
fall into.
It would be a far better use of money and resources if
government did what it was elected to do and is paid handsomely to do; govern –
manage - regulate.