UK Con-servatives have polluted Britain with plutocracy; the Tory legacy will be the effluence of affluence.
We have bidding wars instead of government in the
latest mad ‘levelling up’ nonsense. As many have said before me – a sort of Hunger
Games for struggling infrastructure.
Richard Sharp – head of the BBC was, it turns out,
not just a previous Tory donor and crony of both Sunak and Johnson, he was also a money loan
enabler for his old pal Boris de-Brexit Johnson immediately prior to his
appointment.
Meanwhile Nadhim
Zahawi – Tory party Chair (ex-chancellor and man who had to return tax monies
he’d used to heat his private stables) has had chit-chats with
HMRC about his not very transparent tax omissions. But he’s paid a fine now so
nothing to see here! But the question is – do we want this kind of ‘mistake’
from the man who was at the time running the nation’s fiscal infrastructure.
James Cleverly (sec of state for foreign affairs) drew the short straw at the weekend and was wheeled out to defend Nadhim Zahawi. It was a full on shit show with not-so-Cleverly excusing NZ because he was a successful businessman who fled Iraq with his family as a child. Cleverly is currently part of a government that literally dreams of cruel treatments for desperate migrants fleeing dangerous regimes who maybe also wish one day to be British Chancellor to which one can only say - pick a lane...
Another defender of Zahawi was deputy PM Dominic Raab currently under
multiple investigations for bullying. He’s the man who makes Patel look
like Mother Theresa – the man who was too busy when Home Secretary – to get off
his arse on holiday as the horrors of the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan
unfolded.
But – back to bidding for crumbs from the
millionaires’ many tables.
Last week Michael Gove – political rubber man – denied
and defended the appearance that wealthier southern areas are getting more of
the ridiculously named ‘levelling up’ fund than more deprived areas. When Sunak
was losing his Tory leadership bid to terrible Truss (woops – there goes
£50billion) he was caught out at a Tory pep talk in Tunbridge boasting that
he’d take monies from deprived urban areas to hand to wealthier ones. At the
same time he and Gove and previously Truss and Johnson continue to talk out of
their arses about levelling-up. Levelling Up is phrase that has embedded itself
into the political consciousness if not the political understanding like a
tick.
Local government is no longer really that. Since
Thatcher it’s just a series of decisions about services that were ‘put out to
tender’ usually to be done cheaper and inadequately. Who gets the contract is the game they now play. More rich pickings for corruption and cronyism.
Also in this list of governments no longer governing
would be the setting up of ‘independent bodies’. Sounds great doesn’t it. Ditto
enquiries.
Very often these cabals-of-pals are used to deflect. In the
case of the ubiquitous inquiry – they’re used to kick the can down the road
when hopefully the public will have forgotten or at least be less angry about
the government failure/disaster like –
the Iraq war inquiry or the current – still ongoing - Grenfell tower or the
reports on the Windrush scandal. Of course sometimes there are multiple
inquiries/reports as into racism and they are ignored only to be followed by
another report/inquiry the next time one is needed as a distraction from
actually doing anything.
I’ll stop here because you really get the point.
The thing is Britain is not governed any more. We beg
for services – get some if we’re lucky and if we’re not lucky enough to live in
a wealthy Tory borough – tough. Politicians don’t make decisions they pass
things off to convenient bodies and bide their time until they can leave
politics and cash-in on their status and contacts.
But we are paying politicians more than ever while
they twist and turn to avoid the rules that are supposed to supress their side
earnings where they are at the beck and call of lobbyists and vested interests.
After 13 years of Con-servative governments, the one
thing it seems we cannot expect from our government is government…
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