Sleaze, corruption and the Tories

As the Conservative sleaze scandal and the controversy surrounding second jobs for MPs, or in the case of Douglas Ross, third and fourth jobs, rumbles on, it has come to light that the Conservative MP for Moray, list MSP for the Highlands and Islands, leader of the Scottish Tories, and linesman for the Scottish Football Association managed to “forget” annual extracurricular earnings of over £28,000 a year which he failed to declare to the Westminster register of financial interests. In total his annual additional earnings on top of his MP’s salary of £81,932 before expenses is £32,835.

This would be the Douglas Ross who recently claimed that he and his party were more authentic and in touch voices for working class people in Scotland than the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and the SNP. There are not many working class people in Scotland who manage to forget about annual earnings of over £28,000. Those are people who struggle to do without the £20 a week in Universal Credit that Douglas Ross voted to take away from them while he was forgetting about an extra £540 per week that he receives on top of his weekly income of £1575 from his MP’s salary.

There certainly are not many working class people who bring home well over £100,000 a year. However when you represent a party led by a man who once described the £250,000 a year he earned on his side gig as “chicken feed”, your understanding of the financial constraints that working class people are under is probably as warped as a Conservative MP’s grasp of what constitutes moral and financial probity in public office.

The real issue isn’t the fact that Douglas Ross has a side line as a football linesman, it’s that many of his colleagues in the Conservative party have extremely well paid side jobs representing financial and commercial interests which potentially conflict with their duties and privileges as legislators who are supposed to be speaking up for the interests of their constituents. Public confidence in the institutions of the British state is not helped by the fact that the Conservative party is far more assiduous in taking steps to neuter independent oversight of MPs’ outside financial interests than it is in ensuring that MPs are kept to the high standards that the public has the right to expect of people who make our laws and shape public policy. And all the while the allegations keep piling up.

Over the weekend there were fresh allegations that Jacob Rees-Mogg failed to declare director’s loans totalling £6 million that he received from his company Saliston Limited between 2018 and 2020. Additionally Labour is demanding that new information from American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri about her relationship with Boris Johnson while he was mayor of London should be investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Earlier this year Johnson avoided a criminal investigation into his relationship with Arcuri after the IOP ruled there was no evidence Johnson had influenced the payment of thousands of pounds of public money to Arcuri or secured her participation in foreign trade trips he led.

The disquiet created by Boris Johnson’s attempts in the wake of the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal to abolish the independent Parliamentary Commissioner’s role in investigating allegations of wrong doing made against MPs in order to replace it with a sham committee of his chums is compounded by the many recent scandals about alleged wrong doing in the awarding of lucrative government contracts. A number of senior government figures including former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Home Secretary Priti Patel, and Michael Gove have been found to have been in breach of the ministerial code or to have acted unlawfully. None of them have faced any consequences as a result.

There is now a widespread and entirely accurate perception that members of the British Government and the Conservative party operate in a moral vacuum where they will never have to answer for their actions and behaviour. Their belief in their own privilege and exceptionalism must surely be be found out by the electorate? Or perhaps not? Do they really care enough to call them out on it?