Not the best of birthdays for Andrew

The biggest news story today is one we can only talk around, not directly about, at the moment. The King’s brother, the allegedly sweat-free Andrew, will be sweating buckets today, after being arrested and taken into custody by Thames Valley Police on charges of misconduct in public office. This is a serious offence, and if found guilty he could potentially be facing years in prison. However, colour me cynical, but we all know that won’t happen. The British establishment tends to look after its own and there is no one more establishment than the King’s brother. Like everyone else who is arrested, of course, he is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and Mountbatten-Windsor has always strongly denied any wrong-doing. Come on, admit it, you don't believe him either.

Documents released as part of the Epstein files appear to show that the former prince had passed confidential UK Government documents to his sex-trafficking paedophile friend. Whether Mountbatten-Windsor received any cash or favours in return for doing so, had he indeed done so, will be the central topic of the current police investigation. He has become the first person to be arrested in connection with the information released in the Epstein files. Donald Trump, who is mentioned in the files released so far many times, and who has been alleged to have been involved in some particularly disgusting and revolting crimes, continues to be protected by the Republican Party.

As this story unfolds, the spotlight will inevitably shift to the behaviour of the King and his late mother, who enabled and protected Andrew for decades. For all their efforts to distance themselves now, efforts which will be ably assisted by the full weight of the British media, the entire Royal family will be held accountable by the public and the reputational damage to an already discredited institution could be (I hope) significant.

This story goes to the heart of corruption, British style. The UK likes to pretend that it is not corrupt like Russia, Hungary, or countries like Nigeria, where senior government officials routinely use their positions to rake off millions and where even minor bureaucrats and police officers can be bribed with cash to expedite an application for planning permission for a property extension or to turn a blind eye to a traffic ticket.

Yet the UK is a deeply corrupt polity. The entire British political system is rooted in corruption: corruption which is entirely legal and within the rules. British political corruption manifests itself in the form of donations by wealthy individuals and companies to parties, politicians, and think tanks which do not have to reveal the sources of their funding. We are expected to believe that these donations are made out of sheer altruism and the goodness of the donors’ hearts, showering favoured politicians and parties and mostly right wing think tanks with hundreds of thousands of pounds with no expectation of anything in return. As my dear old granny always noted, you don’t get to be rich by being a nice person, and millionaires do not shower their cash on politicians and think tanks out of an excess of niceness.

These donations and the network of think tanks which they foster, have been responsible for shifting the entirety of British politics sharply to the right over the past few decades so that “common sense” in British politics is now routinely defined as policies which act in the interests of the rich and well-connected. So the reckless bankers who were responsible for the financial crash in 2008 got away scot free while the poor were blamed for the greed of the rich. And, instead of sanctions and safeguards being put in place to penalise the individuals and companies responsible and who had profited from the financial havoc they had caused, we got a decade and a half of austerity and the devastation of public services, the consequences of which we still live with today.

We see British corruption in the revolving door of lucrative appointments doled out to the cronies and associates of government figures. A case in point is Gordon Brown’s decision to give Peter Mandelson a peerage and bring him back into government despite Mandelson already having been sacked twice from ministerial positions and being dogged with controversy and allegations of corrupt behaviour throughout his time as the UK’s EU Commissioner. Starmer then compounded and condoned Mandelson’s behaviour by appointing him to the important post of British Ambassador to the USA, despite knowing that Mandelson had continued to associate with Jeffrey Epstein after the latter had served a prison sentence for sex offences involving a minor.

The entire House of Lords is the embodiment of British political corruption. In the UK a politician with the favour of the British establishment can never fail. Even if roundly rejected by the public at the ballot box, he or she could be granted a peerage and will be able to continue to be supported by public funds for the rest of their life while influencing and helping to shape government policy free from the irritation of ever having to be democratically accountable. 

From the corruption of the first-past-the-post system, which gives Keir Starmer almost unlimited power on a mere one third of the popular vote, to the back scratching and favours upon which the practice of political donations rests, the sunshine rest home for time serving politicians that is the House of Lords, the entire Westminster political edifice rests upon foundations of corruption. Westminster cannot be reformed as its corruption is not a bug, it’s a feature. It can only be replaced. We can replace it with a written constitution which bans political donations greater than £2000, which has laws to ensure transparency in the funding of think tanks, which has a press regulator who guarantees that the media is broadly representative of the public it purports to serve, and which ends the farcical pageant of inherited titles and privilege. And what are the chances of that happening?