Getting away with it
From the PPE scandal to the Post Office scandal, from mega fraud cases to bosses who are sexual predators, from covid’s excess deaths to Brexit lies, in the UK you can normally get away with it.
It helps if you are wealthy, good lawyers are not cheap but they will keep you out of jail. But then so too will the system of government and law in this country.
The list of huge fraud trials I have covered when the obviously guilty came out onto the steps of the court to declare that they had been vindicated by the jury and persecuted by the state, is very long.
I have always argued that the American system is better. Lots of latitude for company bosses, plenty of opportunity to fill your boots, but if the state can prove one simple charge of theft, you go to jail.
But that won’t work for the list of political scandals where no one has been held to account either.
Politicians know full well that they move jobs so quickly and so often that they are very unlikely to be left holding the parcel when the music stops.
It takes years for scandals to fully emerge, even criminally bad policies take time to take effect and even longer to be reported on, delaying freedom of information requests is now an art.
Ministers are experts at denying, delaying, obscuring and defending the indefensible, they are rarely stupid enough to leave a paper trail which proves they knew what was going on. Whistle blowers are ignored, belittled, fired, bought off or even prosecuted. Then if finally the public notice a bad smell, politicians can kick the problem into the long grass with a public enquiry that takes years.
They lawyer up (at our expense), cannot recall, “lose” the messages, have different recollections, dispute the interpretation of “facts”, and even on occasion lie, they are after all very unlikely to get caught.
And then get they get the final chance to protest at the reports findings and water them down. A process called “Maxwellisation”, which tells you all you need to know about why this should practise should be banned outright.
Then when the late, delayed and watered down report emerges we will be told it was all a long time ago, apologies have already been made and lessons learnt, that the police have better things to do than to open a criminal investigation and the evidence is old and memories unreliable.
But if we go on this way then we will continue to repeat the mistakes and the frauds. The “little people” who can go to prison for shop lifting a bag of crisps will increasingly despair that millionaires stealing millions get away with it.
More important even than that, politicians will continue to know that the system will protect them whatever they do.
This is a recipe for increasingly bad government. Which is, if you think about it, exactly what we have.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media