It’s Time to End the UK’s Minister-to-Lobbyist Pipeline
Former British prime minister David Cameron has been exposed using his contacts in government to help out his new bosses at finance firm Greensill Capital. The scandal points to the cronyism among Britain’s elites — and how a wider culture of privatization and outsourcing provides a breeding ground for corruption.
Labour Party campaigners during a stunt in which they carried envelopes labeled “Taxpayer’s Money” while dressed as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and former prime minister David Cameron, on April 21, 2021 in London, England. (Rob Pinney / Getty Images)
In the current series of BBC crime drama Line of Duty, a policeman at war with corruption is unhappy with how things are going at the top of government. “God give me strength . . . a bare-faced liar, promoted to our highest office! When did we stop caring about honesty and integrity?” Ted Hastings asks his commanding officer. Line of Duty has handled current affairs without shoehorning in hackneyed Brexit or Donald Trump allegories. But Hastings’s rant clearly had Boris Johnson in its sights.
Something is very wrong with standards in British public life, with an almost constant stream of contracts-for-friends stories from government. By this point, official procurement rules seem to exist mainly to add layers of expensive bureaucracy to the cronyism that’s going on anyway.
The latest such story came with revelations that former prime minister David Cameron successfully lobbied the current Tory government for expensive favors to his new finance bosses, when rules were relaxed due to the coronavirus outbreak. But this time, the scandal has been pursued more energetically than usual by journalists — because it just keeps getting worse.
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