Weak? Or dishonourable? – politicalbetting.com

I finally discovered the benefits of Brexit. No, really. But first, the journey.

For someone trained at the Goldmans and The Children’s Investment Fund, Sunak is remarkably less ruthless. He has a great opportunity to present himself as a clean break from the seediness and self-interest that was embarrassing in the Boris years. He could, for example, have put the ethics adviser on a statutory footing, giving him or her the right to start an investigation without being asked, distinguish himself from before and put a brake on the ability of Labor to do bad things while in government. Labor could hardly resist its support. Hell, he could do exactly what Boris did when he was PM and get rid of those who don’t share his vision (or at least have a sense of self-preservation). But instead of releasing some members of the previous regime that were more obviously useless and/or repellent –

• He reappoints Suella Braverman who manages to combine the lack of integrity, incompetence and callousness to a degree unappealing to anyone with a modicum of decency, no matter what side of the migration debate you are on. As a result, the Home Office lost migrant children, childrenin the care that we should think has been trafficked for a purpose that you can not bear to think about.
• Gavin Williamson – the best man left at the back of the classroom playing with tarantulas and making raffia baskets – was given a post and soon left, as everything but must be. Did Simon Case (we’ll come to him later) forget to advise Sunak that there is no real constitutional requirement to have a Chris Grayling type in the Cabinet?
• Nadim Zahawi was appointed as the Chairman of the Party. Why? Even the most cursory of questions will raise a red flag that it could be sold to a convention of Corbyn fans. Fluent and capable like him, if Zahawi appeared in the dramatization of Agatha Christie, you are the only one understand he would be up to no good, if not a real villain.
• Dominic Raab is again made Lord Chancellor, despite being one of the worst against some pretty useless new competition. He faces 8 separate bullying investigations. The Bill of Rights has returned for the second time. It is a sign of how little he is regarded that even the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee cannot hide its contempt for the useless Bill, even in the title of its report (“Bring the right to go home, then send it back“, “No case for Bill“, “Weakening the protection of human rights“, “A huge lack of support“)

Then we have Simon Case, who for all his education and experience, doesn’t seem to know what a conflict of interest is, let alone how to avoid or reduce it and doesn’t know how to avoid problems that damage the civil service, damage anything. it is left out of the ethical foundations of government and causes endless problems for government. 5 months after Boris’s departure only increased the number of stories about how he, assisted by Case or not stopped, has destroyed every independent institution and process and stuck the words of Epictetus in the heart of the Tory party and the government – “Each animal does not associate with anything except for its own benefit.“Case’s main achievement was, like Cressida Dick, to be able to hold her position. God knows what we’ll find in her absence.

Partygate, Russian money, party donors and their spouses given government roles, abuse of the honor system, fast-track VIP channels for lucrative contracts for friends of Tory MPs, huge lines of credit given to PMs with little or no transparency “only the little people pay taxes” approach when the Tories have increased taxes to a level not seen for decades – the story comes so quickly it becomes hard to keep up. It was almost numbing. Of course not. We can – and usually have – done better than this.

Does Sunak agree to all this? Didn’t he see how hurt he was? Or is there nothing he can do?

But let’s look on the bright side. Our politics and public life have become positively European. It’s hard to know which countries are so similar. I prefer Italy – a mixture of rotating leaders, fiscal corruption, personal immorality and a stagnant economy living in past glory – “a series of cultural cliches linked by motorways” (in the wonderful words of Grayson Perry) – positively Italian. But there are many European countries to choose from: Hungary, Ireland, France – even the EU itself, no stranger to dubious ethical behavior. When it comes to rejoining the EU – or some other less formal arrangement – we will have no difficulty showing that our common ethics are European standards.

Hooray! Finally the benefits of Brexit! Not divergence but convergence. I expect a handwritten thank you letter from Jacob Rees-Mogg to be delivered by the postilion today.

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