Kmflett's Blog

Boris Johnson’s 2019 dissolution and political honours list has at length been given the nod and published.

A BBC report is here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53606083

Some of it is fairly unremarkable. Former Tory Ministers who Johnson purged over Brexit and he is now trying to put back in the tent to construct some kind of post-Brexit class unity.

Others are those like Hoey,Woodcook and Austin who while occasionally claiming to be Labour (as they were actually elected) worked hard to get Johnson elected.

Then there is Claire Fox, formerly of Living Marxism and now the Institute of Ideas, a Cummingsite disrupter and Lebedev owner (at the moment) of the Evening Standard.

Quite why Ian Botham is included is perhaps less clear as he’ll sit as a crossbencher. Or alternatively quite why Tim Martin of Wetherspoons is not there is also a little odd. Both of course were Brexit supporters like most others on the list minus some of the former Tory MPs and a handful of Labour nominations

Overall though its a list of sinecures and placepeople. What William Cobbett and others in the early nineteenth century called ‘Old Corruption’.

This is political rather than financial corruption but the stench of autocracy is strong.

Old Corruption, definition

‘Old Corruption’ consisted of the appointment of an aristocrat, his relatives, or a political ally to an official position with a high income attached. Normally the income attached to this position was extraordinarily high, and manifestly in excess of what a legitimate, non-aristocratic holder of the position would be paid. Hundreds of examples of ‘Old Corruption’ in the early nineteenth century were collected in John Wade’s Black Book, or Corruption Unmasked, originally published in 1816 and in subsequent editions^[3]. For example, in 1832 Lord Bathurst, an aristocrat of the time, received £32,700 annually (over £3.5 million in today’s money, at a time when there was no income tax) as the holder of the offices of Clerk of the Crown Court of Chancery, Secretary at War, Commissary of the Affairs of India, Teller of the Exchequer, and from an office entitled Clerk of Dispensations and Faculties. Furthermore, according to Wade, two of Bathurst’s relatives received £6400 per year (over £700,000 today) from three other offices they held. If any of these posts actually required work to fulfil their duties, this was done by clerks who were paid a tiny fraction of what Lord Bathurst received. According to Cobbett, Wade, and other critics of the British aristocracy of the time, there were literally hundreds of similar positions with similarly grandiose titles, enormous incomes, and few duties which were held by aristocrats and fortunate placemen.

William Rubinstein

https://www.in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Old_Corruption_(United_Kingdom)