William Cobbett’s ‘The Thing’, Sleaze & Boris Johnson
Following Boris Johnson’s latest defence of his dealings with Jennifer Arcuri and handouts he approved for James Dyson, Keir Starmer has attacked Johnson on the basis that his Government is mired in sleaze.
Indeed it is, but this is not something that bothers Johnson who as an Old Etonian sees such behaviour simply as a way of life.
The issue perhaps is a lack of democratic accountability which means that currently there is no effective way of calling the Government to account.
In the period before the 1832 Reform Act a similar situation applied.
William Cobbett a writer and farmer was a radical Tory who strongly criticised what he saw as the Old Corruption of the political system before the 1832 Reform Act.
He strongly disliked the power of patronage in the system, people who held well paid positions in Government and other official structures not on merit or competence, and certainly not because they were elected, but rather because of who they were or who they knew.
In his Rural Rides, Cobbett criticised ‘pensions, sinecures, tithes and the other ‘glorious institutions’ of this ‘mighty empire’. He referred to this collectively as The Thing.
Cobbett was might well have recognised the Tory Party of 2020 as strangely familiar.
The 1832 Reform Act did begin a process of changing this, very unevenly. It might however be noted that before it was passed in 1831 some historians have argued that Britain came the closest to revolution that it has ever been.
Johnson is playing for high stakes and I suspect he knows it.
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