Braverman, Sunak & the politics of Old Corruption
Rishi Braverman has decided to take no action over Suella Braverman’s latest transgression.
A speeding fine is a serious matters because speeding in a car can injure or kill. That said many get them.
The issue was not the fine but what has become a sort of fog over what Braverman did about the penalty, ultimately paying the fine.
After the Johnson and Truss era Sunak promised a Government of integrity, professionalism and accountability. It doesn’t look like that.
Rather it appears Braverman remains in the tent rather than outside it not because of any great Ministerial competence but because of who she is. That is a leading figure in one of several groups of hard right Tory MPs whose support Sunak depends on.
Historically it is the politics of Old Corruption
Sunak is holding on to power itself. With that comes the potential at some point for personal profit, although Sunak is already the richest MP in Parliament and the ability to offer sinecures in terms of contracts and official positions to one’s friends or those one wants for some reason to influence.
That may all sound somewhat pre-democratic, and it is. It is in fact the politics of Old Corruption that so annoyed William Cobbett in the 1820s. The process of replacing it with democratic accountability was started by the 1832 Reform Act.
The current Government is sometimes said to want to return Britain to the 1950s. It wants to go much further back than that- to the pre-1830s. There is one problem. Had the 1832 Act not been passed Britain faced one of the most serious threats of revolution it has seen to date…
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