Professionalism. Integrity. Accountability. Do you remember them? The three pillars on which Rishi Sunak promised to build his government. By chance he could distinguish his rule from that of his predecessors. Some hope. This holy trinity has long been verified.
Now it just got a lot worse. Starting with Sunak himself. Rish! the recidivist. After receiving one fixed penalty notice for a blockade birthday party with Boris Johnson, he picked up another for not wearing a seat belt. Hardly the greatest crime for sure. But certainly one of the darkest. After all, he was only caught because he accidentally filmed himself breaking the law. Call that a pro? He will never become a career criminal. I’m not sure that not knowing or ignoring the law counts as integrity. Which leaves us with responsibility. And I guess pleading guilty and paying the £100 fine just about qualifies. But whether we want a serial offender as prime minister is another matter.
Still, Sunak is undeniably a step up the greasy ethical pole from Boris Johnson. Also known as the convict. The man who continues to take the Tory party down the drain even from the backbenches. You could tell he knew he was under arrest. Where were you at the weekend? President Zelensky’s visit to Ukraine. Where it always goes when it’s straight. His subconscious cries out for forgiveness. His way of playing off his guilt. His crime this time? As it once was. Dirtyness and incontinence. A basic refusal to engage with normal rules of conduct.
When most people are heavy, they reduce their lifestyle. Johnson, not so much. He is an exception. The man for whom the usual rules don’t apply. His needs must be met. So a Tory donor, Richard Sharpe, put the Cabinet Secretary in touch with a long-lost relative who happened to be offering an £800k loan. For wallpaper, sustenance, fun and extravagance? Although it is not for accommodation. Boris had already found someone else to pick on for this. Meanwhile, Sharpe was appointed chairman of the BBC. Because there was clearly no doubt that Dickie Sharpe was the right man for the job.
But it turns out that disregard for potential conflicts of interest is contagious. Because when Sharpe was chosen by Johnson to head the BBC, it never once occurred to him to mention it at any of his pre-appointment hearings before the DCMS select committee. And we’ve all been there. The Conservatives said the BBC was staffed by a bunch of leftists who were determined to bring down the government. But now we know better.
Then we get to the person of the moment. Nadhim “He Pays What He Wants” Zahawi. Or rather, the hubris came after a long career in business with Geoffrey Archer, not to mention claiming to heat his stables for parliamentary expenses – who hasn’t? And now it finds it has to pay what HMRC wants. Somewhere along the line HMRC appear to have hit Zahawi with a penalty as well as the unpaid tax. Even then, Nadhim protested too much, saying the mistake was the result of carelessness. But here’s the weird thing. When millionaires say they’ve been careless with the tax department, they’ve never carelessly paid too much. We can’t see them crying with joy when they get an unexpected discount. Accounting errors are always in their favor.
And what about Rish’s involvement! in all this? Didn’t he wonder if there might have been a conflict of interest in Zahawi – or the Chancellor as he was then – negotiating his own deal with HMRC? Of course he didn’t. It was something that could literally happen to anyone. Too trivial to mention. Because that is the liberal attitude to paying tax that Sunack wanted to encourage among Tory donors. Zahawi: the perfect welcoming committee. By Monday morning, Zahawi had Sunak’s full support. Sunak has now kicked things into the long grass by turning things over to his newly appointed ethics counsel. A little late in the day.
But even if Rish! was sufficiently pleased with the professionalism, integrity and accountability in his party – a view not shared by many of his MPs – Labor can spot a slop when they see one. So it was no surprise that its deputy leader, Angela Rayner, provided an urgent question about the quality of vetting procedures in government. It was just a general question, spokeswoman Lindsay Hoyle insisted. It wasn’t about anyone in particular. Yeah right. Administrator General Jeremy Quinn rose reluctantly to his feet. Pain and suffering were written on his face. Lying doesn’t come as easily to Quinn as it does to some of his colleagues. The rules were whatever the rules were, he said. He had no reason to suppose they hadn’t been tracked, since he’d done his best not to find out.
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Raynor burst in. How can the government not see that there is a clear conflict of interest? When everyone else in the state could. How could we believe a word Zahawi said? Why was Zahawi barred from receiving a knighthood but not from serving in the cabinet? Were there lower requirements to be in government? And how did #10 change his story about what he knows and what he doesn’t? Did Zahawi have power over the Prime Minister?
Three Tory MPs stood up to weakly defend the government. Can we just forget about it all until the Ethics Counsel reports sometime in 2030? But most sat in grim silence. It felt like the end of days. Moral decay. The SNP’s John Nicholson raised the Sharp case. Was this transparency? Or just transparency of the Tories. Opaque transparency. Quinn tried to fool the opposition MPs, but finally remembered that he had to consider his own integrity. So he said he “really” can’t say whether Zahawi was telling the truth about his tax situation before he was arrested. Zahawi was released. Something like.
In a TV clip, Sunak went on to say that “integrity” really matters to him. But it doesn’t work. Integrity is an action. If Sunak really cared, he would have sacked Zahawi and made sure Sharpe quit the BBC. Don’t hold your breath.
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