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Paul Doran's avatar

Excellent article Martin. I have long stated that what we delude ourselves by calling sleaze is really corruption by any other name. We persist in applying that label only to other countries. However, as unjustifiable as these gifts may be, they pale into utter insignificance when one compares it to the last 14 years of conservative government. How is it not a national scandal that a publican who happened to be Matt Hancock's best friend got a multimillion pound PPE contract with no history of ever being involved in that industry? At the same time a company based in Ellesemere Port that had been producing high quality PPE for 109 years didn't even get shortlisted. By her own admission "Baroness" More and her husband benefited to the amount of 32 million pounds thanks to a "VIP Channel" PPE contract that - again - produced no output.

Space here is too limited to document all the freebies Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have received. Speaking of Farage, that honest to goodness defender of the working man, he is the MP with the highest value of outside interests, paid and gifts. He has also just been reprimanded by the Office of the Speaker for claiming parliamentary security advisers had told him it was too unsafe for him to visit his own constituency. No such warning had been issued of course. And his absence from his electors is more to do with his following Trump around the US like an eager poodle. Again, no justification here of Starmer taking freebies. But it amazes me how much of a contrast there is between the current hard-right pearl-clutching about "Labour sleaze" and the utter silence or jokey laissez-faire about Tory sleaze, which by any other name was grand corruption. Partisanship is fine. If you hate Labour and progressive politics, fine. But perspective, context and balance are essential.

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