What in the modern day is the greatest threat to democracy?
It is oligarchy.
back in the 6th century bc plato recognised
that the greatest threat to his idea of democracy was a few rich individuals
taking over and an oligarchy forming and that is what britain is showing today the owen patterson
affair egregious lobbying in parliament without declaring it it's just the tip of this iceberg
this is not a rare case it's not an exception it is the rule that's why boris johnson wanted to
completely get rid of the disciplinary process and the standards committee
because they're all in the frame particularly him the leadership is important because the fish votes
from the head down and he's setting a standard which other mps particularly conservative mps
not always exclusively conservative mps want to follow in a way you can blame tony bear for this
tony blair started up that tradition you go into politics and then like an american president
you make hundreds of millions just as bad david cameron he leaves parliament gets all these jobs
he's working for health company lobbying for them but with this banker green sill he was paid seven
million pounds to lobby government for them texting his old pals in the treasury and things
like that if you're on paterson and you're only making half a million you feel rather
short-changed don't you i mean this you're just like the startup level of oligarchy oligarchy is
the combination of money and power of the state and money and power this is a few individuals
getting right under the table of the state and kind of taking over and this value is at the
heart of the conservative party project these days you can see it in their donors they have millions
in donations much more than the labour party particularly from those over a hundred thousand
pounds who pay for these special dinners and get access to senior conservative ministers now
why would you as a businessman would you want to have dinner with wishy sinha or with the housing
minister well we know what happened at one dinner with robert generic and richard desmond property
developer and former express owner he wanted to get his housing project passed so business people
are not stupid they don't pay this money in the conservative party just for niche they want them
in power and increasingly we can see they want favors more than anything most disgusting bit
perhaps of the pandemic we're seeing under emergency legislation these kinds of people
rushing towards the conservative party to get contracts 15 billion or so dodgy ppe contracts
i say dodgy because lots of them didn't come to fruition were not delivered properly and others
were clearly done to this vip back channel this goes straight to the owen pattinson affair who
was a consultant to a big company which got half a billion in contracts from the conservatives under
this emergency legislation which the government had enforced he met with the then lord bethel
the minister in charge of procurement of the nhs and we have tracked three billion pounds of these
contracts going towards toy friends and donors why would you or as a businessman or woman bother
setting up your company to compete with others why not get a friendly politician to help you out
that is oligarchy as this goes on there's a kind of cash carousel between a political party almost
like a one-party state and those who don't donate to it who then get the contracts who then get
increased profits and add more to the conservative party and we attract this and it is illegal to
solicit honors peerages in return for donations but as open democracy have done the top three
million pound plus donors we've done the hundred thousand pound donors you are highly likely to get
an honor or a period in fact 55 percent of those two donated more than 1.5 million get an honor or
peerage this has now become a system unspoken system which there is a law against but it's
so easy to breach you just have to reverse the influence that this just happened and it's the
problem with the whole corruption mechanism around the contracts now i'd be very careful to say i am
not alleging any of those companies of corruption because they'll offer these contracts they don't
know they're just going to get vip lane the government is corrupt the government is corrupt in
terms of our public interest by awarding our money without proper scrutiny without looking to see if
they're conflicts of interest and this kind of cycle of corruption begins like a laundromat get
faster and faster and faster and faster and what it does is not encourage the wrong people
to get into politics courage is the wrong kind of politics you're only looking after a narrow
section of super rich elite it also undermines the whole trust of the political system in democracy
of the public and this is a problem which affects all the parties going back to blair's time we had
issues of donations given for honors of formula one guys maybe influencing policy for donations
to the labour party this is a problem with parliament a problem particularly
when so many mps see being mp is actually a second job their first job is to lobby they come out of
lobbying companies you know they make their living it means you're spad you work for a think tank
there is a political nexus which people want to move through are normalized by and they don't see
how far away that is living in the westminster bubble from the ordinary lives of british people
so what's the problem parliament that parliament is falling into the river it's rat infested it's a
fake gothic building built in the 19th century and doesn't reflect modern day life no party is immune
from this and no party seems to be able to deal with johnson partly because this constitutional
issue the constitutional issue is we have a system which relies on good chaps but it has no
breaks or sanctions on bad chaps so pretty patel can be accused and found guilty of bullying person
who did that they resigned if owen patterson is found by the standards committee to have broken
the rules well just get rid of that committee every time there's no real constitutional break
there's no law the met which is partly controlled by the home office is reluctant to investigate
police forces do have an element of political funding and control so no it won't solve it just
electing the labour party or coalition unless that is on a platform of root and branch reform
what all this has revealed is the system was broken already it was a six system in that it was
just waiting for somebody to exploit these crony contracts the lack of scrutiny in public life
is down to the fact that we as citizens did not demand the best for ourselves demand the best
for our politicians the way our money is spent and only we can reverse this this is where double down
comes in this is where byline times comes in these people only thrive in darkness it is shameful
when they are ashamed i can tell you how ashamed they are because i get the legal letters trying
to stop us trying to write this stuff and we have to stand up against that and gradually a bit like
the effluent flowing into our rivers and seas this pollution of the public domain of our political
life begins to stink people can't help noticing when they swim in the seas or kayaking over
they're getting ill they see the sewage floating down their streams accumulating on the beaches
this will happen with this this is happening with this we mustn't be distracted follow these trails
two years of this carousel of cash this cutting of public services this holding back of public wages
with our money we have a right to demand how that money is spent you must pass on this message even
if you have a daily mail conservative supporting neighbor tell them what's happening to their money
as you might tell them what's happening in their rivers and seeds we live together in this world
in this country and things will get very bad very quickly if we don't do something to stop it
it's the key way to solve this pollution of our public realm is to filter it out
show what's happening and the only way that can really cleanse the body politics
is good media and what's good media double down news subscribe now on patreon