The days of getting away with it are over
Once the rich and famous could easily hide their indiscretions but it’s a hell of a lot harder these days
Who can possibly argue that Mandy has a poor choice of friends? Ask Andy
Maybe it is only politicians who still believe that they can get up to all sorts without the Great Unwashed Public knowing. But that era of immunity is long gone.
Everyone and their pet poodle knows this yet a surprising number of politicians are either arrogant or stupid enough to believe that the laws of gravity only apply to others.
Events over the past couple of weeks demonstrates this in spades. Let’s start, as we must, with the hubris surrounding Lord Peter Mandelson, a man who has been at the very heart of British politics for over three decades and twice forced out of office for misbehavior. Hitherto he has bounced back but appears to have finally collided with reality over a close association with the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Less egregious and some miles away from Lord M’s antics is Angela Rayner, toppled as Britain’s deputy prime minister for an act of mindless stupidity in not paying the tax she owed on the purchase of a property.
The fact that she was more likely careless than venal is of little consequence because not only was she the minister responsible for housing but she cannot have been in any doubt that her enemies (most of the British media) were scrutinizing her every move. You would therefore have thought she would therefore have strained every sinew to obtain correct tax advice. Then she should have subjected herself to the smell test – a test which would instantly have revealed that even the possibility of tax avoidance was to be shunned.
Lord M is far more accustomed to personal scandal. He is attracted to the rich and powerful like a moth to the flame and draws closer to the flame when rewards are on offer as they were from Epstein, with free holidays, luxury travel and the usual omnishambles of greed and avarice which characterizes the mingling of the rich and famous.
If you want to take a lofty view of these things you can point out that atrocious behavior in public life is hardly confined to one political party. The succession of scandals affecting the previous Conservative government may have faded but is not been erased from memory. Sitting at the top of that steaming brown colored pile was the serial liar and eye-wateringly greedy former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a man who embodies the very concept of sleaze and set the tone for an administration where rule breaking, sexual misbehavior and corruption were rarely strangers.
This kind of behaviour leaves tracks everywhere in the new digital world, even I, a technological moron understand this.
Tracing the wrong doing is one thing but being held to account is quite different as can be seen in the White House where the mendacity, money grabbing and much more is out there for all to see but the Orange Blob has created, at least for now, a new standard for himself which sets him apart from all others.
Things are also different in dictatorships where the power of the one party state has the means to ensure that high level abuse of power can be hidden from the public gaze while those at the top know full well what’s going as they have small armies of information collectors who keep a close eye on what politicians are doing to a degree that is impossible in more benign societies where basic levels of decency and rule of law prevent such intrusive surveillance.
The dictators keep what the Russians call kompromat or compromising material in reserve for the moment when political considerations require the exposure of miscreants. Then the floodgates open with eye popping revelations.
In the Chinese dictatorship, where corruption is a way of life, the leadership is spoilt for choice in using kompromat as a mean of eliminating political opponents. The fate of Zhou Yongkang, is just one of a great many examples. He controlled China’s vast security apparatus but made the fatal mistake of crossing swords with the big boss Xi Jinping. At this point he was exposed for acquiring great mounds of money, sexual abuse and living in a style which defied even the most lurid imagination.
The Chinese Communist Party stands out among dictatorships for managing to preside over a truly impressive sea of corruption and for using it as a tool of political expediency allowing it to self-righteously congratulate itself on mounting the moral high ground when exposes are spat out.
Apologists for miscreants retreat to the dubious defense of burbling on about how none of us is perfect, all of us make mistakes, they may even be desperate enough to suggest that everyone is entitled to a bit of privacy in their personal lives. But they are talking about the very people who have chosen to put themselves in the public domain. It is an exposed and unfriendly place with little shelter.