Paid-For Politics?

[00:00:00] The Why Curve, with Phil Dobbie and Roger Hearing. Money and politics. Nigel Farage got a £5 million gift from a supporter before he became an MP. Should he have declared it publicly, or is it none of our business? If a sitting MP gets free tickets, free trips, or just cash from someone and does declare it, does that then make it OK? Even if they then vote in Parliament for the cause that the donor supports.

[00:00:26] What is corruption? And what is just normal politics? And how does Britain compare with other democracies? There are few restrictions in the US, and many now see the Trump presidency as a business exercise as much as a term in office. So do we need to tighten controls here to avoid corruption of our politics? The Why Curve Or is it too late is the question, isn't it? Well, I mean, it's been there a long time. I mean, you know, this goes back as long as there have been politics.

[00:00:55] There have been people, obviously, feathering their nests and that sort of thing. But it's just a question of, you know, we seem to just tolerate it. This is what I find a bit surprising. We've got a long list, and they've all been, you know, bad, but people were pulled up. So like Owen Patterson, you remember, was lobbying for a couple of companies. Peter Mandelson got a loan, didn't he, when he was a cabinet minister to buy a home from Geoffrey Robinson. Oh, yeah.

[00:01:23] David Cameron with Greensill Capital, with that naughty Australian. Yes. Oh, yeah. There was lots coming out at different points. Baroness Mohn with the PPE contracts. You know, there's a long list of them. And individually, but I mean, I guess we feel reassured because in every single case, of those cases anyway, they're found out. And they aren't politicians anymore. You know, they're found out because we know about them. I mean, it's kind of, there must be, maybe there's loads we just never have found out about.

[00:01:52] Well, yeah, exactly. That's the likelihood. And I think, you know, it's only when we lift the lid, you know, a little bit with the whole Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein thing. You know, you begin to see a world that perhaps we didn't really know was there, although maybe we suspected. But, you know, even the stuff that's out in the open is really interesting because you get MPs who get freebies to football matches to, you know, racing days to all sorts of things. Casinos, holidays.

[00:02:20] And then coincidentally, they then vote when it comes to something on betting, say, in Parliament. They vote with the people who gave them the freebie. Now, they declare it. So we know it happens. But does that, is that still OK? I don't know. Do you, not for politicians, but it's almost the same thing. Have you, as a journalist, ever been offered something, you know, like a gift ticket to something from someone who wants to try and make you feel better about them? I mean, not really.

[00:02:49] I mean, occasionally you get taken on a trip by a company to show you something like a mining company in Africa or something. But you make it very clear that that's what's happened. You say, look, this is the reason I'm here is because this has all been, you know, paid for by them. But then you also used to get charities that would fly you to places to show you terrible situations where they were doing good. Now, I mean, that wasn't a commercial thing.

[00:03:14] And you might argue that it's perfectly reasonable for them to show you what they're doing in those circumstances. That sounds a lot more reasonable, doesn't it, than all the other situations you've been described. I know when I was, I used to work in tourism. I used to work for the British Tourist Authority years ago. And we used to take travel journalists around the UK and give them a, you know, a really nice time so that they would write nice things about the UK. But they're travel writers. They've got to go to these places to write stuff. And it's pretty hard to pay for it all themselves. So obviously there's vested interest.

[00:03:43] So all the way along the line, in every single situation, whether it's the media, whether it's in work or whether it's in politics, there's got to be a line drawn somewhere, hasn't there? And sometimes it's hard to determine exactly what's on the right side and the wrong side of that line. So I'm sure some of these people, for example, are lobbying. They might go, well, yes, they don't pay me very much. And I do lobby because I like the product, for example. Or it's just a game of connections. And I'm just connecting people. And I don't see any harm in that.

[00:04:12] I've seen MPs saying, yes, it's absolutely fine that I should be taken to see races, motor racing, horse racing or something, because then I know what I'm talking about. You know, it's just information. So when I vote on a thing about betting, I know what's going on. You know, and you think, well, yes, up to a point. I just think it's really hard. And I think politics, it matters more. Yes, media. Yes, you know, yeah. I mean, everyone knows freebies go on a lot of the time, particularly in showbiz and tourism. And maybe people accept that.

[00:04:41] But when you're deciding about how a country is run, where big amounts of money go, where contracts go, that matters rather more, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the five million is a big figure, isn't it? When we're talking about a man who could be the next prime minister of the UK. So, yeah, let's delve into this a bit more today. Indeed. Indeed. We have with us Dan Huff, who's professor of politics at the University of Sussex.

[00:05:02] So, Dan, we've just been talking just before you came on about some of the sort of like the, you know, the catalogue of, and some of them seem like relatively small infringements that we've had over the years of politicians dipping their hands in for cash or doing favours more often, actually, for money. This thing with Nigel Farage, it feels like a different league, doesn't it? I mean, we're talking millions now.

[00:05:27] Yeah, this is a different league and you can see that it's a different league by the fact that Farage has been curiously absent from the airways of late to talk about anything. It's most unlike him. He'll talk about anything to anybody normally unless he's in a position like this where clearly he's accepted or appears to have accepted a very large sum of money in a way that's inappropriate. So, yeah, it is. It is a case that is not that normal.

[00:05:51] It shows a little bit about Farage, but it also shows about the complexities of getting a system right because it isn't easy. No, indeed. And I mean, the point with what Farage has done in his defence, much as I don't normally stand in his defence, but he would say, well, he wasn't an MP. He wasn't standing as an MP at the time. And someone who supports him gives him a load of money. I mean, you can't police that really, can you? You can't just stop any random person getting money.

[00:06:16] But they wouldn't have given the money if they weren't expecting that he was going to have a significant role in politics, would they? Well, I think from our perspective as academics, what we look at is how does this system supposed to work? And the fundamental basis is transparency. Now, you can organise this in different ways, but the UK system is about transparency. People will be able to find out what's been given to parliamentarians and to political parties and draw their own conclusions.

[00:06:39] And sometimes, you know, if you did look, then you would see that someone like Boris Johnson, for example, you can see the many, many millions that he's received for going on lecture tours or for writing books or for doing a whole array of things. And it's all out there. You don't have to take your two minutes to find all of those details and then you draw your own conclusions. So, with that in mind, Farage has not been transparent at all.

[00:07:05] And sure, he might try and find ways to say why this is actually OK. But the normative expectation is that you will be open, then others will draw their conclusions. And that's, I think, where Farage's case is actually really interesting, because the one thing he has not been is transparent. But, I mean, Boris getting paid, I mean, he's got paid a lot since, obviously, since he's been a politician. I guess that's a, I mean, that's another question, isn't it? How people might manoeuvre themselves into roles where they get paid once they're no longer in parliament.

[00:07:35] But, I mean, that's a different thing, isn't it? We don't really care what you do once you've left, unless you, you know, you have done that, you know, engineered yourself into a well-paid job by making decisions along the way. But, I mean, you know, it's fair game. But hold on, Phil, that's not right. He has taken significant sums of money all the way through his political career. Boris Johnson's very good at spending money, and he needs to keep the income coming.

[00:07:58] And, of course, the salary of an MP or even a prime minister is not nearly as significant as if you were five miles down the Thames in the city. So Johnson's always been very good at harvesting money, but he's always been very open about it. And he's so open about it that people don't get excited about it anymore. Admittedly, he did take on an extra level once he left parliament. But still, there was income coming in before that.

[00:08:20] He was a little more cagey, wasn't he, when he was the mayor and he was helping the American girl who was being allowed out on trips. And she was getting government. Teaching him IT or something. Yeah, I think it was his trousers doing most of the talking. Yes, something of that. I mean, I suppose what we need to do, you know, really right at the start of this, Dan, is then define what we mean by corruption. What constitutes corruption?

[00:08:45] Because, you know, you can say, well, if some MP gets a trip to go and see a horse race, and then later down the line they vote in favour of some measure that favours betting companies, for example. But all this is declared, all this is out in the open. That's not corruption. I mean, how does one define it? Yeah, it's a good question. We run a load of courses at the University of Sussex on this. And we run a course on defining corruption. That is one of the modules in the whole programme. It's that complicated.

[00:09:16] Just give us the end of the course, Dan. The last half hour of the course. I was going to say, I won't give you all seven weeks of it. What's the conclusion? But, yeah, the conclusion is you can look at it as a process. That's a starting point. And the process has got four things in it. Corruption is always deliberate. That's the first thing. Corruption is never accidental. Don't get corruption mixed up with incompetence or stupidity. They're different things. It's always deliberate. There's always some sort of abuse. Everybody in the public sector has a job spec.

[00:09:45] Some more detailed than others, but everybody has a job spec. If you go over and beyond that job spec, then you're potentially in corrupt territory. Thirdly, you've got some sort of entrusted power. That can be that you're elected or it can be that you're nominated. There are various ways of getting that power, but you have it and it's entrusted in you for a period of time. And finally, there's some sort of private game. The private game can come to you. It can be old school.

[00:10:09] It can be brown envelopes with cash or it can go to political party or it can go to your friends and family or it can go to a whole range of people. But they wouldn't ordinarily have got it. So it's deliberate abuse of entrusted power for private game. That's the starting point. The problem with that is there are challenges with each of those four different things. And that's where it gets more interesting. Yeah. Well, for example, like on the last one where you're getting private game. I mean, where do you draw the line on that?

[00:10:38] Because there's smaller amounts like you might get a gift at Christmas or something or, you know, which might just be a bottle of wine. But another extreme might be, yeah, we're going to take your whole family on holiday to the Caribbean. Yeah. Most organisations have a policy on things like this. For example, the Esteem Institute and University of Sussex does allow me to have gifts. So as I say to my students, I like my Porsches big and red. The problem is if the gift is over... You got the champagne, didn't you, Dan? Sorry. Appreciate that, Roger. Yeah. Good.

[00:11:08] But the problem is if the gift's over £20 in value, I have to tell the university and they have to take it off me. So to be honest, don't give me a Porsche because I'd never see it. So £20, that's the limit for the University of Sussex. I have to be public about that. And most institutions will have the same sort of policy. So there are rules around what you can get, but I can certainly get a cup of coffee off a student. That wouldn't be seen as corruption. But I can't get a Porsche. So most organisations are aware of the challenge. Yeah.

[00:11:36] It's sort of like a coffee and maybe a croissant. After that, you start to get onto dodgy ground, dodgy territory, particularly if you go for a second coffee. But that's in a way, it's easy to measure the sort of monetary value of something like that. But supposing, as I say, you know, I'm an MP and I get invited to, you know, a conference in South Africa to do with arms trading or something. And I get flown there. I get put up in a nice hotel. I go to the conference. I come home.

[00:12:04] I haven't received monetary value in the same sort of way you could put a value on it all. But I could say, well, that was for work. I'm, you know, I'm on the Defence Committee in the House of Commons. It's perfectly reasonable that I should be given that to enable my work. I don't think it's unreasonable either, to be honest, because the other way in that particular case, because the other side of that coin is have to pay for it all themselves.

[00:12:27] And if I do anything for my for my employers, I don't really expect to have to pay for my overnight stay to go and do some work at the University of Sussex. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect them or somebody who's helping us provide a service to provide those costs. And that's the basis of the British system. It's about transparency. We know, for example, how much the BBC will pay people to go on. Have I got news for you? And we know that they pay Boris Johnson a lot more than they pay Diane Abbott. We know all this stuff.

[00:12:54] We then judge as to whether we think there's appropriate behaviour towards the public and the public's interests committed by that MP. And it's then for us to judge. And when I say us, I mean, I think we need to be clear that people don't get home from work and think, yes, let me at the register of interest for MPs. Let me have a look. That's not the way it works. But journalists can see this stuff.

[00:13:15] Those who have a vested interest and know more about it and then can report on it can get access to, for example, the fact that Owen Paterson was paid by a particular lobbying firm and then decided they were the very best lobby by a particular pharmaceutical company. And they were the ones who should be given a particular contract. We can see this and we can criticise him for it. And ultimately, even if his prime minister at the time defends him, he loses his job on account of what I would regard as corrupt practice. Yeah. And there's been lots of cases like that.

[00:13:46] Just before we came on, we talked to Owen Paterson. We talked about Peter Mandelson. David Cameron, of course, lining up meetings and lobbying for Greensill Capital as well. And Baroness Moan with the PPE contracts. But the consequences for these people, I mean, they don't often I mean, they don't go to jail, even though it's corrupt. Are they ever fined? I mean, it's the threat of what will happen to you. OK, you might lose your job. But then if you're so in with these companies, they're probably going to give you a job anyway.

[00:14:15] Is the threat big enough for the crime? Well, this is one of the challenges of policing the system. Nigel Farage will be investigated by one of the parliamentary committees. A report will be will be published and it will then be judged internally by those in parliament. And the chances are it's not going to be judged by somebody in Nigel Farage's party.

[00:14:38] But it's perfectly possible for an MP to be investigated by the relevant parliamentary committee to be found to have behaved inappropriately. And then it lands on the prime minister's desk who's in the same party who's struggling with his majority in parliament. What interest has he got other than say, oh, you naughty boy, don't do that again, because the politics of that really doesn't fit up with what you and I may regard as appropriate action. It's called, you know, the good chap theory of politics. They're all good chaps, really. Just the odd ones are bad.

[00:15:07] Yeah, it's marking your own homework, really, isn't it? And there's a lot of that in the system. But then, you know, Parliament is very wary of independent, independent oversight of that, because it argues that once you get independent of parliament, parliament may be compromised itself. Parliament has to be able to do what parliament wants to do. And on principle, I understand the logic. But in practice, we are indeed marking our own homework there. And that can bring with it challenges. And it could go from bad to worse, couldn't it?

[00:15:37] Because you talk about, well, maybe the balance is that if you've got one politician who's being investigated, the other side of politics will go heavy on him. So, you know, to make sure he doesn't get off scot-free. But if they're all at it, you know, you could get to an unhealthy stage where he said, oh, yeah, you did that. We do that as well. I mean, you know, we're all at it. We've all got our fingers in the till. Let's let you off. So you let us off. And then, you know, we're all investigating ourselves. So who cares? Yeah, a bit like the expenses scandal. Yeah, I mean.

[00:16:07] In that way. The idea that they somehow feel, well, we do a good job for the country. We deserve a little bit more. That kind of thing. The thing is, I mean, there's two points there. The expenses scandal is a fascinating episode in modern UK history. Because the sums of money involved are minuscule. You know, you had Rosie Cooper claiming for a jam donut. 40-odd pea, I think she claimed. I mean, that's a decent price for a jam donut, I have to say. But the point with it is. Yeah. Quite a few of those for your 20 quid.

[00:16:37] Yeah, absolutely. Yes, yes. I mean, it was a long time ago in our defence. But what I would say is that there's a lot going on in that expenses scandal. Part of it was about Margaret Thatcher setting up a regime because she didn't really want to put MPs' pay up. MPs' pay was always an issue. It's never quite as much as what people think it is. If you ask people on the street how much parliamentarians earn, they'll always give you a total. It's way more than what they do. And the sheer sums of money were not great. But the look was horrendous.

[00:17:06] And that prompted some quite radical changes to the way expenses are now organised. The second issue with this, and I think this is the bigger problem, is it's really easy to slip into they're all at it. They're all rotters. The country's going to hell in a handcart. And what can we do about it?

[00:17:24] And I would just gently encourage people to just have a look round at the way politics works in many, many other places to see that actually Britain's system is far from perfect. But also there are mechanisms in place to keep, for the most part, folks in check. And I'd go as far as saying that the vast majority of MPs enter politics for the right reasons. They want to do the right things, even the ones that I really don't like very much and particularly don't like their politics.

[00:17:53] And I think we're in danger of undermining what democracy actually is. And it's a process for people to argue with each other. And it's a process for people to argue with each other and disagree and get really annoyed without getting weapons out. And I think we need to be careful because the countries over and beyond the UK that I know well have got systems I think are more problematic than ours. Well, let's look at some of those comparisons. Because, I mean, obviously we can throw out the US there and say, you know, many people have said to me,

[00:18:21] the Americans have said to me, actually, the Trump presidency is more a business enterprise than it is almost a term of office in terms of the amounts of money he, his family and his supporters are making from his decisions. I mean, that seems clear corruption to us, but there are very few checks and balances there. I mean, that's a pretty poor system, isn't it? Yeah, well, yeah, it's the Trump thing. Well, Trump's always good when you teach courses on corruption because there's always examples you can use.

[00:18:47] But the thing with the American system is it's so far removed from the British system that it's almost the wrong country to compare us to. The only thing we've got in common is we vaguely speak a similar language. You know, the systems that we have much more in common with are the continental European ones. They're parliamentary democracies. They have broadly similar attitudes to what they want out of politics. They care about public services. America, you know, less so. We don't have loads of guns knocking around. You know, the issues that really drive American politics don't drive British politics nearly the same way.

[00:19:15] So I'd be wary about using America as a starting point because it's just so very different. France and Germany, they are, I think, in a broadly similar position to us. I think they have broadly similar problems. And I think they wrestle with them equally as problematically as we do. The question for me is where do we want to be at the end of this? What do we want to actually achieve? What do we want our democracy to look like? And what role do we want money to play in it? Now, I think that's a challenging question.

[00:19:45] But it's a question I'd encourage anybody to wrestle with before they start saying we need to do this, this and this. So an example of it is, you know, I read the other day about the trade unions talking about Andy Burnham and how they were not going to put up with X, Y and Z from his new chancellor. I thought, well, OK. And what happens if you're not in a trade union? Who are they representing then? And the point is, of course, they're lobby groups like any other lobby groups. And they very clearly think they've got an influence in the Labour Party.

[00:20:10] It wouldn't be completely out of order to say it sounds a little bit ropey, folks. And yet, of course, they don't see it that way at all. So I just think about the end point before we start doing our reforms. And if you are looking overseas, so there's an organisation called Transparency International. Transparency International, I'm sure you've heard of them. And they do the current Corruption Perception Index. It's not necessarily a measure of corruption. It's just what people perceive as being corrupt countries.

[00:20:37] The least corrupt countries are in Europe. So Denmark. Well, OK. The worst is South Sudan. The best is Denmark. In the top ten, you've got Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Iceland. And we are 20th place. So they're doing a lot better than we are. What is it that they're doing that we're not doing?

[00:21:02] Yeah, we drifted down from being sort of on the cusp of European football, as it were, to use a football analogy, to being a bit of a Wolves. And we're struggling at the bottom of the Premier League. So we're in good company. We were, you know, in good company. But we have problems. Yeah. One of the things they do is there is a broader trust in their institutions. That doesn't mean that all Swedes think their democracy is perfect. And I've had Swedish students who've done the stations on corruption in Sweden purely because they think there's way more corruption there than anybody else does.

[00:21:32] But they have trust in institutions that I think we are slowly but surely seeing ebb away in the United Kingdom. It's not that they necessarily have more openness. It's very hard to find out how Swedish politics is financed. They have no laws or they have very few laws to actually guide us there. But there's also not really the perception that there's a problem. Therefore, it's not talked about in the same way that it might be in the United Kingdom. It's about trust in institutions, trust in politics, generally trying to find problems to solutions.

[00:22:01] Doesn't always get it right, but generally tries to go about it. It's interesting with the perception thing, though, because I noticed that France wasn't in the top ten there. And if I were trying to think of a European country where in recent history, it seems many of their former leaders are in prison or have been tried at various places. France comes pretty close to the top on that. It's sort of an understanding, sooner or later, that the ex-French president would go to prison or would at least be on trial. There's a very long list of that. And other politicians as well.

[00:22:30] Prime Minister, the Prime Minister who I think took his own life when he was under investigation not that long back. So perhaps that's it. If you police it really hard and you actually have politicians doing the perp or going to prison, the perception of your corruption actually gets worse. Yeah, how many politicians? That's absolutely right. How many UK politicians have been to prison? Well, in the expenses scandal, five went to prison, all Labour. And they were doing things that were actually not really about expenses at all.

[00:22:59] They were being very silly. I mean, one was claiming interest, claiming back the interest that he was paying on his mortgage, except he wasn't paying a mortgage. So that's good old-fashioned fraud, folks. So there are British politicians who go to prison, not many, but it's something that happens in these sort of egregious cases. With the CPI, now CPI is not everyone's favourite tool for trying to get a grip on how much corruption is out there,

[00:23:25] but there's very much a Northern European sort of feel to the top places. The Nordic democracies do very well. You mentioned Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark. They're always up there. The Southern European democracies traditionally much less. Well, Italy. Italy. I can't remember what it is off the top of my head, but I'm going to guess at about 50th. It's quite a long way down. All those invites to bunga-bunga parties, that sort of thing. Yeah. So there is definitely a different set of challenges in Southern European states.

[00:23:54] But a lot of it is when you reveal corruption, then people are actually more aware of it actually being there. To give a very left-field example, Xi Jinping came into power in China in 2012. Huge corruption drive. Millions of people were accused of corruption. Hundreds of thousands went to prison, often relatively senior. And China went down in the CPI rankings. Now, there's no doubt other reasons why Xi did this. You know, it's about securing power and such like. But Chinese people do recognise it as a corruption problem.

[00:24:24] A lot of those people would almost certainly corrupt. And the data just said China's getting worse. It happens when you start talking about corruption. You have a dip before, if things are going well, you'll then bounce back a little bit and increase. And that has happened in the Chinese case. You get a bit better. Yeah. It's an interesting one. And Israel is an interesting case in this. Because, again, they push themselves as being basically a Western democracy. That's how they pitch themselves, one can argue. But, you know, even the current serving prime minister is actually on trial for corruption. That's right.

[00:24:53] And is likely to go to prison. And that's happened before as well. There have been several other cases in that way. So, you know, it's an interesting mix between what's real and what's not. Often because of the way it's policed. And the fact that you can text about it makes a difference. The very fact that you can say, oh, Netanyahu, I think you're corrupt. You can't do that in the majority of the countries around the world. You can in Israel for all its sins. The media will go for Netanyahu if they think he's done alleged corrupt practice. So lots of politicians, as you say, have been to prison.

[00:25:21] But very often it's for things that happened outside parliament. So Geoffrey Archer, of course, was given four years. I don't think he served four years. But he was sentenced for four years because he lied over that libel case against the Daily Star because they said he'd had sex with a prostitute. And then he created a false alibi. And so he was thrown in the slammer for that. I think he did something like a couple of years, though, didn't he? But that's nothing to do with parliament. That is, he was, you know, he was lying in court.

[00:25:51] And stuff that goes on inside parliament is exempt from all of that scrutiny. As you say, it's like it's an internal scrutiny. I mean, should it be more like the court system? Should we be trying politicians more with an external view? So we aren't hitting this problem of ticking their own homework? I think that's an interesting question. But I would be wary of where it gets you.

[00:26:19] For all of the many sins that parliamentarians may commit, they need to have a sense that external forces, whoever they may be, won't come and get them because of what they're trying to do in running the country. And I take your point totally. There will be parliamentarians who behave badly. But I put it to you, there are bigger problems than that, actually, in the UK today. One of them that we bang on about a lot in academia is something called state capture, where ultimately parliamentarians have got the power to set laws.

[00:26:49] And the bigger danger is that they will create laws where it makes it nice and straightforward for them and their friends to do whatever they want to do. They've done nothing wrong. There's no sort of money trail or anything like this. They've just, over time, managed to create pieces of legislation that help certain close friends do whatever they want to do. Now, in Britain, I don't think we're nearly as far along the line with that

[00:27:15] as we are in many other places around the world. Well, South Africa was the famous one, wasn't it? That's a great example. A particular group of Asian origin businessmen, the Guptas, basically did exactly what you said via the president. And that was very notorious. And yet, you know, South Africa, democracy and all the rest of it, it was in theory overseen and to some extent was revealed by their parliament. So you could argue, in fact, the system worked.

[00:27:44] Yeah, well, eventually, although they did manage to, you know, achieve an awful lot in there before it did. But the problem is it's very hard to go after this. I mean, we saw it in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s when they created not just new democracies, but new economies. And if you're in the right place at the right time, it's very easy to shape it so you've got access, say, to, you know, to natural resources that you could then make many billions of pounds out of, particularly in Russia, but in other places too.

[00:28:11] So you have a system where if people can set the rules of the game and then police the rules of the game, then they're very powerful indeed. And that they do because they're often not stupid or within the confines of what's legal. Yeah, exactly. It's defining what's legal and what's not. So there's a great example here in Sydney. In fact, a shining testament to it is the tallest building in Sydney, which is the Crown Casino, which was built by James Packer's company. Crown was the company. Barry O'Farrell was the New South Wales premier at the time.

[00:28:41] And they were redeveloping this big area around the harbour site, which used to be Dockland, called Barangaroo. True. And James Packer just came along to Barry O'Farrell and said, well, tell you what, I'll build a bloody big casino in the middle of this just to make it all shine and look fantastic. Barry O'Farrell said, yeah, all right then. There was no planning process. It was an unsolicited proposal, basically. It wasn't a competitive tender. He didn't pay for the land that went on it. And so he built this big casino, obviously made a lot of money.

[00:29:10] It wasn't as much a casino as he'd said in the beginning. Strangely, there were less floors of casino and more floors of executive apartments in the end. So he built these executive apartments on land that he didn't pay for, which is right in the centre of Sydney. So you'd think that sounds a bit corrupt, but that was just mates looking after mates. It's the Australian way. Mate! Barry O'Farrell helping James out. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds corrupt, but it's not corrupt, presumably, if it's not, you know, on your

[00:29:39] definition of what corruption was, Dan. And clearly, it seems to be legal, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, the legality challenge is a real one, because a lot of the things that people understand as corrupt are things they don't like very much. And the word corruption is often used, and Donald Trump is the best example of this, to basically describe someone that you don't like. I mean, Hillary Clinton was apparently the most corrupt politician ever to run for public office in America, until Joe Biden ran for the presidency.

[00:30:05] And he was the most corrupt politician ever to run for public office in America. Well, thank God Donald Trump isn't. I mean, you know, thank God we brought him up to that. So say all of us. But the point is, of course, the word now is a term of abuse. It's a big stick that you'll hit somebody with. And that applies, actually, when politicians run for office as well, and they talk about corruption, and they mean it, and they talk about it in a positive way. If somebody says they're going to enter office and get rid of corruption, well, you know, be decidedly sceptical of what they're going to manage to achieve, because they're not going to be able to do that.

[00:30:35] So people often use corruption to hit somebody else, but also to make promises that are completely unfulfillable when they get into power, because it's a complicated issue. Once morals, norms, and values enter the fray, what I think is corrupt becomes what I don't like all too quickly. And then we're in a complicated place. So do we need a better definition of all this? I mean, is it that, you know, you talk about transparency being the thing in Britain, at least. It has to be declared, and that's the issue.

[00:31:05] But as you said, people don't sit down, maybe some journalists do, and look at the list of interests and lists of what's happened. Is it enough? Should we not have a better, tighter system that simply says, well, I'm sorry, declaration isn't in itself enough. There are certain things where if you're about to vote on a very controversial piece of legislation, and you have been wined and dined by the people who want a particular outcome, you would have to recuse yourself from it directly. So no Labour MP would ever be able to vote on anything to do with trade unions? Yeah.

[00:31:35] Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So the problem I have is that I get it. And that was an eminently sensible point in my mind. The problem is actually making it work. And I've got no issue with Labour and the trade unions in a broader sense. But it's a really good example because people never go there. You know, would you ever be able to talk to environmentalists? You know, Greenpeace, very good at lobbying for its interests. And, you know, it gets difficult because people don't think about Greenpeace. They think about financial services.

[00:32:02] They think about things that look and feel like corruption should look and feel. But the challenge you've got is what do you want to end up with? And most of the corruption examples that we see, nobody wants to end up with those. We have to highlight them. We have to point the finger. And if relevant, then criminal proceedings should be undoubtedly... But lobbying in itself, there's nothing wrong with that. That is part of just the system of government, isn't it?

[00:32:26] You've got to allow interest groups to try and put their point of view to people who are running the country. Because otherwise, what is the government basing its ideas on? Absolutely. I mean, the challenge with lobbying is it's a fundamental part of democratic politics. I mean, if I'm not allowed to speak to those who I've elected, then what's going on there? You know, the whole point is it's supposed to be an interaction, an interactive relationship between the two.

[00:32:54] I mean, the thing I always find quite intriguing, if you looked up lobbying scandals on Google, you won't find lobbyists there. You find greedy politicians. But, yeah. Cash for cash. We don't elect the lobbyists. Who was that? Oh, yeah, that was a politician. Yeah, we don't elect the lobbyists. We elect the politicians. So lobbyists can, you know, they are business people. They do whatever business people do to get the money. So, I mean, Dan... That's true, but they're not allowed to bribe politicians. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can't bribe the law, but they can do other things. But is it a point where you...

[00:33:22] I mean, you're saying, Dan, that you think the system as it exists in Britain at the moment is the best we can get? Or do you think it could be improved? Yeah, that's a big call. The systems can always be improved. And I think there's been a... There's a significant challenge with that broadly understood issue of state capture, of rules and regulations being crafted that don't really fit the exact purpose that they're there for. And the very funding of politics is a good example. The funding of British politics is a mess. Even the way...

[00:33:52] The most basic parts of it are odds. You know, for example, it's all about, you know, funding inconstituencies. There's quite a lot of regulation about that. But, I mean, it's 2026, folks. You know, you don't... You know, a lot of the money is not spent in Shrewsbury and Atcham, you know, to name but one constituency. It's spent in a different way. We need regulations to be updated. And, you know, who is spending the money? How are they spending it? And where are they spending it?

[00:34:16] And I think there's a whole series of reforms that could bring in not just more transparency but more effectiveness and less ambiguity there. So I think there's a lot we can do. But I think the broad tenets of the system are ones that need to be improved, not eradicated. And getting back to where we started, if we did have an effective definition of what corruption was, would Nigel... What side of that definition does Nigel Farage sit on? Well, see, this is...

[00:34:45] What I would say with that is... One sort of fudge, and then I'll give you an answer, is that all of the things that we find interesting are contested. You know, American politics, democracy. I mean, you know, there's plenty of reasons why you might look at American politics and gerrymandering anybody? Super PACs? Citizens United? All of this stuff looks like a very odd way of organising democracy to me. But we don't go sit down and say, well, we need to redefine democracy. We need to rethink what it is. All of these ideas are contested.

[00:35:14] People like me spend a lot of time arguing about them. And corruption fits that bill. Fairness, freedom, corruption, democracy. There are four terms that we could spend days arguing about. So I don't think we need to have a definition everybody agrees on. But we need to be aware that it's contested and to think about where we're going with our definitions. Now, Farage's example, I think, as I said at the beginning, actually, the very fact we've not heard much at all from him about anything even vaguely related to that, or even vaguely related to politics,

[00:35:44] says that he knows that something has gone on there that is going to leave him in problematic territory. So I think most people would argue that that sort of behaviour needs to be beyond the line. What the line looks like, that's the challenge. Where do you draw it? Now, wherever you draw it, I think Farage is on the wrong side of it there. But actually working out where the grass is, where you draw that line, is the big challenge. And that's something we've not got right at the moment. And your point about the person who offers, it's not a bribe necessarily.

[00:36:12] But if it was, the person who paid the five million will be just as guilty by your definition. You see, this is the thing. In the US, I said we shouldn't compare the US, but we can in this case. If you're going to bribe somebody, there has to be a quid pro quo. So it's not just that, ah, that's happened, therefore this looks a bit dubious. They'd have to find evidence that you meant it to happen. So if you think about it, only real, you know, sort of idiots will, you know, they'll send you an email. So by the way, I gave you five million quid. Now you must do this.

[00:36:43] Nobody does that. They're not that daft. Yeah. So actually showing... When you say that, quite a few of the Epstein emails were kind of on those terms with Mandelson and Coe. But yes. But no, you're right. People don't make it that clear, I suppose. Yeah. They would say, well, you know, you can't fund democracy just by membership dues. There aren't enough members of political parties. I'm helping fund a democratic party whose values I support, whose ideals I want to see realised, and I wish them all the very best.

[00:37:11] They give you something like that. What they wouldn't give you is, yeah, I want Farage and I've demanded it, that Farage does this. Because that would lend them in... Be difficult, and they know it, so they don't do it. Well, let me make... We're getting towards the end of this, Dan, but let me make one point, which some people do say, and said so over the expenses scandal, as you mentioned. If we paid our politicians better, they'd be less corrupt because they wouldn't need it. They'd be able to pay for their own tickets to places. Is that the answer? And if there was some way of funding parties as well, where they didn't need to get all of these donations as well.

[00:37:42] You know, just enough of a working fund to actually run a political party. Yeah, I mean, two very different points there. With the payment of politicians, I think for a long time, parliamentarians were not being paid. They'd be able to pay for their money. The sort of money that their cohort of, you know, the people they went to university with are getting paid for, as I say, five miles down the Thames, working for a bank. They just took a nought on their salary, and it's a lovely secret world. Then they're not in that camp. Now, I'm not saying that you should stick a nought on MP salaries. Far from it.

[00:38:10] But what I am saying is that, you know, they don't get paid as much as many people think. So I think there is a strong case for doing something to try and put that right. But the strong case politically, you know, parliamentarians would hate that because the last thing they want to do is, you know what we need to reform British democracy? Pay me 50k a year more. You know, that's not an argument any of them want to make. They know that. They realise how bad that would go down. But there is a case there, I think, that compared to their cohort elsewhere, that they don't earn that much money.

[00:38:39] But we also know from our research onto the payment of, you know, into how much civil servants earn and bureaucrats earn and politicians in other settings, that it's not just about what you earn. If you've got used to a situation where you can continue to make a bit on the side, you can continue to make a bit out of this particular side hustle, then you'll carry on doing it unless somebody tells you you can't. So you could pay somebody extra money. And we've seen this in cases around the world, often very sort of left field cases.

[00:39:09] But if you don't take away the opportunities, they'll carry on doing them as well. So I don't think it's just about money. I think it's about appropriateness, about making sure that parliamentarians are paid the right amount. But alongside that, they're not able to engage in this legal corruption that I've talked about before. But they can also shape rules so that down the line, they and their friends can actually make a nice, a nice little sum.

[00:39:31] So the other side is when people pay political parties to try and help them win because the donor has got some inherent benefit from that. And that's why you get – so in the States, over $12 billion was spent in political advertising in the last election. $12 billion, which is a phenomenal amount of money. And it doesn't happen here to that same extent.

[00:39:58] But it does become, you know, certainly in the situation in the States, whoever's got the most money has got the louder voice and is more likely to win. Yeah, but the rules here are very different to that. The rules are very strong on how much you can spend in different ways. And certainly where the individuals who pay for it come from as well, that makes a difference. I'd be careful with that as well, though, Phil, about who has the most money wins. I mean, Ross Perot had the most money in 1992 and he didn't win. Barack Obama definitely did not have the most money when he started. He got the most money because he was by a standout mile, a country mile, the best candidate.

[00:40:29] So the quality of the candidate makes a difference. But money flows to the best candidate. Now, whether you think that's right or wrong is another matter altogether. But Barack Obama definitely was not in the very, very rich camp when he started out his presidential journey. So I stand corrected. But if we had a situation where you didn't have to rely, even though the rules are much stricter here, but if you didn't have to rely on anybody's money, if there was a way that it could all be internally funded, wouldn't you get over this problem? Because you'd just be saying, we can't take money from anybody.

[00:40:58] So we can't be influenced because we can't accept any cash. I get that. But if you look at how you might action it, one of the answers is that the state would help parties to fulfill their functions. And we see that in a number of countries. Germany has quite an elaborate system of state funding. But then there are accusations made that smaller parties in particular haven't really got these roots in society that the broader people's parties, as they're called in Germany, have.

[00:41:26] They live off this state funding. They get 5% of the votes and you don't even have to get 5% of the votes to get some state funding in Germany. And that's that becomes very much a comfort zone for them. So what you get is a political class that funds itself through party through laws on exactly how much they get dependent on how many votes they've got in the last round of elections. And that brings with it challenges because it does look like a political class can shape the rules to fund itself. Not always popular in Germany.

[00:41:56] So, again, where do we want to end up with this and how do we want to get there are good questions to begin with. Yeah, but as you sort of said, the system we have is not perfect. There are ways it could be tightened up. But overall, it probably gets most of the job done. Most of it. I mean, I'm loathe to give anybody a free pass on that one. And reform in so many areas and not just in terms of corrupt practices is important in the United Kingdom. And nothing ever stands still in democratic politics.

[00:42:24] You need to make sure that rational actors out there haven't found clever ways of getting around what used to be perfectly good systems. So we need to keep watching it, keep looking at it, keep thinking about it. And journalists do a phenomenal job of highlighting malpractice. Politicians know they do a phenomenal job. They keep them on their toes. But it never will mean that anything is perfect. And if we're looking for perfection, then I think that in and of itself is not a great place to start because we're just not going to find it. Fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:42:53] Dan, thank you so much for talking us through all that. Fair enough.

[00:43:26] They're saying that, you know, when we visited this subject, of course, an awful lot during the war for good reasons. But people are saying things are changing in the military sense and political sense, which is giving Ukraine a real boost. It hasn't had despite all the iffy support or not support from America. Right. So are they claiming territory back? Is that what we're saying? Or are they? I mean, I don't really. I know that they're saying that the military side of it, as in, you know, their ability to defend and perhaps, as you say, go on the offensive,

[00:43:55] certainly in terms of sending drones and missiles into Russia itself, deep into Russia, is making a big difference. Right. So could it all be over sooner rather than later? I guess is the question. I mean, here we were thinking this thing had set in and it was going to be with us for another five years. That's sort of what I'd assumed, if not more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people are suggesting that things are changing inside Russia, too, potentially, that it's no longer easy for Putin to hold the line. I mean, you know, we've been here before. We've talked about this before.

[00:44:21] But people, you know, insignificant with knowledge are saying things are changing. So let's visit that. We'll find out precisely how that is next week on The Why Curve. Join us for that. We'll see you then. The Why Curve.