Once corruption sets in, it becomes very hard to reverse: voters start to price it in to their expectations of the political class
‘That happens in Russia, it shouldn’t happen in Britain.” These were the words of Chris Bryant, chair of the standards committee, on the events of last week, when Conservative MPs voted to reject the recommended suspension of Owen Paterson, while the government tried to change the system that had found him guilty. The sense of abhorrence is welcome, but the insinuation that it was an un-British occurrence, the kind of thing that is only supposed to happen in dark and dastardly faraway places, is disappointing. It is a common rhetorical tic in this country: the deep-seated urge to make sense of the state of British politics by invoking foreign lands, instead of looking at our political class directly in the face.
What happened in Westminster was neither exceptional nor inherently foreign. It is simply what happens in all countries where the political system has, in one way or another, been captured by a small elite of political and business interests.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
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