Years ago, when no one had yet heard of Maastricht, a professor of political science took exception to my professed admiration of Italy. ‘How can you like it so much, Alex?’ he asked. ‘It has the most corrupt government in Europe.’ ‘That’s partly why,’ I said, prompting my friend to suggest that I sometimes let my propensity for paradoxes get the better of me.
In fact, I was merely trying to draw his attention to an important distinction between what I call peripheral and fundamental corruption. The former is what my friend meant: a politician helping himself to a few bob here and there, or perhaps trading his political favours for the fiscal or carnal kind. The latter is corrupting, and thereby undermining, the very nature of government or, even broader and deadlier, the essence of Western civilisation.
That distinction was lost upon my friend who, truth be told, isn’t known for nuanced thinking. More important, it’s lost upon those who form public opinion and, consequently, upon the public whose opinion they form. Yet the distinction is critical.
Those of us who believe in original sin usually have modest, or shall we say realistic, expectations of human nature. Clearly, a few politicians, out of the thousands who find themselves in positions of power, will use such positions for personal gain, be that self-enrichment or a brisker sex life or both. To think otherwise would be too idealistic to be clever, even though one shouldn’t of course condone such behaviour. True enough, politicians who speak Romance languages tend to be peripherally corrupt in greater numbers than those whose languages have a more Germanic lilt. But that’s only a difference of degree.
And those of us who look at the world from the historical perspective like to compare two politicians of yesteryear, Maximilian Robespierre and his British contemporary Edmund Burke. Robespierre’s personal probity was of such sterling standards that, when still a local politician in his native Arras, he acquired the soubriquet ‘Incorruptible’. He then went on to become one of the most hideous mass murderers in history but, on the plus side, he still wouldn’t take bribes. Moreover, he and his accomplices delivered a great civilisation a blow from which it still hasn’t recovered, and nor is it showing any signs of recovery. Using my terminology, Robespierre was corrupt not peripherally but fundamentally.
By contrast, Burke’s finances probably wouldn’t stand up to the exacting scrutiny we like to apply today. If these days we throw up our arms in horror when an MP takes money from a private donor to raise a question in the Commons, for Burke and his contemporaries that sort of horse-trading was par for the course. And yet Burke went down in history as one of its greatest political thinkers and one of Britain’s most remarkable politicians.
Writing before the Great Terror was unleashed by the ‘Incorruptible’ and his gang, Burke exposed the revolution for the giant crime against humanity that it was, and accurately predicted the massacres. The great Whig went on to formulate the blueprint of political thought by which conservatives still live. And in his own political career, Burke battled courageously against every outrage that undermined the realm, every perpetrator of misdeeds he correctly saw as striking a blow against English polity. The upshot is that we may argue whether or not Burke was corrupt peripherally. But his fundamental integrity is beyond doubt, and that’s what really matters.
That brings me, as you knew it would, to today’s politicians in Britain and elsewhere. In assessing them we often can’t see the wood of fundamental corruption for the trees of the peripheral kind. For example, we are up in arms when we find out that a narrow-minded wide boy charged assorted wheeler-dealers £250,000 for the privilege of having lunch with Dave. (I would conceivably agree to be paid that amount to break bread with Dave, though I wouldn’t respect myself in the morning. How anyone would actually pay for it is beyond my comprehension.) We remark, correctly, that the practice is questionable, if not downright sleazy. We then extrapolate to suggest that Dave and his friends themselves are questionable, if not downright sleazy. They probably are. But I wish that were all they are.
Today’s spivocrats may or may not be peripherally corrupt. They may or may not take backhanders. They may or may not skim off the public treasury. Even in the worst possible scenario, that would be like a murderer getting a parking ticket while dismembering his victim. What matters is that the whole political class (if not yet every politician within it) is these days corrupt fundamentally – not just in Britain but throughout the Western world.
Everything they do, be that domestically or, increasingly these days, internationally, is aimed at growing and perpetuating their own power. In practical terms, that means destroying every obstacle in the way of that objective. And the greatest obstacle of all is Western political tradition and, more generally, our whole civilisation.
That’s why our own spivocrats join forces with their EU colleagues to obliterate the very notion of a nation state accountable to its people. That’s why they undermine England’s ancient constitution in every possible way, using attritional, yet irreversible, pinpricks here and there, such as degrading the upper house or submitting British subjects to dubious foreign laws. That’s why they create, as their electoral base, a huge class of quango or welfare freeloaders dependent on the spivocrats for their livelihood. And that’s why they seek to dismantle the Judaeo-Christian foundations of our civilisation, correctly surmising that, once the foundations are taken apart, the walls won’t stand.
Oh, if only they concentrated on taking bribes or pilfering the public treasury or chasing interns. Just think how much less damage they’d do then. Let me tell you, corruption just isn’t what it used to be.