The curse of Ostentatious Egalitarianism

On the Miserable Britain Mindset

A former government minister has been found guilty of bribery, having taken gifts while in office, including flights, hotel rooms and tickets for musicals. He now faces up to two years in jail, a sentence that might surprise many readers - but this, of course, is Singapore, not Britain.

I wonder what Singaporeans think of the recent scandal here, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer and others have been accepting a great deal of hospitality from a Labour donor. Lord Alli paid for £19,000’s worth of clothes for the PM’s wife, lent his home to the family so that their son could study for his GCSEs, and even let Starmer use his penthouse for a 2021 Christmas message - despite work from home regulations still being in force (although in fairness he did work from ‘a home’).

Starmer has also accepted hospitality to watch Arsenal free of charge, while multiple Labour MPs have received Taylor Swift tickets, including education secretary Bridget Phillipson, who said they were ‘hard to turn down… one of my children was keen to go along it’s hard to say no if you are offered tickets in those circumstances.’ As the father of two fanatical Swifties, I empathise.

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner accepted clothes and the use of Waheed Alli’s apartment in New York, while he also gave an interest-free loan of £1.2 million to Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh to buy a house for her dying sister.

I’d feel immensely grateful for such help in horrible circumstances, yet the fact remains that this same Lord Alli also received a Downing Street pass, while someone from his office was seconded to Labour HQ to run candidate selection. It’s not ideal.

It is hardly surprising that some ministers are questioning Starmer’s personal judgement over this, when the revelations would obviously harm them, especially as Labour in opposition were keen to hammer the Tories for this sort of behaviour – who are just as bad, and probably worse.

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In Singapore, many of these ministers might be facing corruption charges and jail, but all they will suffer as punishment in Britain are terrible polling numbers.

Of course, the other main difference with the city-state is that the Singaporean minister in question was on a salary of £800,000, almost five times what even the British prime minister receives, even though Britain’s economy is six times larger. Singapore’s prime minister is paid a whopping £1.25 million, but the condition of that generous settlement is a zero-tolerance attitude towards bribery and ‘gifts’.

This is all by design. Lee Kuan Yew wrote in From Third World to First that unless they paid ministers, senior civil servants and judges handsomely, Singapore wouldn’t attract talented people to work in government. He also didn’t want politicians captured by corporate interests, as they so clearly are in the United States and Britain.

Lee concluded that in the US, people serve in government habitually then ‘return to their private sector occupation as lawyers, company chairpersons, or lobbyists with enhanced value because they now enjoy easy access to key people in the administration. I thought this “revolving door” system undesirable.’ The same is true of Britain, where David Cameron and George Osborne both left office to lobby for major corporations, and they are just the most glaring examples of a common practice.

Yet the British public seem to like it that way – or at least, they want politicians to be paid so little that a culture of freebies and corporate lobbying is inevitable.

In a poll conducted last year, the public were asked what they thought the prime minister should be paid: the mean response, in both senses, was £88,000, almost exactly half of what he now gets.

They are also hostile to any politician travelling in style. Asked what sort of accommodation was suitable for a Foreign Secretary while at a work conference, just 14 per cent said he or she should stay in a five-star accommodation and 40 per cent suggested a room in a basic hotel; another seven per cent wanted the Foreign Secretary to share a bedroom in a budget hotel. Only 9 per cent believe that the Foreign Secretary should fly first class, compared to 30 per cent suggesting economy.

This Miserable Britain Mindset extends to the entire government: a majority of voters who expressed a view think that ‘civil servants in ministerial departments should provide tea and coffee at their own expense’, and over half of Labour voters with an opinion believe that Parliament should be based in a business park rather than the Palace of Westminster.

If Labour are getting hammered for their lifestyle choices, it is partly because in opposition they were keen on promoting what Katherine Bayford of The Critic called ‘sadistic austerity’.

Bayford noted how Rayner had railed against Conservative ministers dining out on a five-star luxury lifestyle, while ‘families up and down the country are sick with anxiety about whether their pay cheque will cover the weekly shop.’ They are ‘living the high life and treating taxpayers like a cash machine.’

When, in July 2021, ‘then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak stayed in — gasp — a five-star hotel with economic advisors and aides whilst attending the G20 summit… did they not know that fitting them all in on a Zoom call could have saved the taxpayer an extra 4.3 seconds of NHS funding?’ Similarly, Liz Truss was criticised for flying a private jet to Australia along with 13 aides.

‘To explain to people that the Foreign Secretary is a prize target for terrorist and state actors alike who may wish to maim, spy on or blackmail an individual responsible for the diplomatic affairs of a great power state is beyond the dignity of anyone tasked with doing so. Ministers need high levels of security and space. Why does Britain, seemingly uniquely, insist on such absurd levels of self-flagellation?’