I really don't see "how we do the same unethical and compromised things as the Tories but less so" is a good defence when labour hung their campaign on integrity and competence.
Fwiw it's within the rules so whatever you & I may think about it, it is not (strictly speaking) unethical.
Also fwiw I think political parties should be publicly funded, no private donors, no gifts, etc. No 2nd/3rd/4th jobs for MPs either. No paid speaking engagements. Nothing.
Sorry, I disagree. At the end of the day, it's a form of bribery. A subtle form, but ultimately it's personal reward for access and policy direction. Whether or not it's permissible under the "rules" is moot, it's morally wrong.
You are of course entitled to disagree. As am I.
But if you weren't shouting from the rooftops about this for at least the last 14 years if not far longer, why start now? Maybe you were, I don't know. But if not, why now?
I've been shouting about the systemic corruption of politics my entire adult life and have busted my arse trying to help people get elected who would change that, thanks. This Labour Party clearly would rather feather their own nests than do that and I'll treat them the same as I do Tories for it.
I do think we're broadly on the same page, I just think jumping on a rw bandwagon to criticise Labour for something that is not illegal & they've been open about feeds into the rw narrative of "Tory good, Labour bad".
"Strictly speaking" you are still incorrect. Holding Labour to account when they do the very thing they criticised the Tories for is actually the opposite of what you say. Both Labour and Tories are bad, unprincipled and corruptible. Again, legal is not the same as ethical.
To add, Tories calling out labour sleaze may be hypocritical but that doesn't make the criticism wrong. If you're more upset about Tories being hypocrites than Labour being corrupt then, I guess you don't really care about corruption, and dishonesty.
That is not what I'm saying. And I still hope the rules will be changed (not 100% sure that's in the PM's remit but I'm also sure he could have a big say in it) and we will see if that happens or not.
My objection is so many jumping on the rw bandwagon of "Tory good, Labour bad".
You do know that this chart was quickly shown to be false? Johnson may be an odious creep but the amount declared in gifts is nowhere near this. Most of his money came from speaking engagements. There a risk here of descending into Twitter like misinformation. A reason many of us left there.
The Tory government voted themselves an exemption that ministers didn’t have to declare anything. Therefore Johnson didn’t have to declare the £200,000 "gift" to decorate his flat. Ministers given free attendance at events didn’t have to declare them either.
And if he got £6.4 million for "speaking engagements" he must have been working far harder at doing that than his actual job of running the country. Now unless someone was paying him way over the odds to waffle for half an hour (in which case my question is why?) that's one heck of an amount of time
that he spent doing speaking engagements, especially when you consider covid and lockdown featured heavily in that timescale too.
So on balance I consider that relevant, but I appreciate that others see it differently.
I so agree.
Hypothetically speaking, if I was inclined to give somebody a backhander the easiest way to do so would be to pay them over the odds for a so called "speaking engagement".
Hypothetically speaking of course.
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Also fwiw I think political parties should be publicly funded, no private donors, no gifts, etc. No 2nd/3rd/4th jobs for MPs either. No paid speaking engagements. Nothing.
But if you weren't shouting from the rooftops about this for at least the last 14 years if not far longer, why start now? Maybe you were, I don't know. But if not, why now?
I do think we're broadly on the same page, I just think jumping on a rw bandwagon to criticise Labour for something that is not illegal & they've been open about feeds into the rw narrative of "Tory good, Labour bad".
But I helped get Labour in with the hope they would actually make systematic improvements to how the country works. (See my bio).
The PM cannot defend bad behaviour with "Rules innit" when he makes em!
My objection is so many jumping on the rw bandwagon of "Tory good, Labour bad".
So on balance I consider that relevant, but I appreciate that others see it differently.
Hypothetically speaking, if I was inclined to give somebody a backhander the easiest way to do so would be to pay them over the odds for a so called "speaking engagement".
Hypothetically speaking of course.