Bullingdon Club Britain: The Ransacking of a Nation by Sam Bright

Author:Sam Bright [Bright, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Byline Books
Published: 2023-03-20T22:00:00+00:00

6 THE GAME

Politics is fought in a village, between a long-standing cast of characters, dramatised by the media. It’s not an open, level playing field for the most talented and altruistic to serve their country. Exactly the opposite.

Westminster is not merely a place but a culture – one that is alienating to outsiders, requiring years of practice to navigate its ancient nooks and crannies. As academic Aeron Davis writes in Reckless Opportunists: “Whether entering Parliament, the Square Mile or a big corporate headquarters in the West End, there is a diverse and alien culture to experience. Such spaces are intense, insular and self-referencing.”241

In effect, the people ruling these domains create their own moral codes that are often distant from the views of the majority, he writes. “The higher a leader goes the more removed they become. The constant danger is that those at the top come to believe that their world experience is the world experience.

“They then act on those misplaced views. Corrupt, self-serving practices become unquestioned.”

This is exactly what has occurred in Westminster, with prospective leaders conditioned in loyalty over competence as the ministerial production line inexorably transports them to a pot of gold on retirement, regardless of their performance. The institution of government has become estranged from its people, with repeated, fatal consequences.

Take Brexit, for example. The Government released an official report in February 2022 into the benefits of Brexit, written by civil servants and paid for by the taxpayer. As Chris Grey has observed, the Government’s report was not an objective, mathematical cost-benefit analysis – given that not a single downside of Brexit was mentioned in its 100 pages. Rather, it was a word salad of half-truths, exaggerations and policies that could have been implemented even despite Brexit. It was a party-political broadcast, packaged as official, impartial, objective fact.242

In this way, the apparatus of democracy has gradually been warped away from rational decision-making – instead favouring those who best ‘play the game’.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, was appointed as ‘Brexit Opportunities Minister’ in the same month that the ‘benefits of Brexit’ paper was released. And he is not the only current or former Cabinet member whose title has been derived from a Conservative Party slogan. A Secretary of State for Levelling Up was created in September 2021 – using a political phrase coined and deployed by Johnson during the 2019 General Election campaign. This suggests an administration motivated by projection over substance, with the roles of ministers derived from a party manifesto rather than the concerns of the nation.

Ultimately, Johnson’s Government was a product of the Instagram age – it recognised that clever branding (and a carefree attitude to controversy) is the recipe for viral popularity, diminishing the need for competence, substance and detail. The advisors tasked with cultivating Johnson’s image were brought from the Conservative campaign trail into Government – let loose on the machinery of the state.

The meme merchants Sean Topham and Ben Guerin – reportedly responsible for the Conservative Party’s notorious ‘Fact Check UK’

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