With the shenanigans of Owen Paterson and Geoffrey Cox making headlines, politicians and pundits are finally starting to use the ‘C’ word. It’s about time. It’s now five years since the Italian mafia expert Roberto Saviano described the UK as “undoubtedly” the most corrupt country in the world.
His argument has gained momentum since then. It’s not that the UK is particularly prone to the sorts of middle-class extortion or nepotism familiar in discussions of much of the Global South. Police here aren’t much known for accepting bribes. Civil service jobs are allocated on the basis of exams, not family ties.
No, the corruption is a level up from that. “I mean in terms of money laundering,” Saviano would later explain. “There is no control of the flow of money.”
