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This week I’ve been thinking about how well/not so well the UK has been doing in fighting corruption. The more I ponder this the more I realise that in anti-corruption terms Britain is basically what Newcastle United is to English football. Bear with me on this one 1/10
If you take TI’s CPI ( https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi ) as a starter for 10, the numbers stack up nicely. UK is 12th in the CPI out of 180. Newcastle, meanwhile, are 13th in the Premier League, making them 13th out of England’s 158 elite level (government definition) football clubs. 2/10
The vast majority of English football clubs would love to be Newcastle. Indeed, a place that high in the pyramid seems all but a dream for most. Ditto the CPI; a place in the top 20 looks a long, long way off for much of the world. 3/10
From Newcastle’s perspective, things look different. There was a time when they were the very best; 4 time title winners, 6 time FA Cup winners. But no Newcastle fan realistically thinks those days are returning any time soon. 4/10
In corruption terms, Britain has never been top of the CPI, but in pre-CPI days it certainly did used to enjoy a reputation for taking probity very seriously. Is the UK going to be challenging the Nordic countries for the CPI’s top spot again? Unlikely, I'd have thought. 5/10
Furthermore, there was a time when Newcastle was everyone’s second favourite team; Keegan, Asprilla, Beardsley, Ginola. There was lots of good will towards them. Not really any longer. Mike Ashley and the regime he runs has seen to that. 6/10
Read that across to the UK. Once (for many, if not all) an object of admiration, the UK is becoming increasingly seen as a chancer that is frequently rather tiresome. Second favourite team now? Definitely less so than was the case before. 7/10
The same can be said if you look at football/corruption and finance. Newcastle dip into the murky waters of potential Saudi ownership, the UK dabbles (and arguably facilitates) the (even murkier) world of global money laundering. Sorry stories. 8/10
Even as you get closer to the field there are similarities. Steve Bruce, the competent and under-rated custodian doing the right thing with chaos never seemingly far away. The UK civil service, meanwhile, tries to keep things on an even keel as politicians cause chaos. 9/10
One can, of course, push all this too far. But the more I thought about it, the more the comparison worked for me. 10/10
