I have just finished reading a book about the Irish experience of the credit crunch. The title of Irish Times journalist – some might say polemicist – Fintan O’Toole’s book says it all. “Ship of fools. How stupidity and greed sank the Celtic Tiger.” I recommend it.
It is grim reading indeed for the Irish, but it might tell the British how it could have been worse. It might even cheer you up. Much of O’Toole’s case is against the Irish political class. Whether greed or deceit or stupidity, he outlines a country where the crisis did not just embroil the economy but politics too. The electorate didn’t help forgiving scandals mostly surrounding the ruling party, even returning convicted felons to the Irish parliament as part of a flawed localism from at least the 1980s on.
The Irish ruling party had an inappropriately close relationship with the property developers and the worst of the banks. The attitude to tax avoidance/evasion might kindly be described as tolerant.
We never had this. Our scandals – the worst boom time behaviour of bankers and the parliamentary expenses fiasco were unrelated. While the property boom echoes through the UK expenses scandal, it is not directly related to it.
We can’t be like Ireland in one other way. British MPs, who defraud or whose behaviour is in question, are very likely to be shown the door by the electorate. Perhaps we underestimate how strong, for all its flaws, British civil and political society is.
But I think, there is one warning for David Cameron in all this with the Ashcroft issue. Lord Ashcroft is someone who is a non-dom, a member of the House of Lords, deputy chairman of the Tories and a funder of campaigns in the marginals. Many people including those in his party believed he was domiciled in the UK for tax purposes since his elevation to the Lords. Not yet. After the election, he says.
It is nothing like the shenanigans of Ireland. No laws have been broken, but it is something the British public might see as the thin end of the wedge. Imagine the fury in the UK, had there been a big cross over between politicians, financiers and bankers. Cameron needs to be careful that he isn’t getting close to crossing an unacceptable line in the minds of the British public, whose affection for democracy should not be underestimated.
