In response to a growing number and an increasing vehemence of questions about governmental sleaze, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has, like former President Richard Nixon did when Watergate started to emerge, is having to play a very heavily defensive game. Nixon was on the back foot and had to come out and say to the public ‘I’m not a crook’, something that elicited the response from press and public something on the lines of ‘well maybe he is’? He had reached the stage where he had to address the rumours and all this did was weaken his position.

Fast forward to today’s Britain and we have a Prime Minister who is forced to play defence and make a statement that is clearly so dishonest that it will do little more than encourage more people to ask more questions about Johnson and his government. According to a report in the Guardian when Boris Johnson was asked about the corruption and sleaze allegations that are swirling around his government like a unflushable bit of poo in a toilet pan, he replied:

“I genuinely believe that the UK is not remotely a corrupt country, nor do I believe that our institutions are corrupt,”

Whilst it is true that Britain is not as corrupt as some African countries for example, that doesn’t mean that there is no corruption. But just as bad as corruption itself is the mere appearance of corruption which can also be damaging. Politicians do not just need to be non-corrupt per se, they also need to be seen to not be corrupt and to give no cause to even give the impression whether real or false that they are corrupt or corruptible.

Boris Johnson’s statement is one that is both laughable and breathtaking in its dishonesty. There is corruption in various forms all around us in the public sector. Not all of this corruption is of the brown envelope kind, some of it is ideological corruption or public servants doing bad things because they keep their well paid jobs by doing so. I dare say that many people will be able to recount tales of councillors being all too friendly with developers, of MP’s who seem more interested in promoting the interests of their sponsors or those they do second jobs for instead of their constituents and public servants who virtue signal rather than provide the services that they are paid to provide.

Then there is the overt ideological corruption that we’ve seen in some police forces, especially in the North of England where for decades Muslim grooming gangs were allowed to operate with almost complete impunity because officers feared a specious accusation of ‘racism’ rather than doing their job and protecting the public. Britain is not an country where there is no corruption. Such corruption might be less than it is in Nigeria for example and it might be less centred around the dispersal of brown envelopes stuffed with cash and more centred around ideology and the self interest of public officials, but it is still there.

Boris Johnson’s appearance in public to say ‘Britain isn’t corrupt’ looks desperate. It looks like the actions of a man willing to say any old bollocks just to get the heat off of him, his party and his government.

I would say that at this stage Boris Johnson is at the ‘I’m not a crook’ position on the ‘Nixon scale’ and look how that ended up for Nixon and for America. I can’t help but wonder whether Boris Johnson will go down or up this Nixon scale and what will happen next both to Johnson and the nation?