The disaster that is the Tory government, currently worrying the hell out of its North of England MPs who were given their seat on approbation by traditional Labour voters, is in the grip of seriously puffed up colonials and sociopaths. Satirist and writer Armando Iannucci lays into them. Saying sorry after the slur, smear or blatant falsehood is not sufficient apology. Some should be removed from office. They are a danger to their colleagues and to society.
A CORRUPT GOVERNMENT
by Armando Iannucci
Evade, gaslight, attack: this is the playbook of a corrupt company, not a government. If the government were a company, the shareholders would have thrown out the chairman and board of directors by now. If it were a school, Ofsted inspectors would have judged it inadequate and put it into special measures. If there had potentially been lawbreaking, the police would have been involved a lot sooner. But the government knows it is bigger than any such institution, and consequently thinks it can’t be moved.
Its behaviour over the past few weeks has chillingly echoed the pattern adopted by many organisations accused of something horrendous, which is to double down, evade, attack accusers, hide behind investigations, and ultimately use the shield of an apology to say – as Mark Zuckerberg has been saying for half his life – that clearly we didn’t get everything right, and we must now look to a future where such things never happen again.
Look at the examples of churches hiding abusive priests, banks involved in money laundering, racist cricket clubs, national broadcasters disciplining a duplicitous reporter, a political party investigating antisemitism, specialist care homes looking into complaints of assault, police departments investigating failings within their ranks or schools protecting an abusive teacher. They all consistently adopt a classic and rotten playbook now being used with some commitment by the prime minister and his cabinet. After stern denials comes manufactured outrage, for example, in the wake of the Allegra Stratton video: “I was also furious to see that clip”. Then comes a firm commitment to investigate, “to establish the facts and report back as soon as possible”.
At this early stage, the organisation’s instincts is to police itself, so keeping any findings away from the public sphere. Unfortunately, in this instance Simon Case, whom Boris Johnson had only recently appointed to his job as cabinet secretary, had to recuse himself since he appeared to have held a gathering in his own office.
No worries. There are other blunter but heftier weapons in the backpack. Sue Gray may be more formidable, but in a neat jiujitsu move, you can use that to your advantage. “Look, we’ve asked no less ferocious an investigator than Sue Gray to examine this, so that shows how transparent we’re being.” Since everything’s above board (with someone who wasn’t your first choice), this gives you the chance to question the motives of those who persist in challenging you and the opportunity to belittle them. It’s a thread that connects failing schools or special care units that vilify complaining families, Labour party members who call out antisemitism being attacked as disgruntled opponents, a graphic designer being sidelined by the BBC after raising concerns about Martin Bashir, or Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers questioning the sanity of those who accused her.
With “party-gate”, the same playbook has been used, taking in attacks on the media for wanting to engage in tittle-tattle, Jacob Rees-Mogg denouncing the Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, as “a lightweight figure” and the sinister decision by Johnson himself to drag a right-wing online conspiracy theory about Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile into the broad daylight of mainstream news.
With gaslighting in full throttle, a parallel manoeuvre is also under way: to hide behind legal technicalities wherever possible. These can often involve absurd twists of logic, as when, for example, Prince Andrew’s lawyers tried to argue he couldn’t be sued since he was protected by an agreement the complainant had made with a dead paedophile. There was a degree of absurdity on Tuesday when the disinformation minister, Chris Philp, before a parliamentary committee scrutinising his online safety bill, refused to distance himself from the online disinformation about Starmer – the kind that his bill is intended to root out. It’s a position that has also been taken publicly this week by our ministers for culture and justice.
But that’s how the rot spreads. If a sociopath is at the heart of an organisation, then the organisation itself begins to take on the characteristics of the person controlling it. Each one close to him or her becomes infected, because it’s now too late to do anything else. The best they can do now is delay; say they’d love to tell you everything, but their hands are tied. They rely on the fact that we’ve all got lives to be getting on with, we can’t keep paying lawyers, and some of us have died, while others are just tired. A government is different, though: its adversaries are, potentially, all of us. It may be that there are just too many of us following the smell of something rotten for this to end cleanly for them.
NOTE: Armando Giovanni Iannucci OBE is a film and TV writer whose credits include The Thick of It, In the Loop, Veep and the film Death of Stalin. He is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, producer, performer, and panellist. Born in Glasgow to Italian parents, Iannucci studied at the University of Glasgow followed by the University of Oxford. Text in blue links to background information. This article was published in the Guardian.
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Grouse Beater 
Unfortunately, sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists are more common than anyone thought previously. They will naturally gravitate to positions where they can weave their cruelties to best advantage: government, banks, big business, corporations, etc., and they usually thrive on creating and amassing wealth which they hoard (the top ones, that is) in order to maximise their own opportunities and diminish those of others, who are like cattle to them. They do exist at all levels of society, however, and can cause a great deal of damage, but the one thing they all appear to have in common is that: a) they harm others; and b) for little reason other than personal enjoyment. They are also past masters at hiding their true selves and much of their social behaviour (they can be very charming) is learned from observation, not experience.
Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
When funding for services is throttled to the point of impossibility and people are desperate then, much like war is the psychopaths dream, being able to get top jobs based on fantasy and false promise is the Narcissists. They can do anything, achieve anything. The much used phrase, ‘It’s not all about finance’ should ring alarm bells instead of achieving Brownie points.
The transfer of public money to the rich is the reason for these people being in positions of power. Our archaic political system controlled by elites, lacks adequate checks and balances and is the ideal vehicle to propel self interested dullards and dupes, ripe for manipulation into these positions.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, senior management in all our central/local government/quangos voluntary and charitable institutions.
The sociopaths have taken over the biggest asylum in UK! They claim ‘asylum..as ‘parliamentary Privilege!’ What chance do any of us have against this lot! Independence is the only lifeboat but the current SNP Leadership are feart of the watter!
UK government is run by a millignant narcissistic self entitled gangster elite. Brexit is a disaster for the economy and ordinary people. The English voters have been hoodwinked by the Tory crime syndicate hell bent on enriching themselves at the expense of the taxpayers hard earned cash. While the Tory elite hide there millions and billions in off shore tax havens .Everything is in danger of destruction the NHS , Pensions.our ability to keep Warm and Eat.,the very basics of a society. The UK is not a proper country, it’s a failed state. What does it take for Sturgeon to wake up and launch us out this rotten to the core coercive Union.
I read the article but why should I listen to him? His complaints are tedious and lead nowhere.
They could burn Boris Johnson, his cabinet, and the house of lords at the stake and it would move me less than this atricle. I post because I want to make the point that it makes no difference to my nation (not Iannucci’s nation). We live here under an entitled class of tossers. Crown Office, civil service, judges, Scottish government politicians, media tossers, chief police officers. It’s a stinking club. Selling us out, everything we have. Its members hing in wi’ power and despise us. They displace us, rob us of our futures, and drain away our cultural reserves. This is our enemy. It lives in Scotland, works for England.
Iannucci’s point of view means nothing.
Iannucci’s welcome view adds to the clamour that people are tired of living in a colonised country where major decisions affecting us are taken by another country. Secondly, contributors to to commentary must use their real email name. I note you have used a nickname.
We have very similar sociopaths in government here in Australia. I despair of ever getting a government which plans for the future and delivers for all the people.
Howard: we are living in an age when there are more than usual of the three categories that cause the most harm – sociopaths, psychopaths and narcissists – and the ones at the top (albeit there are plenty of them in the other social classes, too, especially the middle-class Tory class) have more individual/corporate wealth than ever before recent history. Since Thatcher and Reagan, some have accumulated more wealth than entire countries have in GDP. They are starting to flex their God complex muscles, deliberately interfering in politics and creating social experiments that even politicians are now unable to prevent, so they collude instead, putting their populations in immense danger. But, hey, we are dross to them. People the world over just do not understand the dynamic of aggressive and unfettered capitalism. I’m not calling for Marxism or even Socialism because the left has collapsed and thrown in its lot with the right, but, if we don’t get a handle on this soon, we are all going to very, very unhappy bunnies. At the moment, the war is being waged against females, but, soon, it will be everybody.