Simon Kuper
speaker
89 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard 4 Jun
Simon Kuper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yeah, bad governance. And if you feel... well, I don't want to buy the bonds of a country where the government is giving contracts to people who are donors to the ruling party. I mean, it's very much, you know, the COVID VIP line scandal is very much like how Sierra Leone handed Ebola where all the Ebola contracts went to friends of the president.
So, yeah, I mean, when you're thinking of lending to Britain, and Liz Truss tested the proposition that people were still willing to lend to Britain, which they said, maybe not so much. Yeah. this does become a factor. But generally, I mean, more directly, government money goes missing to the tune of billions in some cases through corruption.
I would say it starts... With Margaret Thatcher, who herself was not corrupt, she was sort of restrained from stealing from government by a very strong Christian ethic. She thought it was wrong. And so even when her ministers would meet to discuss Tory party business, they had to pay for their own sandwiches because you're not discussing government work. It's party business.
So everyone pays for their own food. And however, she kind of didn't really believe in public service. It was weird because she was a public servant, but she was always dissing it. People who worked in the public sector were sort of losers and leeches on the state and the real heroes of Britain were business people.
She had this idea that to get rich is glorious and she'd bring in business people to advise government because business is obviously better than government. And I think that's when you start on the right to get this waning of the public service ethos.
Because if you think of conservative politicians of previous generation like Harold Macmillan or Anthony Eden, Churchill, I mean, they spent their whole lives in public service starting with World War I because they had gone out to fight and if necessary, die for Britain in World War I. They believed that the highest thing you could do with your life was to serve the state.
And, you know, business was a bit vulgar and grubby and it was very much not where it was happening. And so this public service ethos starts to disintegrate with Thatcher. And then what you get from the 80s and 90s is you get a lot of money coming into London. For a start, the city grows enormously after Thatcher's big bang of 1986.
So suddenly you have people in banks and hedge funds who are earning millions. And the other thing is you get a lot of people from the former communist countries, especially the former USSR, coming to park their ill-gotten money here. So Roman Abramovich is a very spectacular example. But there's lots and lots of them. I think Moscow, you know, you could be...
hurting a drive-by shooting in your favorite restaurant.
In Kensington, not so much. So you moved to Kensington.
Yeah, later Putin came to get them. But for a while, London seemed a very safe haven, expensive schools, good tailors. And so a lot of money came here. And those people had learned from their home countries, not just the former Soviet Union, but also, say... Egypt, they'd learn in their home countries that you protect your money by being friendly with people in government.
And the people in government, they also want a bit of money. And let's see if that proposition works in the UK. I'll donate to the ruling party. So you get a surge of money. These people very quickly get UK passports because there's a fast track of golden visas for rich people. So suddenly you're a UK citizen.
You have all this money that you've taken out of Russia and you start giving it to a political party. So the ruling party, because you'd be an idiot to give to the opposition. And so a lot of conservative donations in the years between about 2010 and 2022 come from Russians, former Russians.
There are some people who just genuinely believe in the party. And sometimes they want something, but mostly they just want that party to do well. And the key examples I cite from the past are the Sainsbury cousins. So you have David Sainsbury who gives Labour, I mean, probably the biggest Labour donor over time. in the several millions, and his cousin John Sainsbury gives to the Tories.
And I don't think either, none of them were involved in the business anymore. They kind of left the family business, the supermarket, decades earlier. Both David and John just wanted their party to win. They're not asking for anything back. So you get that kind of donor.
And I think Lord Ali, who is the figure who was involved in the current Labour scandal, he's actually a mini Sainsbury in that way. He gives much smaller amounts to Labour, But he's been a Labour peer. He's been inside for 30 years. I think he just wants Labour to win and he feels, well, if they have nice clothes on TV, they're more likely to win.
I think what I would look at if I were doing investigative journalism is he is the chief fundraiser for the party. So I'm not so much worried about the money that Lord Ali gives because I think he gives because he's a supporter. I'm worried about the people who come to Lord Ali and say, you know, I'd like to give some money to Labour.
No, I don't think he's particularly looking for a quid pro quo. And also, you know, if you're a rich person and you like politics and you're kind of a lord, you like hanging around the political scene, you have a pastor down in the street, often you just want to be involved. Yeah. And the people who run the show think, well, Why are we going to bring you in?
You're not a major figure in the Labour Party. And then you say, oh, well, I can give you some money. So a lot of the donations are a little bit idiosyncratic. I'm not saying that what has happened with Labour now is okay at all. I think it's a disgrace. But I don't think it's, as you say, it's not big money. And I don't think the Lord Ali donations themselves are dangerous.
I think his position as gatekeeper is dangerous.
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