Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

When is corruption not corrupt? When the establishment says it isn’t

Mr Justice Tugendhat delivered a ferocious verdict last week. Undercover reporters from the Sunday Times claimed they had found Peter Cruddas, co-Treasurer of the Conservative Party, offering influence in return for wodges of cash. With damning language, the judge found against the paper, leaving it with costs and damages of around £700,000.

I don’t want to discuss the merits of the case. Cruddas, who had to resign when the story came out, may have been unjustly maligned. Conversely, the Sunday Times is going to the Court of Appeal, so it may be that the paper is the true victim. I want to look at the judge’s reasoning instead, because it unconsciously reveals how platitudes, evasions and logical fallacies hide corruption in British public life.

If I have read him right, Tugendhat believes that corruption cannot exist in the British state because nothing the British state allows can be corrupt. I will let the learned judge take you round his circular reasoning in his own words.

“The present system of party funding, whether desirable or not, is lawful and practical, whereas other possible systems, such as funding out of taxation, or mass membership of political parties, are either not provided for by law, or not in practice available to the parties, however much they might wish that they were. This court cannot declare to be corrupt, as a matter of fact, the system of party funding authorised by Parliament and adopted by the Conservative and other parties. That may or may not be an opinion which people may honestly hold. It is not true as a matter of fact that the system is corrupt.”

Where to begin? One of the many pernicious aspects of our libel law is that it allows judges to express personal prejudices that have no place in a courtroom.

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