Britain is not a captured state…yet

Britain’s working week has begun on a dismal note. Or a grandly hopeful note on a dismal issue.

It’s about ethics and politics. Probity in public life. Parliamentary snouts in trough. Should members of parliament be allowed to serve as consultants to business? And then to lobby for those businesses?

Obviously not. It’s not clear if Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson agrees, but there you go.

MPs meet on the afternoon of November 8 for an emergency debate on the standards they should observe. This is the aftermath of the Owen Paterson sleaze scandal in which Mr Johnson is involved. (Mr Johnson’s government tried to block the suspension of Mr Patterson, a Conservative MP, for using his position to lobby on behalf of two companies that paid him as a consultant. It executed a U-turn after a huge outcry.)

There are suggestions now that the speaker of the House of Commons may propose a wholesale review of the rules governing MPs’ behaviour, as well as an outright ban on outside consultancy …