A failure in public trust undermines the foundations of local authority democracy, says Nicholas Dobson
“Pepys Show Unmasked! Celeb diarist smuggles up secret stash!” So might run the tabloid headline, were Samuel famously diarising nowadays. For today we expect our politicians and officials to act selflessly in the public interest. True, there’s widespread cynicism about the extent to which such propriety standards are actually met. A cynicism which can turn rapidly toxic when reports appear of misdoings by senior politicians, subsequently exonerated on what appear to be flimsy technicalities. But while the principle at least is now a firmly established canon of British public life, it was not always so.
Gradual divergence of public & private interests
As Tim Lankester, former President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, pointed out in “A Historical and Comparative Perspective”, his July 2007 paper on conflict of interest: “For most of Britain’s history, conflict of interest amongst rulers and their officials was endemic.” This was because until “the 18th century, no-one expected the king or his courtiers not to take advantage of their position to enrich themselves”. And while there were
