Rees Mogg EU Corruption Hypocrisy

Another eminently missable edition of the BBC’s supposedly flagship political debate show Question Time came and went last night, briefly enlivened by an attack from the member for times long past Jacob Rees Mogg on the hated European Union, which he declared to be corrupt, having previously declared it to be a threat to democracy. Democracy is a threat to democracy, eh?

Rees Mogg was telling the audience of the benefits of Brexit, which, if he had been totally honest, would be a mercifully short exposition, but he could not resist the temptation to chuck in a little abuse to bolster his rather flimsy case. He decided to call out the EU for something he has little room to talk about.

“What are the advantages [of Brexit]? The basic advantage is democracy [someone forgot European Parliament elections]. You now decide how you are governed. Your votes cannot be overruled by a cabal in the European Union, and a corrupt cabal in the European Union … huge amounts of money that have been paid out in the European Union in bribes”. There was more.

“Is that how we want to be governed? By a corrupt, crooked European Parliament? Or do we want to make our own laws on your votes? That is the fundamental principal basis. And then what flows from that? Well, there are things that are already passing through Parliament, so we’re having a massive reform of financial services regulation”. And on he went.

So let’s consider what Rees Mogg was talking about: this from the Guardian tells “The European parliament has been rocked by the biggest scandal in its history after Belgian prosecutors announced they had charged four people with corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation, as part of an investigation into attempts by a Gulf state, named by Belgian media as Qatar, to buy influence in the assembly”. Do go on.

“The European parliament has voted to strip a Greek MEP implicated in a bribery and corruption scandal of her role as one of the body’s vice-presidents. MEPs voted by 625 votes to one, with two abstentions, to remove Eva Kaili as one of the parliament’s 14 vice-presidents, following a decision in favour of the move by the assembly’s senior leaders”. There was more.

“Kaili is one of four people charged … She has been remanded in custody and will be brought before a judge on Wednesday … Kaili has been expelled from the European parliament’s Socialists and Democrats group and Greece’s Pasok party, and Greek authorities have frozen her assets”.

And more. “An MEP from Cyprus’s governing Disy party has claimed that Kaili approached him to amend a highly critical European parliamentary report on LGBTQ and other human rights in Qatar”. So let’s get this straight: one MEP is implicated in a corruption scandal. She is stripped of her vice-presidential status, arrested, remanded in custody, and expelled by her party.

Moreover, as the BBC has reported, Ms Kaili failed to appear at that hearing last Wednesday, and so has remained in prison. One flaw in the Rees Mogg exposition is immediately apparent: we only have one MEP implicated in the scandal, which makes his “corrupt cabal” claim difficult to stand up.

Nor can the whole European Parliament be thus described, given there are 704 other MEPs not implicated. Nor can The Moggster point to any of those huge amounts paid out in bribes, which suggests the European Parliament is somehow involved in this activity, which it is not. Nor will he back up his claim about UK voters’ preferences being “overruled”, because they never have.

Worse for Rees Mogg, this is a case of asking the kettle what colour the pot happens to be. Has he not heard of the infamous VIP lane for PPE procurement? Maybe he is unfamiliar with the name of Baroness Mone? Or perhaps he missed that £37 billion spaffed up the wall, to borrow the characterisation of disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, on a test and trace system that somehow didn’t?

Worse still, none of the above, nor any of those donations to Tory party funds originating from outside the UK, nor the ennobling of the son of a former KGB spy by Bozo the clown, have been, or seemingly will be, the subject of civil or criminal sanction - unlike the scandal unearthed by Belgian authorities where the suspects are already in jail or subject to electronic tagging.

Jacob Rees Mogg is full of shit. But you knew that already.

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