The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Link: Britain a dangerous place to do business, OECD to warn – Telegraph.

See how the mighty have fallen. As a lawyer doing business in emerging markets, some of which are less than favourably rated by Transparency International, I sometimes have to ask local business people to sign provisions in contracts, which they find offensive, such as (when acting for companies with American shareholders) those relating to the USA’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They are (I think, understandably) upset by the implication of moral superiority on the part of their Western business partners. If our companies are to make any money in the next few years, they will need to do so in emerging markets. The cynical among you might think that a lax approach to corruption is the way to help them. On the contrary, governments need to live up to their rhetoric or damn their business people to charges of hypocrisy.

This humiliating rebuke by the OECD is as big a milestone on the path of Britain’s decline as was the 1976 IMF crisis. And it doesn’t even reflect the fact that our government recently used anti-terrorist legislation to seize foreign assets (the wrong ones, as it happens, such are the incompetents who staff our state). That fact alone is likely to cause a flight of capital from a country long dependent on foreign direct investment. A reputation for fostering corruption won’t help. Neither will bringing into government former EU officials who like to hang out with foreign oligarchs on their yachts.