Alexey Navalny rightly asks: “If corruption is preventing us from finding solutions to the problems of the ‘big agenda’, is it perhaps time to prioritize it on that agenda?” (Action against corruption can only solve the world’s biggest problem, August 19)
With respect to the UK, this is unlikely to be the case because corruption – the “exploitation of an official position for personal gain” – is also rampant in UK government, although in a slightly less severe form than in some other countries. If it’s not corruption, then what is the funneling of government contracts for apparently incompetent companies run by cronies, or by political donors? What is the use of the privilege of ministerial office to benefit a person who immediately thereafter donates to the party’s fund, if there is no corruption?
The pot, being aware of his own blackness, will remain silent when he attends a summit with Kettle.
Henry Law
manchester
Alexey Navalny Makes a lot of apt points in his letter set from his prison cell about corruption in Russia and other states. I was particularly interested in his suggested five steps to help tackle global corruption, as he highlights many that need to be implemented on our own government. These include creating a special category of countries that encourage corruption, enforce transparency, combat corrupt individuals and enact the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
So unless all four of these steps are implemented on the UK government, it can hardly begin to tackle corruption in other countries. But there doesn’t seem to be any real hope of tackling domestic corruption, which is happening elsewhere.
David Felton
Wiston, Cheshire
The problem before Alexei Navalny is where does he go from here? All this may very well be attacking Vladimir Putin, but where will he find a country to meet his great demands? I hope he was not thinking of flying the flag for the UK. Perhaps he is unaware that there is nothing “Clean Britain”. When he looks to the West through rose-tinted glasses, he can find that he is constantly surrounded by the things he thinks only happen in one-party states. to explain a famous song: “Corruption makes the world spin, the world spins.”
Michael Newman
Shepherd, Bedfordshire
Polly Toynbee’s call to end the “failed drug prohibition” that fuels corruption should be added to Alexei Navalny’s Five Steps to Combat Global Corruption (Taliban victory in Afghanistan exposes horrors of Western pride, August 17Both are right in highlighting corruption as the next biggest threat to civil society after climate change.
Harold Mosley
York
We read the letter of Alexei Navalny with great admiration for his immense bravery and clear vision. Especially now that we face such a difficult future, clarity, honesty and openness become even more essential, as is the safe channeling of money to effective life-saving measures. The climate crisis is no less.
We should no longer tolerate selfish and selfish corruption, be it moral or financial. Navalny’s Five Steps is a good practical start.
Judy Libert and Julian Marshaw
Nottingham