As  a compost gardener,  I know a little about corruption.

I have 3 compost bins, each measuring a cubic metre. I regularly turn them over, seeing the fungi and animals responsible for the rotting, decomposition  or corruption process: snails, slugs, woodlice, worms, centipedes, white-rot and brown-rot fungi.

Whenever I start a new compost bin, I “seed” it with a little of the  compost from an established bin, knowing that the composting organisms spread like a virus, infecting and corrupting fresh debris as it is added to the bin.

Under the present government, Britain has become a metaphorical compost heap, displaying some of the characteristics of corrupt states around the world: lying and deceitful politicians, illegal financial dealings, political and financial power being hoarded by a ruling clique and its hangers-on.

The UK was among the top ten least corrupt countries according to the 2017 league table published by Transparency International. However, although the Tory government had  undertaken to protect our healthy position in the league table by publishing an anti-corruption strategy by the end of 2016, that strategy is still awaited.

Such a strategy is badly needed. London has well earned its reputation as the money-laundering capital of the world. The City of London processes the ill-gotten gains of the kleptocrats of Russia, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and any other haven for crooks, helped along by the likes of the egregiously money-grubbing Tony Blair.

Shell companies proliferate in London like viral variants. The majority of those glass and steel monstrosities blighting the London skyline are foreign-owned by some of the most dubious characters in the world. They and their cash are welcomed here by their mates among our home-grown oligarchs and Tory politicians.

Since Doris Johnson became Prime Minister, Britain has become increasingly corrupt. The British people were unwise enough to put into power a man, some of whose closest associates described him as an inveterate liar and scoundrel, a man who did not know the difference between the truth and a lie and did not care.

He won the 2019 general election on a barrage of lies about the EU and the benefits of Brexit.

He was continuing his habitual perfidy about the EU as when he served as Brussels correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. In that role, he would concoct some hog-wash about EU rules, on the shape of bananas, for example, which would be picked up and exaggerated and embroidered by such comics as The Sun and Daily Mail and the British public would fall for it.

As a liar and deception artist extraordinaire, he has come into his own since “Partygate” came to the fore. His lies about not being there, or not knowing it was a party he was attending, because his underlings failed to tell him, have made him a laughingstock. The corruption that started with these  tall tales has spread to civil servants and MPs who have defended him in order to protect themselves. Like the rot in a compost heap, the corruption has spread to all parts of Parliament and Whitehall. During the pandemic, the cronies of government ministers have become billionaires thanks to the PPE contracts doled out to them, due diligence and proper procedures having been cast aside in the rush to rake in the cash while the going was good. We may never know the scale of this corruption, because under this government, the promised inquiry into the government’s conduct of the pandemic, may turn out to be a whitewash.

Johnson’s fabrication, along with the US President, of the Ukraine crisis, has been his attempt to have a Falklands War, Thatcher-style exoneration and re-birth.

Regarding the vaccination programme roll-out, he and his Tory apologists have spoken as if, between Downing Streetparties, he found time to develop the vaccines and personally administer millions of jabs, emerging as the hero of the hour.

At the time of Brexit, there was  the difficulty of the Irish Republic remaining  in the EU, while Northern Ireland left it. Johnson claimed to have resolved the problem by means of his Northern Ireland Protocol, which has been contentious all along and has now fallen apart, and the Stormont government along with it.