Thread by @JolyonMaugham

On Wednesday evening I spoke to a prominent journalist about a mind-blowing PPE case that will soon emerge - it looks like a small group of senior civil servants created false evidence trails to try and cover up the fact that valuable PPE contracts were diverted to Tory VIPs.

Our conversation followed a meeting we had with the lawyer - in a well known firm - acting in the case. The lawyer spoke of how it had taken him a long time to believe the evidence. He had it, but it cut so violently across his own understanding of what the State in England is.

The journalist had made their name writing about a long-running scandal involving the creation of false evidence by other trusted public bodies.

It hadn't occurred to them that there are profound similarities between that scandal and this.

"What do you mean?" they asked me when I made the comparison?

I explained that (I thought) both scandals were important because they carried an opportunity to address one of the most profound causes of injustice in the UK.

That "profound cause" is the conviction, unique to or especially prevalent in England, that we are a country where the State does not commit profound acts of wrong.

So (like that lawyer) we disbelieve the evidence that challenges that conviction - however powerful.

When @GoodLawProject revealed the existence of the VIP Lane in 10/2020 we were out on a limb. Plainly the evidence suggested corruption but no one would believe it.

Now, of course, it is widely accepted and, after a change of Government, it will be conclusively proven.

As a Nigerian PhD student, looking at relative levels of corruption in her system and ours put it, 'it is much worse in the UK; at least in Nigeria we know we have a problem.'

Her line speaks, of course, to corruption in the health service. But it also speaks more broadly to the damaging consequences of our conviction belief in the inherent 'goodness' of our State.

Of course, outsiders have a different view of the beneficent nature of British institutions. Ask those states who were once our colonies; ask the Windrush generation; ask the families of those who lost their lives at Grenfell.

It also means that, when evidence emerges of the English state killing its own citizens and covering it up, our conviction is to disbelieve.

Surely things cannot be as they are described in this thread? There must be some other explanation?

https://x.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1803729360731406489

But in ignoring the evidence of your own eyes you fall prey to that "cause of injustice", the "conviction belief in the 'inherent goodness' of our State."

In 'Bringing Down Goliath' I tried to explain how I learned and we might learn to see the world through clearer eyes.