Ebook: How Corrupt Is Britain?

Banks accused of rate-fixing. Members of parliament cooking the books. Major defense contractors investigated over suspect arms deals. Police accused of being paid off by tabloids. The headlines are unrelenting these days. Perhaps it’s high time we ask: Just exactly how corrupt is Britain?

David Whyte brings together a wide range of leading commentators and campaigners, offering a series of troubling answers. Unflinchingly facing the corruption in British public life, they show that it is no longer tenable to assume that corruption is something that happens elsewhere; corrupt practices are revealed across a wide range of venerated institutions, from local government to big business. These powerful, punchy essays aim to shine a light on the corruption fundamentally embedded in UK politics, police, and finance.

"This excellent book should be read by everyone--but particularly by those who harbor a belief that our liberal democracy protects against the worst forms of state-corporate crime. What the authors in this powerful volume reveal is a network of egregious state and corporate corruption in Britain to rival any in the developing world. With the very agencies of accountability also chief offenders, the book’s conclusion is inevitable--that only radical resistance from the public sphere can hope to challenge the culture of impunity which currently protects the most powerful." ― Penny Green, Queen Mary University of London

"At last, a book that asks the right questions about corruption, and provides some fascinating and important answers. Corruption isn't what--or where--most people think it is." ― Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World

Dave Whyte earned his PhD in Criminology at Liverpool John Moores University and is now a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Leeds. He has published in a range of edited collections and journals, including Corporate Watch, Critical Criminology, Journal of Law and Society, Policy and Politics, Risk Management, Social and Legal Studies, and Studies in Political Economy. He is Professor in Socio-legal Studies at the University of Liverpool, UK, where he specialises in teaching and researching the relationship between corporate power and law.