New Broom Has Limp Bristles

Last week the compliant Sajid Javid dispatched his hapless henchbeing Caroline Nokes, who has apparently just about cobbled her face back together after Yvette Cooper walked across it in her Windrush-cleated boots, to announce a sweeping crackdown on financial crime. Coming from the Conservative Party, of course, this sounds about as convincing as a sweeping crackdown on poverty, climate change, slum landlords, arms sales to aggressor states, contempt of Parliament, sexual harassment or racism; and inevitably, so it has proved. Five days ago the Ministry for Wog Control issued five hundred words proclaiming that it would suspend its programme of selling visas to wealthy foreigners; today, after being prompted like a sullen brat in the forced-confession stage of a well-deserved trip to Whacksville, the Ministry for Wog Control issued thirty words to the effect that, of course, the proclamation has not been implemented. Doubtless, with a sudden defenestration from the Conservative Party's battiest belfry looming ever further into the realms of possibility, the compliant Sajid Javid has taken advantage of his department's characteristic efficiency to sneak in a bit of foreign policy on the side.