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Politico (13 April 2021)

By Matt Honeycombe-Foster 

David Cameron once warned that lobbying was Britain’s “next big scandal.”

He probably didn’t imagine that he would be at the center of that scandal and that his actions would shine an unfavorable light on the government transparency system that the former prime minister himself helped set up.

The current government is treating the scandal, which has seen successive newspaper stories about Cameron’s attempts to influence British ministers on behalf of his post-government employer, a now-collapsed financial firm called Greensill, so seriously that it’s just launched an independent inquiry, and the opposition Labour Party wants to grill ministers in parliament Tuesday.

Yet transparency campaigners and even Westminster’s lobbyists themselves point out that the steady drumbeat of revelations comes in spite of, and not because of, the U.K.’s promises about open government.

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