THE mounting public disgust at corruption in Westminster has forced the Conservatives onto the back foot.

But we have to be vigilant, as any concessions they offer will be limited to prevent wholesale system change. 

In the two weeks since Conservative MPs voted down sanctions on their former colleague Owen Paterson — after he was found guilty for his “egregious” paid lobbying of ministers — there has been an avalanche of stories regarding corruption in Westminster.

Fearing the backlash, the Conservatives dropped their attempts to save a colleague — in order to save the system as it operates now and the privileges it provides them — but the public backlash has snowballed out of the government’s control.

What started with headlines of Paterson’s £100,000 per year payments to lobby for private business, led to the exposure of other Conservative MPs’ interests.

The Register of MPs’ Financial Interests showed John Redwood earned £200,000 in the past year advising financial firms, while former attorney-general Geoffrey Cox has received £900,000 in the past year providing legal advice in the British Virgin Islands.

All this became apparent as the reality of the Conservatives cost-of-living crisis seeps into public consciousness.

Inflation is up as gas and electricity, food and petrol prices go up.

Real wages are coming down and those reliant on universal credit have now lost their £20 uplift.

The contrast couldnt be greater. People are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet while hearing more and more how their elected politicians are enriching themselves by working on behalf of big business and corporate power.

Recent polling by YouGov showed that MPs above all occupations — including CEOs, bankers and newspaper editors — are seen as being members of the ruling class.

This is corrosive and needs to be challenged but can only be done so by cleaning up Westminster.

Right now, through a medley of institutions and pressure points — donations, lobbying and supposedly impartial accountancy firms — corporate power has captured almost every level of policy-making, ensuring its voice is heard above all others and that other voices are effectively drowned out.

This process, and the system it has established, is what we call “corporate capture” and can affect both Westminster and Whitehall — members of Parliament and ministries of the government.

The recent exposure of this corruption has created a political problem for the government, which Labour must seize on by demonstrating the party is prepared to clean up politics — even where that affects Labour MPs’ lifestyles.

The Conservatives goal will be to calculate how much ground they need to cede — or appear to cede — without significantly altering the system within which they work.

In Wednesday’s debate, Labour set out the demand to ban MPs taking paid work as a strategist, adviser or consultant.

In Keir Starmer’s press conference, he offered to go further in future, and ban all second jobs for MPs.

This is something I have long called for. In 2013, I said in the House, no members should be permitted to hold paid directorships or consultancies.

Eight years on, I welcome that this is the demand that Johnson and Starmer have backed this week.

Since 2010, I have followed the Cabinet Office closely and seen how it fails to regulate political finance and protects corporate interests.

As with previous governments, this one will seek to weather the debate, riding it out with cosmetic changes, without threatening the process of corporate capture from which they personally profit.

However, the apparent support for banning second jobs is only one demand and given the Conservatives’ survival instinct and adaptability, no single measure is sufficient.

When they benefit from the status quo, we can’t trust them to take action needed to sweep it away.

That is why a week ago, I wrote to both the Prime Minister and to Keir Starmer, setting out measures I have consistently called for over the past 10 years, and which in 2017 and 2019, I ensured were in Labour’s election manifestos, to start cleaning up politics.

From banning political donations to parties from tax-avoiders and evaders, to banning second jobs for MPs; from replacing the business appointments committee to prevent ministers and civil servants profiting from government contacts; and from establishing an extended corporate lobbying register to requiring the Civil Service to report its contracted consultancy work, we need to ensure both Westminster and Whitehall are accountable.

As I set out in a forthcoming report, the state and its institutions have been captured and transformed at multiple levels and in different ways.

Unless Labour tackles this dual problem — of democracy and the state — it will find any transformative economic ambitions curtailed and, in some cases, actively prevented.

Jon Trickett is the Labour MP for Hemsworth, West Yorkshire.