Good Chaps

The 'Good Chaps' theory holds that those who rise to power in the UK will almost always be trustworthy public servants - good chaps who can be trusted to follow the rules and do the right thing. It's only when bad chaps take office that things go wrong, and our unwritten codes of conduct are powerless to stop the sleaze.Yet Britain appears to be run by a clique of bad chaps. Our politics and institutions are now awash with financial scandals, cronyism and a sure feeling that politicians can't be trusted. With a general election looming, what can we do about it?In Good Chaps, Simon Kuper chronicles how corruption set in across public life, from oligarchs bribing MPs to donors who can buy party policy.The chumocracy may be about to end, but will our politicians behave like good chaps again?

Praise for Chums: 'Brilliant ... traces Brexit back to the debating chambers of the Oxford Union in the 1980s, An extraordinary book ... I got angrier and angrier and angrier as I read it, A searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn't. It matters, A sparkling firework of a book, Exquisite and depressing in equal measure

Simon Kuper is an author and Financial Times journalist, born in Uganda and raised around the world. An Oxford graduate, he later attended Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar. He has written for the Observer, The Times and Guardian, and is also the author of Chums, Impossible City and The Happy Traitor.