The attack on planning laws reveals a government that doesn't play by the rules

Another day, another act of sabotage. Today the government announced plans to strip away the planning system in England that guarantees local authorities and local inhabitants a measure of say in what developers do to our surroundings. Ripping down familiar landmarks and replacing them with gigantic, unplanned slabs adds to the sense of civic powerlessness. Who’s in charge? Where are the rules? No one, is the answer, increasingly.

Developers are the booming winners in this stagnant decade, sitting on land-banks for a million homes, their executives rewarded in multiple millions. Now even the meagre sums they contributed to communities in section 106 compensation are weakened – so who pays for the schools, clinics, roads and transport their homes require? Robert Jenrick’s attempt to deprive impoverished Tower Hamlets of £45m of such payments from Tory donor Richard Desmond’s £1bn development stands as the signpost for these plans – and for this government.

Related: Robert Jenrick says concerns over planning overhaul are 'nonsense'

Once there was a fond belief in the probity of our institutions, boasting they set world standards in clean civil service and public appointments by exams, not nepotism. The much-mocked bowler hats of Whitehall were an emblem of starchy correctness, obedience to rules marshalled by scrutineers. The upper elite perpetuated itself then as now, but a stink of corruption has been rare, though most at risk with developers, as in the notorious 1972 John Poulson case in Newcastle. That caused the resignation of the home secretary, Reginald Maudling – as would Jenrick’s behaviour have done back then.

Now the door is wide open – a dinner, a donation, a wholesale removal of planning laws, “a developers’ charter”, warns Labour. Any remaining local control is dismissed as nimbyism, though records show that 90% of local planning permissions are granted. Preposterous promises of “beautiful” pattern books drawn from building standards of “Bath, Belgravia and Bournville” should be checked against the last bonfire of regulations in 2013, when the Cameron government let offices be converted into flats without planning.

A report commissioned into its effects by Jenrick’s ministerial predecessor makes shocking reading. Its University College London authors visited 600 sites and found flats of 16 sq metres, some without windows: instant slums. The government boasts that these office conversions created 60,000 dwellings, but these are “studio” rat cages: there’s no sign Jenrick read the report before it was slipped out silently by his department. Instead, the Tory wall-of-sound press trumpeted praise this morning for this no-planning plan.

That’s just today. Yesterday, No 10’s latest assault on the civil service was revealed in a survey of Tory cronies appointed to paid positions on supposedly “independent” Whitehall departmental boards. Already 8 out of 13 this year were Tory party people, unlikely to provide “scrutinising of decisions and sharpening accountability”. A Times survey shows four of the five appointees to oversee Michael Gove’s cabinet office are Gove’s own former special advisers.

Where’s the shock and outrage? The Conservatives’ decent core has been expelled or quit. So where is this fabled “deep state”, those sinister civil servants reputed (mainly by the paranoid left) to stand ready to stop extreme state destabilisation? The top civil servant was ejected and the frontrunner for the post is said to be the health department’s permanent secretary, Chris Wormald – hardly covered in Covid glory, but favoured because he’s a rare Brexit-backer, the only criterion for office or cabinet.

The Lords appointments at least raised a rumble. The prime minister’s brother, a former junior minister? A Russian socialite whose Italian villa parties Boris Johnson frequently attended, whose newspapers backed his every election? Claire Fox, ex-Revolutionary Communist who still hasn’t apologised for once defending IRA atrocities? But she’s a Brexiter, so that’s OK.

Polls show people object vehemently to grotesque top CEO pay of 119 times median earnings: yesterday’s High Pay Centre annual report showed even the third of FTSE 100 CEOs who ostentatiously “cut” their salaries by 20% during Covid-19 did no such thing. Who can stop that? Shareholders, is the excuse, but big fundholders are cronies – and besides, in the US, shares are only held for an average of 22 seconds. So who’s in charge?

Contracts to cronies abound, private companies are favoured over experienced public servants. But that is beginning to be noticed now it affects Covid-19 failures. The test-and-trace system fiasco turns out to be far worse than feared, mercilessly exposed by Richard Dobbs, a board director of the Office for National Statistics. Analysing all the data, he shows “a potentially catastrophic level of less than 5% for England” are traced and isolated. “That means that for every person successfully isolated, there are around 20 not isolated,” he writes in the Spectator. It’s not enough to prevent a second peak, he warns.

Related: England's planning changes will create 'generation of slums'

Is this when voters find out about government by crony? It may not matter that a Tory peer, married to a Tory MP, was appointed to head track and trace or that the chair of NHS England is a former Tory minister – and that they chose favoured private companies over local government experience.

Tory MPs chant “80! 80! 80!” at Labour objectors because an 80-seat majority is absolute power. Proroguing parliament was an outrage called out by the courts – so now those judicial review powers will be curtailed. After Brexit, the Tories are “sovereign” to behave however they damn-well please: rule-wrecking to their hearts’ delight, free of Brussels restraint.

Cronyism infests No 10. In the bowler-hatted days, this would have been called, with patronising imperialism, “banana republic” behaviour. Abstruse questions of civil service oversight and contract awarding passes most voters by, so it’s Labour task to expose how corrupted government leads to bad decisions – and in the case of Covid-19, possibly to tens of thousands of needless deaths.

A promise to cleanse the filth, reform the Lords, reform company pay oversight by shareholders and stop political donations would suit the style and probity of Keir Starmer and his serious frontbench. Labour still lags in the polls – but probably not for much longer.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist