What hiring a failed Australian prime minister tells us about corrupt Britain

What is Tony Abbott to Britain or we to him? A failed Australian politician who will be remembered, if at all, for believing climate change was “probably doing good” as his country burned, and being eviscerated for his sexist comments by Julia Gillard. Abbott is a has-been from the other side of the world of whom we know little and care less. Nevertheless, Boris Johnson is thinking of making him our trade envoy. No one has voted for Abbott in Britain and he negotiated no major trade deals in his error-strewn period as Australia’s prime minister, which ended in 2015, when, incidentally, his own party judged him to be worthless and brought him down.

His record does not matter to Johnson because Abbott is a product of the global network of rightwing thinktanks that has learned how easy and cheap it is to manipulate British politics. I want to emphasise the cheapness. Britain is the Poundshop of European politics, where money goes further. Pecunia non olet – “money does not stink” – said the emperor Vespasian as he defended his tax on the sale of urine from Rome’s sewers to tanners who used it to soften animal skins.

It might be the motto for the Anglo-Saxon right, which will use money from any source to soften public opinion. The best text to reach for if you want to understand how Abbott, a blunder from down under, became a figure of consequence in London is Peter Geoghegan’s Democracy for Sale, which should be the most discussed political book of the year. It is by turns balanced, authoritative, revelatory and scandalous. As the web and unsourced money twist elections, the subject could not be more urgent. Too many politicians and journalists are too compromised to think about buying influence, however, and the book has not been mentioned outside the liberal press.

I’ll come to the reasons for the silence later. For the moment, let’s endure a few more minutes of Abbott’s company. His case illustrates our troubles in microcosm. Abbott could be influencing our government because he earned the essential qualification for promotion when he became a travelling player on the rightwing thinktank circuit. He defended Donald Trump at the Heritage Foundation in Washington and Brexit on behalf of the Policy Exchange and the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. He was so far gone, he was willing to join Daniel Hannan, Andrew Roberts and a clown parade of other fruit loops in asserting that Britain could free itself from geography, leave Europe and become a part of “Canzuk” , an Anglo-Saxon Narnia formed by the merger of the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Do you expect a government led by Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson to open up a system that gave them power? The unanswerable complaint against thinktanks is that they allow anonymous donors to influence policy without a semblance of accountability. And it’s a criticism you should never tire of making. Less noticed is how economical it is to buy access and promote your proteges. As the former Tory MP Guto Bebb told Geoghegan: “If you are willing to put quarter of a million into a thinktank you can get a lot of bang for your buck.” Indeed you can. The access to decision makers is dizzying. The British Medical Journal found that 32 MPs had direct or indirect links to the IEA. Tobacco, alcohol and food companies can pay a pittance in their terms – assuming we are ever allowed to know who finances the institute – and hear the IEA tell Tory politicians that essential public health protections are just “nanny state” meddling. So embedded in the Tory state are they that Matt Hancock announced his back-covering manoeuvre to scrap Public Health England at an “independent” Policy Exchange event. Then there is the equally dizzying level of access to the media. The IEA’s turnover is just £2.5m. In 2017, it boasted that the advertising value of media appearances was £66m – a 2,600% return.

A little money goes a long way in political London. After a mere £12,000 donation to the Tory party, the billionaire developer and former pornographer Richard Desmond saw Robert Jenrick unlawfully approve his property development in the East End of London two weeks later, which you might say is prompt service. For 50 grand, pretty much anyone can get a seat with a minister or prime minister at a Conservative Leader’s Group. And again the first question is, really, is that all?

The cheapness of influence-peddling fits a time when unregulated campaign groups can use small sums to target marginal seats on social media and disappear as soon as the election is over. There is a clear need for reform. The Electoral Commission should be expanded and given police powers. Political parties should have the same duty as banks and be held accountable for checking the sources of money they take. Thinktanks and all lobbyists should be required under pain of criminal punishment to declare who is funding them. As indeed should social media companies running political adverts.

Much of the media won’t help us clean up politics. Sky and the BBC are too compromised. They want extreme opinions, no matter how tainted or stupid, which will hold their fickle audiences’ attention. In return, they too often betray the duty of journalists to ask the IEA and Spiked on the right and Novara Media on the left hard questions about who they are representing and who is picking up the bill.

I cannot see politicians reforming the system. Individual MPs speak well on the folly of thinking democracy will look after itself in an era of dark money, dubiously acquired data and digital campaigning. But come now. Do you expect a government led by Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson to open up a system that gave them power? Pecunia non olet and they want to keep the stink from voters’ noses in case the country realises they are taking the piss.

• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist