Britain as corrupt as Nigeria - because an actress says so

The first installment of a two-part drama - Blood and Oil – airs on BBC2 tonight. It concerns the kidnap of four oil workers from an installation in a remote part of Nigeria. One of the actresses, Naomie Harris, was interviewed on BBC Breakfast News this morning.

The beautiful Ms Harris was also on Woman’s Hour last week. (No wonder rival broadcasters get ratty about the amount of free publicity the corporation lavishes on its own output.  But that’s not what was irritating about the actress’s performance – or that of her interrogator, Bill Turnbull.)

I was half-way through my bowl of Special K when I heard Ms Harris express the view that Britain was just as corrupt as Nigeria. 

She and Turnbull then agreed that the British Empire may have brought some good things to the countries it ruled, but the other side of the coin was the profits it then made from exploiting those countries’ natural resources. Now, the view that the British Empire was A Bad Thing is so much the standard BBC line, that it would be more shocking to hear the opposite point of view expressed. (The historian, Niall Ferguson, has argued convincingly that the cost of running the empire easily outweighed any profits generated from it.)

But Britain is just as corrupt as Nigeria? Do me a favour! (And I’ll scratch yourback – know what I mean?)

Just to make sure I hadn’t misheard, I tracked down Ms Harris’s Woman’s Hourinterview. Here’s a direct quote: “People often say that Nigeria is really corrupt, but it’s actually not that it’s necessarily more corrupt than here. It’s an issue of visibility – corruption is more visible in Nigeria than it is here”.

Neither Jenni Murray nor Bill Turnbull made any attempt to question this disgraceful assertion. Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index for 2009 puts the UK in 17th place (ahead of the United States and France), with Nigeria in 130th position (Somalia and Afghanistan are at the bottom of the league). But, then again, we’re only talking about perception, and Naomie – somehow – knows we’re all wrong. I can only assume that British businessmen and government officials are constantly demanding bribes from her before they’ll do what’s expected of them? I only ask, because this has never happened to me in this country. Not once. Ever. 

I’m not saying there is no corruption in this country – a few of our politicians have revealed themselves to be a bit dodgy, and we know that some of our businesses offer bribes to secure foreign contracts – but to compare us with a country which has been a by-word for jiggery-pokery and sleazy double-dealing at every level for decades is grossly insulting to those millions of British businessmen and government officials and doctors and dentists and headteachers and, yes, even politicians who would never dream of demanding or accepting money to do anything improper (former Labour cabinet ministers excepted, obviously). 

How dare she! 

Naomie Harris is a beautiful, talented, black actress. She was raised by a single parent, was bullied at her North London school, and hated her three years at Cambridge University (she cried every day because all the other undergraduates were talking about Eton, apparently – not my experience, I must say, but no doubt times have changed). But beauty, talent, blackness, being bullied at school, not much enjoying college, or even being a member of the acting profession should not give anyone carte blanche to make ridiculous, unsubstantiated assertions about their own country when being interviewed by the country’s main broadcaster, without at least being robustly challenged to provide evidence.

I’m absolutely certain that two experienced and intelligent broadcasters such as Bill Turnbull and Jenni Murray knew perfectly well that Ms Harris’s comments were untrue and unjustified: why didn’t they challenge this blatant twaddle? 

Well, because the liberal left will do anything – and I mean anything – but blame Third World countries for their shortcomings. It is an article of faith amongst media leftists (and 95% of them are leftists) that all non-Western countries, tribes and regions existed in a state of prelapsarian nirvana before westerners discovered, brutalized and exploited them. There’s more than a grain of truth in that – although Britain was less brutal and exploitative than most of her rivals – but most of this happened a very long time ago. The trend for inadequate adults to blame their parents for their failings, and for inadequate countries to blame their former colonial masters for theirs, simply has to stop. 

There was an item on Radio 4 recently about how Black and Asian lives were being lost in the UK because Blacks and Asians weren’t willing to donate blood. The two reasons given for their reluctance were the fears amongst minorities that their DNA would be added to the national DNA database (yeah, sure) and, according to some silly academic interviewed by the BBC, their colonial past (or, more likely, that of their great-great grandparents) makes them less willing to help other members of their own ethnic group. (Er… run that past me again? On seconds thoughts, don’t bother – we all know it’s utter bollocks.)

I look forward to hearing other actors assure us that Britain is just as oppressive as North Korea, that we suffer the same levels of crime as South Africa, and that our infant mortality rate matches Angola’s - we’re just better at hiding our problems. 

None of these is any more silly than suggesting we’re as corrupt as Nigeria. 

Shame on you, Ms Harris, and shame on those interviewers who let you get away with such pernicious nonsense!