Britain’s reputation for clean government has taken another hit, with the country now notching up its worst-ever performance on the global corruption league table. Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index hands the UK a score of 70 out of 100, a slip from last year’s 71 and the lowest since the index was given a major overhaul back in 2012. For the third year running, Britain sits at 20th place worldwide. That might not sound like a total disgrace, but cast your mind back to 2017 when we were rubbing shoulders with the top ten. The slide since then has been steady, and it’s starting to look less like a wobble and more like a permanent fixture.
This year’s findings land at a particularly awkward moment for the government, with the Peter Mandelson-Jeffrey Epstein saga refusing to fade quietly into the background. The former ambassador’s ties to the convicted sex offender were always going to raise eyebrows, but now the police have stepped in to investigate Mandelson for misconduct in public office over alleged leaks of sensitive government information. Transparency International UK points out that stinkers like this do far more than just generate a few days of awkward headlines—they corrode public trust and feed a growing suspicion that dodgy dealings are becoming par for the course at the top of British politics.
You might think the government’s recent promises to restore integrity would have moved the dial, but the numbers tell a different story. This score of 70 suggests that fine words and warm intentions aren’t worth a great deal without serious action to back them up. The index draws on expert assessments and surveys of business leaders, measuring how corrupt the public sector is perceived to be, from zero (total free-for-all) to 100 (squeaky clean). Britain’s score is now at a level that should ring alarm bells in Whitehall, even if the noise from Westminster is more of a gentle hum.
Among the eight independent sources used to compile this year’s score, six contained fresh data collected between January 2024 and September 2025. And what a period that was. The country saw political parties splashing cash on election campaigning like never before, with all that money sloshing around courtesy of some very deep pockets. The Conservatives pocketed £15 million from a single donor in under a year, while Elon Musk was reportedly sizing up a cool $100 million (£85 million) donation to Reform UK. When one individual can throw that kind of weight behind a political outfit, it’s hardly surprising that the public starts to wonder what exactly they expect in return.
Then there were the stories that had a distinct whiff of cash-for-access about them. Newspapers reported that a Labour donor had been handed a privileged pass to Number 10, and that the party, along with lobbyists and MPs, had been touting access to the corridors of power in exchange for money. It’s the sort of behaviour that makes voters feel like the system is rigged in favour of those who can afford to buy a seat at the table. Meanwhile, questions were raised over whether some government appointments had gone to donors without anything so tedious as a proper process being followed. Cronyism, in other words, alive and kicking.
Two of the data sources actually improved the UK’s score slightly compared with previous years, but two pushed it downwards, leaving a mixed picture overall. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement. It suggests that experts and business leaders can’t quite agree on whether Britain is cleaning up its act or letting things slide. Either way, the trend is not our friend.
The global picture is hardly encouraging either. The average score across all countries has slumped to 42, the lowest in over a decade, with more than two-thirds of nations – 122 out of 180 – scoring below 50. Even the usual star pupils are showing signs of strain. Democracies, which have historically outperformed autocracies and flawed democracies on corruption measures, are losing ground. The United States sits at 64, France at 66, Canada at 75, Sweden at 80, and New Zealand at 81. All have seen better days. At the top of the class, Denmark holds firm with 89, followed by Finland on 88 and Singapore on 84. At the other end of the scale, countries like Türkiye (31), Hungary (40) and Nicaragua (14) have haemorrhaged points since 2012, reflecting a toxic cocktail of democratic backsliding, institutional collapse and entrenched patronage networks.
Transparency International UK’s chief executive, Daniel Bruce, didn’t mince his words. He said the UK had now been stuck in 20th place for three years running with a score that keeps sliding, and warned that this persistent decline risks becoming a defining feature of our political culture, not some temporary blip. He pointed out that the data collection period covered some of the most expensive political campaigning ever seen in this country, alongside troubling reports of access-for-cash arrangements and dodgy appointments. Unless the government takes decisive action to tackle the corrupting influence of big money in politics and beef up anti-corruption measures, these worries will become the new normal.
Bruce called on the government to prove it’s serious about restoring integrity. That means bold steps to remove big money from politics, genuinely open government, and an end to the cronyism that eats away at public trust in our institutions. He’s not asking for tweaks around the edges. He wants proper caps on donations, lower campaign spending limits, more transparency over where political cash comes from, and a beefed-up Electoral Commission. He also wants transparency rules extended to all lobbyists, with detailed disclosure of who they’re meeting, what they’re pushing for, and when—following the lead of countries like Canada, Germany and the US. And he wants Parliament to clean up its own act by ditching corruption-prone practices like MPs holding second jobs, reforming appointments to the Lords, and booting out anyone found guilty of serious misconduct.
The question is whether the government has the appetite for any of that. Promises to clean up politics are cheap, and they’ve been made before. But with the UK’s reputation for good governance fraying at the edges and the public growing increasingly cynical about the whole business, the cost of doing nothing might eventually become too high to ignore. For now, though, the index suggests that Britain is drifting further away from the top tier of clean countries, and the trajectory is anything but encouraging.
