EVERY week I ask “Where are they now?” The answer often differs in the details, but the big picture is the same: a picture of corporations buying slices of the government.

I consider this “where are they now” question by checking various registers for what happens to senior civil servants and former ministers as they exit the government and enter well-paid corporate jobs.

I assume at the conferences, flower-show receptions or corporate boxes at the races where top civil servants and ministers gather they ask the same question – and are heartened to hear about the corporate careers of their former colleagues.

“Whatever happened to whatsisname?” The reassuring answers imply that, when the time comes, they can walk the same well-trodden path.

The latest two examples concern a company called Flint Global. They are just one detail in this picture, but make a good illustration. They picked themselves because they keep popping up the official registers.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments keeps one “whatever happened to?” register. The committee, known as ACoBA, is a very weak watchdog supposedly keeping an eye on the revolving door between government and business.

Their weakness is very helpful for journalism — they often highlight people flowing from government to corporations, but rarely stop it happening. It is a good source for stories but bad for the country.

In July ACoBA documents showed that top civil servant Sue Owen had joined Flint Global as a part-time, two-day a week “specialist adviser.” Flint Global are hired guns, a consultancy that will “provide advice at the point where government and business meet” to many corporate clients, for the right cash.

Dame Sue was Permanent Secretary for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport until April 2019 — that’s the top official at the department with a remit to regulate digital services like Facebook and Google. DCMS also regulates the very contentious area of gambling.

According to European lobbying registers, Flint Global’s major clients include Facebook, Google and the European Gaming and Betting Association.

Flint also represent Airbnb and Diageo, who are at least partly regulated by DCMS.

As well has her specific experience of DCMS, Dame Sue has a wider experience — having worked in senior positions at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Treasury.

Dame Sue also recently became (as I revealed in the Morning Star), a director of Serco: they said she would be good for the leading privatiser because of her “deep experience of government and government policy.” With Flint, she can also share her “insider” knowledge.

Flint Global themselves say Dame Sue “advises clients on a wide range of UK political, economic and regulatory issues” based on her “broad experience of governance,” including her time at the Treasury, DWP and Number 10.

According to ACoBA, “Dame Sue stated her role will be to advise client teams on policy issues and work with the senior leadership of Flint to build the company’s positioning. She also stated the role will likely involve contact and dealings with the government, however, without a view to lobbying.”

ACoBA are supposed to limit the way corporations can hire insiders to help them “lobby” the government, to persuade them to hand over contracts or limit regulation.

Dame Sue admitted she would both be both meeting clients and be one of Flint’s “meet-the-government” people, but by simply stating this would not be “lobbying,” she got a free pass from ACoBA, who waved the job through with some limited restrictions.

Dame Sue was also making clear that Flint had hired her to make the firm more attractive to clients — that’s what “build the company’s positioning” means.

Flint seem pretty much based on selling insider knowledge to corporations. Flint were set up by top UK civil servant Sir Simon Fraser. Until 2015 Fraser was “Head of the UK Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service” and “senior foreign-policy adviser to the British Foreign Secretary.”

Flint also recruited another top insider, Philip Rycroft, who resigned as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) in April 2019. Last July Flint also hired Ed de Minckwitz, one of Theresa May’s Special Advisers, as a director.

Flint offer clients what they call “clear, expert, and timely analysis of geopolitical developments and related policy decision-making in UK and European markets, as well as expert judgement on what is going on behind the scenes.”

One implication is they know what is going on “behind the scenes” because they used to work there themselves. They also suggest they know how to talk to the people who are still labouring “behind the scenes.” Flint say they can “Identify” the “key” people and “develop strategies for effective engagement to influence them.”

To help them sell their “influence” services, Flint took on another (slightly less) top person recently, according to the registers. Tim Pitt was until April 2019 a Treasury Special Adviser, working for Sajid Javid, and before that Phil Hammond.

According to the latest Treasury “Business Appointment Rules” advice, Pitt left government to work for Flint Global. They say he works in their “political practice,” telling clients he has worked on government “economic and fiscal policy, including on personal and business taxation, industrial strategy, energy.”

Regulators like ACoBA are supposed to consider if a top civil servant or minister “might be influenced in carrying out his or her official duties by the hope or expectation of future employment with a particular firm or organisation, or in a specific sector.”

The “future employment” of government figures with the top corporations, their lobbyists and consultants is so widespread that ACoBA only really make a small noise about the most obvious cases. But the “expectation” of future, better-paid corporate jobs must be distorting government policy now.

When favoured corporations — the ones who get government contracts or benefit from deregulation — share personnel with the government itself, this is called “crony capitalism” — the implication is that both democracy and the “free market” are undermined, because governments give favours to business friends instead of working in voters’ interests and businesses prosper based on those favours instead of their performance.

Or at least it is called “crony capitalism” when it happens in the developing world. In Britain, it barely gets reported.