What is really unforgivable is liberal hypocrisy

There is a dangerous, creeping tendency in parts of the Left to treat politics like a parody of religion

An important rule in politics is “my guy’s crimes are never as bad as your guy’s crimes.” Left and Right both do double standards. The Left, however, throws dogma, sanctimony and liberal hypocrisy into the mix.

Enter Brendan Cox. When the claim was first published that Mr Cox had sexually harassed women, I truly hoped it wasn’t true. The work he did to restore decency to politics after his wife’s murder was worthwhile. But last weekend he admitted that he had behaved inappropriately. “Good for him,” said Labour’s Lucy Powell. “It’s absolutely the right thing to do,” said Labour’s Jess Phillips. Ms Phillips added that when a pal is accused of something, we don’t just “switch off our feelings... I love Brendan. He’s my friend.” And that’s a human response I think we can all recognise and admire.

But this story sticks in one’s craw, doesn’t it? I’m told lots of people knew what Mr Cox could be like, so why was he allowed to present himself as the face of a nicer, cleaner politics?

The implication is that he’s on some sort of a journey – and maybe he is. But so was Toby Young, the Rightwing journalist who was recently offered a job on an education quango. Mr Young used to be a wind-up artist who told jokes about breasts, but a few years ago he set up a free school and became rather heroic. Nevertheless, Labour tore his appointment to shreds. Ms Powell called it a “gross misjudgement” and of “no merit”. Mr Young stepped aside.

One of Mr Young’s mistakes was that he never censored himself. Sometimes his language came off as crass; often it betrayed someone who doesn’t take themselves seriously at all. Self-awareness, even self-parody, is common among conservatives, and rather likeable. At the height of the Republican primaries, Donald Trump joked: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” And he was right. That’s exactly how absurdly partisan politics really is.

For example: Left-wingers are keen to remind us that Margaret Thatcher opposed sanctions on apartheid South Africa. She was, in fact, against apartheid. But, yep, she fell short on what to do about it.

She was still a saint compared to the career of Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader invited convicted IRA members to Parliament; called Hizbollah and Hamas his friends; said Fidel Castro, for all his faults, was super at “social justice”; and hasn’t denied meeting a Czechoslovak spy in the 1980s.

Mr Corbyn calls the agent’s account of multiple meetings a smear, but that’s not the point. The shocker is that he had any meetings at all, and that so many people don’t apparently care. At the same time as news bulletins are full of allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, the BBC is said to appear reluctant to mention the charge that Labour MPS were in contact with agents of the Soviet bloc. Labour’s Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary, once described Mr Trump as an “asteroid of awfulness”. Mr Corbyn, however, is an “internationalist”.

So, in its own special way, is Oxfam. We mustn’t condemn the entire aid sector for the crimes of a few Oxfam staff members accused of paying Haitians for sex. As a Catholic, I know good causes can be exploited by predators and that well-intentioned hierarchies can fail to protect the vulnerable.

But what makes Oxfam’s errors especially unforgiveable is that just last year it released a video that depicted tax dodgers as masked thieves who break into a hospital and steal medical equipment from a screaming baby. This charity has become expressly political, casting itself on the side of the poor against the rich. And yet, when the allegations were made that women, even children, might have been abused by Oxfam workers, its chief executive asked: “What did we do? We murdered babies in their cots?”

A friend who used to work in aid tells me: “You have to go into that business with a healthy cynicism about human nature.” We all know that power corrupts and that a belief in one’s moral superiority blinds you to your faults. That’s why a healthy, free society does not grant excessive power to charities, churches or the state. And it is why sensible people don’t worship politicians.

The problem is that parts of the Left treat politics like a parody of religion that casts the first stone, judges without any fear of being judged and asks its followers to do as it says rather than as it does. The Leftist faith is irritating not just because its arguments are wrong but because they are insulated from criticism by a belief that they are holy writ. Unlike Mr Young or Mr Trump, they never see how daft they, like all us human beings, can look.

It ends, as it did at the Baftas, with a protest against harassment in a movie industry that makes its fortune peddling sex and violence, at which we are supposed to believe it was “courageous” for actresses to turn up wearing a black dress. Honey, it ain’t brave to wear black. Black is slimming. You want to be brave? Wear stripes.