ON MY MIND
TO TALK about standards today seems quaint, especially when a former Eton and Oxford student finds it difficult to distinguish between a social and a work event, a drinks menu and an agenda or between an apology and an excuse. When the product of this dubious privileged education is a confusing tangle of linguistics and ethics you know moral bankruptcy is close.
Yet Boris Johnson was not the first political leader to embarrass himself and his party. You may remember David Cameron telling the former New York mayor that the Queen had “purred” down the phone to him after Scotland voted to stay in the UK; or Gordon Brown being heard calling someone a “bigoted woman” after a confrontation about levels of immigration in Rochdale; or John Major questioning the parental status of three Eurosceptic MPS in his cabinet. My favourite has to be the comments of French president Jacques Chirac when, in a meeting with German and Russian leaders, he was heard to say: “The only thing the British have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease” and “After Finland, it is the country with the worst food”.
Anthony Seldon, in his fascinating account of the “impossible office” (the history of the British prime minister), starts with an imagined dinner conversation between Robert Walpole, Britain’s first de facto prime minister, and Boris Johnson, Britain’s 55th. With similar educational backgrounds, they share many other striking features: their opportunism, theatrical revelling, risk-taking and ability to pull the political strings. Yet Johnson’s fewer powers have been executed with considerably less skill in a shabby premiership.
When Johnson became PM one popular newspaper identified 43 previous “lies, gaffes and scandals” in a shocking pattern of behaviour. If true, they were already in conflict with the principles of conduct for MPS identified by the Committee on Standards in Public Life which include selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. With many faults and allegations of corruption, Walpole was appointed by King George I. It is quite extraordinary that the British people actually elected Johnson in the first place.