“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone”
Jesus Christ, Gospel of St. John 8:2-11
Notwithstanding the old parliamentary adage about ‘being economical with the truth’, there are clearly many in the House of Commons who regard themselves as without sin, and therefore eminently capable of throwing stones.
Our commentary title, The Rise and Fall of Honesty, harks back to an album recorded by Maffitt & Davies in 1968 when Boris Johnson was just four years old, but it also draws on a theme which has plagued humanity for millennia: indeed, Pilate’s final words to Jesus on Good Friday were, ‘What is Truth?’
For those in the public spotlight, reputations often take years to develop, but are vulnerable to instant trashing. The blaze of immediate publicity through the media, both press and social, allows very little time for absorption or correction.
Boris Johnson is the latest in a string of public figures who have recently come to grief: Philip Schofield, former Archbishop John Sentamu and, just recently, City fund manager Crispin Odey, have all suffered very sharp falls from grace.
You might think that it's all men, but you’d be wrong: remember the tragic case of Ruth Perry, the head teacher at Caversham Primary School, whose Ofsted downgrading led to her suicide.
People feel an attack on their reputation very sharply, and even more when its building has been a key part of their professional journey.
The shock of a collapsed reputation needs, however, to be seen alongside other shocks that can cause a calamitous loss of confidence. An unexpected bereavement or some devastating news can also knock us sideways, and invariably it takes time to recover from those shocks.
As the immediate pain starts to numb, it's important to start addressing the problem — not to pretend it doesn't exist. In Boris’s case, he cannot lay all the blame at other people's doors: his cavalier and disorganised approach has contributed to his fall from grace, even if he feels in his heart of hearts that he was telling the truth to the Privileges Committee.
For those who have fallen foul of safeguarding and sexual misconduct issues, they must accept where they have fallen short. The word repentance is drawn directly from the Latin for ‘turning again’ and, just as Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, ‘Neither do I condemn you — go now, and leave your life of sin’, there needs to be that acceptance of where things have gone so badly wrong.
As it says in St. John's first letter, ‘If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness’.
As our opening quotation makes clear, we have all fallen short: our audio podcast ‘Love at the Cutting Edge’ expands on this teaching about listening to our conscience. People with trashed reputations should not, therefore, be cast into outer darkness for the rest of their lives — and that applies as much for Boris as for anyone else.
On 11th July last year, following his resignation as Prime Minister, our commentary was entitled ‘There has to be a role for the unconventional’, and it started with a quotation from Mark Antony’s speech in Act III, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: the very same speech that was quoted in the House of Lords last week.
As we reported then, the catalogue of errors which brought Boris down were so small in comparison with the big issues confronting us — such as the vaccination programme, the invasion of Ukraine and getting Brexit completed: all of which Boris handled at least as well as any other recent Prime Minister would have done.
But it was not those irresponsible parties and personal misjudgments which incurred the wrath of the Privileges Committee — it was the challenge to his honesty.
Nevertheless, I hope he can rise above the feelings of angst and mistreatment that he is clearly now experiencing, and can find his feet again as the ebullient and positive character who led people to vote for him in such huge numbers in late 2019. He must accept his share of responsibility for what has happened, and he must be prepared to overlook the excessively harsh judgement that has been meted out to him.
There does, indeed, have to be a role for the unconventional. For Boris, it may not be in domestic UK politics, but it's unlikely to be just writing articles in the media. In this respect, before deploying grudges in his new column in the Daily Mail, he should think very carefully about how he could make the best contribution to our troubled world: whether it's the environment, conflict between nations, or helping us to find a more equitable way of sharing wealth creation. There is much to be done from a global perspective.
The one thing that he should avoid is to harbour any thoughts of making use of his New York birthplace to run in an American presidential election: not a good idea, they’ve got enough trouble already with Trump. In any case, he would have to live in the United States for another eleven years to qualify for the required fourteen, which might be tricky following his renunciation of American citizenship in 2016.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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