‘How are the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished.’
2 Samuel 1:27
Over this last weekend the media seems to have had no other focus than (Prince) Andrew’s fall from grace. In a sense, that's quite a relief after the horrendous trail of violence which has filled our screens for so long.
However, it's all the worse for Andrew because he has shown so little sense of remorse or contrition for a series of events which have led to someone taking her own life. Grudging acceptance of his fall from grace has multiplied the problem so much, as it seems to imply that there's no sense of conscience: which itself is a challenging feature of humanity for us all, as we wrote about on 6th October.
There are many who have sat on the pedestal of mightiness, only to feel the extent of descent therefrom — even Margaret Thatcher felt the anguish after her intransigence over the poll tax. Former Archbishop Justin Welby also clearly found eating humble pie a very difficult challenge when giving his valedictory speech in the House of Lords in November 2024: there are no exemptions for bishops and priests in this regard.
Meanwhile in business, the extraordinary collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland was due to the unbridled ambition of Fred Goodwin, its Chief Executive from 2001 to 2009: just one amongst so many in commercial life whose power goes to their heads.
Even Donald Trump will have to keep his feet firmly on the ground while he continues to wave his Executive Orders in front of everyone.
Boris Johnson similarly experienced a dramatic fall from grace in 2022, but the same toxic combination of pride and intransigence described above was not quite so explicit in his case. Boris always liked to model himself on Winston Churchill, but his tendency to be economical with the truth was not heavily cloaked in pride, as was the case with some of these earlier examples; instead, he definitely exhibited a degree of unconventionality which was unacceptable in the Westminster village.
I recall writing the Share Radio commentary on 11th July 2022 with the title, ‘There has to be a role for the unconventional’ following Boris Johnson's fall from grace, drawing a comparison with Julius Caesar. One of my favourite extracts from Shakespeare is Mark Antony's eulogy in the wake of Caesar's assassination, and the deep irony in that speech carried a lot of similarities with Boris’s demise; although thank goodness it didn't extend to the same fate as Julius Caesar.
So, hopefully, we’ll be able to move on from talking about (Prince) Andrew over the next few days and concentrate on two significant meetings coming up over the next fortnight.
The first will also be in Rome, the meeting between the new Pope and King Charles: the first such gathering in five hundred years since his predecessor Henry VIII broke away from Roman Catholicism to form the Anglican church. There are now estimated to be over 97 million followers (of which the Church of England accounts for just over a quarter).
Of course, many of the schisms which have torn Christian denominations apart over the past two millennia have shared the experience of irreconcilable pride, and we must hope that Pope Leo and King Charles can now find common ground.
It is this process of walking alongside people and trying to resolve differences which is so critical in not allowing pride to result in all these falls from grace. This has a lot to do with our commentary on 22nd September, ‘Love your enemy’, and it speaks strongly of understanding what servant leadership means.
This leads us to the second significant meeting: the summit in Hungary between Trump and Putin. the one redeeming feature of Donald Trump is his preparedness to meet and talk with people such as Vladimir Putin. He may describe it as making deals, but a key part of this process is to understand the other person’s point of view, however different that may be.
However, all of this is of little consolation for those who have refused to eat humble pie, even when it's completely clear to everyone else that it needs to be done. We all fail at some point or other but, if we refuse to accept that failure, it simply multiplies the damage done — both to ourselves and to others — exponentially.
In a world which seems so keen to exaggerate differences, we must learn how to find reconciliation: and probably the greatest modern example of how to do this was Nelson Mandela, who showed beyond question how to let reconciliation, not pride, govern the way forward.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio