`Untrustworthy and Hypocritical Politicians

 "We have to rebuild faith."

" We have to restore integrity."

One by one, Tory leadership candidates who served under Boris Johnson, are lining up to trot out the same mantra, evoking the crisis of trust in western democracies and their intention to fix it. Am I alone in looking on in a state of disbelief?

Do they think we have forgotten that they are the very people who colluded with Johnson as he lied and broke the law; who defended the indefensible rather than safeguarding the public interest; who used high office to weaken the invisible struts of our system? When Johnson was high in the polls, and they could see on which side their electoral bread was buttered, they did everything they could to conceal and justify wrongdoing.

Zusammenbruch (Collapse)
Ludwig Van Hofmann (1861-1945)
Photo Credit: Leicester Museums and Galleries [CC BY-NC-SA]

... They now claim he was always unsuitable for high office, having strained every sinew to keep him there. 

It is why this prime ministerial defenestration cannot restore trust; how could it? On the contrary, it will add contempt to the collapsing faith in politics. How risible for Suella Braverman to talk about honour; how hypocritical of Rishi Sunak to adopt the patina of integrity. Brandon Lewis? He took the silver pieces for years, enjoying the ministerial driver while threatening to breach the rule of law "in a limited and specific way." Only at the bitter end, as the political edifice was reduced to rubble, did he rediscover his conscience.

... Of the main Tory leadership contenders, only Jeremy Hunt and Tom Tugendhat can hold their heads up high, having refused to serve under Johnson. Almost all the others sniffed the wind and set their sails accordingly.

... As Braverman, Sunak, Liz Truss and others burnish their moral credentials, we should never forget that they backed Johnson until the moment it was in their interests to shaft him. That the public does not trust them is not depressing but rational. It is what happens when politicians are untrustworthy.

(Mattew Syed, The Sunday Times, 2022)

Not a lot more to say. It used to be "complete faith in the prime minister". Now it's "duty" and "integrity". As the old saying goes actions speak louder than words.

... Johnson's lack of personal integrity and attempts to bend rules to protect his chums contributed to an erosion of trust in the government. It is not unreasonable for us to ask our political leaders to abide by standards of probity that most right-thinking people would view as basic. But it is also the case that if the person at the top is perceived to be morally compromised, those in the tiers below feel tempted to follow their example.

(Sunday Times editorial, 2022)

Somewhat more diluted than the previous article in the same paper!

... His defects were not cunningly masked during his ascent to Downing Street. The Tory party was fully acquainted with his biography of dishonesties and scandal when they handed him the keys to number 10 three years ago. They knew who he was. They chose to pawn their party's soul to the electoral devil to give themselves a better shot at winning in 2019 at the cost to the country of awarding the premiership to a man manifestly unsafe with it. However they justified themselves then and subsequently, this makes the party collectively complicit in all the squalor that followed.

... Tory MPs and cheerleaders in the rightwing media continued to sustain him at the apex of power long after there was no room to doubt that he would explore further depths of degeneracy until he was gone.

... He has provided fresh evidence for the wisdom of an old saw. If you put a crown on the head of a clown you do not make him a king. You turn the palace into a circus. What a shabby and shameful carnival it has been.

(Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer, 2022)