What have the now former chair of the BBC, the Labour veteran Diane Abbott and the ousted chancellor Nadhim Zahawi all got in common? Indeed, what do they share with Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Matt Hancock?
The answer is that they have all been accused of things that so upset people as to cause them to lose or risk losing their jobs. Failing to disclose having facilitated a loan, enjoying an unwise liaison, holding a contentious opinion: the misbehaviour in question varies, but all was deemed sufficiently significant to risk ruining their reputations or future careers – or at least for their organisations to be under pressure to see them depart to appease its critics.
I will say nothing in their defence. All seem “guilty as charged” and I am happy for them to be told so to their faces. They broke the subtle web of acceptability we now weave around those in power, potentially trapping them at every turn. Perhaps Zahawi entered his income in the wrong tax column. Perhaps the BBC’s Richard Sharp should have told some committee he was a buddy of Johnson. Certainly, in any job, however much you may like your colleagues, it is advisable not to have sex with them.
But do the punishments fit the crime? Is Abbott’s explosive letter to the Observer enough to bring a distinguished career to a shameful end? If Hancock was qualified to be health minister, was the (presumably illegal) leaking of security pictures of a private embrace sufficient to wipe that qualification?
Break the law of the land and the law stipulates you can hope for a fair trial, due punishment and hope of rehabilitation. We no longer flog or deport those convicted of stealing rabbits, or shut them in stocks and pelt them with rotten vegetables. Yet that is the equivalent of what we often do to those whose behaviour or views are deemed “unacceptable”.
The people listed above were – with exceptions – perfectly good at their jobs. Some blurted out public apologies for what they said or did, but these are swept aside by the media as admissions of guilt. Investigators are hauled in to conduct private trials in murky Whitehall attics in a desperate attempt to appease the mob.
The crime of partying during lockdown of which Johnson and Rishi Sunak were accused – and for which their officials were primarily responsible – was reported to the police, judged and punished with a fixed penalty fine and much humiliating publicity. Justice was done.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s tangential offence of misleading parliament has beaten the Congress of Vienna for longevity. It has become a two-year festival of political retribution. Johnson has already lost the top job in the land. Now he is to be threatened with the end of his political career. I can think of a host of reasons why he should never again be allowed near public office, but telling a fib about an illicit party is not one of them.
The answer, of course, is that needs must. Intolerance of minor faults in those who rule us is the price we pay for being unable to get accountability for major ones. The Tory party this week permanently expelled its MP Andrew Bridgen for idiotically comparing the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust, and its former deputy whip Chris Pincher declared he won’t be standing at the next election after last year’s allegations of groping.
Labour has likewise banished Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone amid accusations of antisemitism. Yet not a day passes without news of politicians and other public figures committing some gross incompetence. This week, a Commons committee heard of the effective collapse of HS2’s £4.8bn Euston terminus without batting an eyelid. No one apparently is responsible.
No one has been condemned, let alone sacked, for the continuing refusal properly to compensate the victims of the Post Office computer scandal or the contaminated blood scandal. Likewise, no one has to answer for the ongoing pollution of rivers in England or corrupt PPE contracts. Ministers always “move on” and out of range. Justice for the Grenfell Tower tragedy is delegated to a reenactment on the stage.
This failure is ultimately derived from our polarised politics, which seems unable to tolerate unconventional opinions or behaviour, even from those who apologise for them. The weekly fight between Sunak and Keir Starmer across the dispatch box has become excruciating. Two apparently decent and reasonable men are forced to strip naked and scream at each other. Intelligent democratic accountability is lost in a swirl of charge and counter-charge. Tabloid politics demands blood.
When politicians and others in public life make it hard for us to hold them to account for major failures in government, the temptation is inevitable. We will hold them to account for minor failures of their own. We should be getting angry about what matters.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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