I reached this unorthodox conclusion upon reading that the host of Pienaar’s Politics on Radio 5 commended James Cleverly, MP, for answering his questions honestly.
Honesty is of course a laudable quality — but it’s not a redeeming one. Much depends on what one is honest about.
For example, Jeremy Corbyn (the leader of the Labour Party, for my foreign readers) is widely praised for honestly holding views that, if acted on, would turn Britain into a Greece with bad climate.
Call me a moral relativist, but I’d rather our politicians advocated and executed good policies even if in their hearts of hearts they’d rather destroy Britain with a couple of well-aimed blows. I’d forgive them such hypocrisy.
As I would have forgiven Mr Cleverly for having uttered the usual dishonest platitudes instead of the honest replies he chose to give to the interviewer’s questions.
For example, he was forthcoming about having looked at hard porn on the Internet. Even allowing that such viewing practices resulted only from adolescent curiosity, one wishes he had kept such revelations to himself.
After all, MPs pass laws affecting our lives. In a sense, this is a paternalistic relationship: we are like children whose daily lives are in their parents’ hands. Of course we can vote politicians out, even as a child can run away from home.
But if we choose to stay put, we expect those in a position of authority to convey an image of strength and probity. No son would have much respect for a Dad who sobs every night after work and openly two-times Mum. Decorum matters.
So does taste. Mr Cleverly readily proffered the information that he would love to snog Home Secretary Theresa May and marry Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP, who happens already to be married to another hare-brained politician.
Whatever one thinks of Mrs May’s political performance, it’s hard for anyone with a modicum of taste to see her as a sex object. And even if one’s tastes do run towards middle-aged women with bad dress sense and an overbearing personality, it’s best to keep such preferences private.
This way one is entitled to ask whether Mr Cleverly fantasises about Mrs May or indeed Mrs Balls (the name by which Miss Cooper is known outside Parliament) when watching hard porn — and whether or not he smokes marijuana (which he also admitted to having done) while doing so.
An MP should not make public admissions that wouldn’t necessarily jar only if coming from a pop star, an actor or even some philosophers. They, unlike parliamentarians, represent no one but themselves.
If their listeners are appalled by their pronouncements, they can simply shun their work. Mr Cleverly’s constituents don’t have such an option, at least not until the next election. Neither do the rest of us, those on whose behalf he part-governs the country from the height of his mind, character and morality.
Though he harbours ambitions of becoming a Tory leader one day, one wonders how such an obvious lightweight could ever be elected to Parliament in the first place.
But then one remembers that the chap he defeated was caught sending naked pictures of himself to an undercover journalist. I couldn’t find out whether the targeted hack was male or female, but either way my opinion of politicians didn’t improve much. Nor has Mr Cleverly’s honesty done much to help.
Would it be preposterous to suggest that our modern democracy fails on the most significant desideratum of any political system: elevating to government those fit to govern?
What is so scary about our rulers isn’t their dishonesty, corruption and unbridled egoism but their total lack of any serious substance. One recalls with nostalgic longing such politicians of yesteryear as Messrs Talleyrand, Metternich and Disraeli.
None of them had an honest bone in his body, a skeletal deficiency for which they compensated by possessing statesmen’s mind and character. Our lot today is to applaud chaps who honestly say what they think, revealing how little they really do.