Hain and golf club morality

The Times and Devil’s Kitchen both point out the absurdity that being merely incompetent should be a reason for Peter Hain to keep his job. What they don’t point out is that this is the consequence of our politics being dominated by a rule-based rather than virtue-based morality.
The test of whether a minister should keep his job is: has he followed the rules? It‘s not: has he behaved with dignity and excellence? This test is unthinkingly buttressed by a media obsessed with tittle-tattle, as Mr Staines’ latest outing (about 22 min in) demonstrates.
The problem is that there can be trade-off between the two standards.  In some cases, rules can stop people behaving excellently, as the cases of Paul Waugh and Jordan Lyon show.  But also, a concern to follow rules and keep one’s nose clean breeds a prissy pedantic obsession with mindless regulations that preclude any attempt at excellence. I can imagine a better man than Hain running into the trouble he’s had and replying: “I didn’t bother to register these donations because I’ve got better things to do than count beans and fill in forms. No man of honour and dignity worries much about money anyway.”  This, I believe, was Enoch Powell’s attitude to the register of MPs’ interests.
But this attitude has been killed off by the rule-based morality. The upshot is that our politicians (and increasingly all of us) are now judged by the standards of the golf club. It is quite acceptable to be a pompous priggish racist mediocre little bore, just as long as you obey the dress code - even if this does make you look like an idiot to all right-thinking people.
In allowing the merely “incompetent” Hain to keep his job, Brown is showing the logical consequence of this attitude - it allows a man to cling onto a well-paid job even if he is utterly devoid of merit. If Brown knew what he was doing here, I’d cheer him.   

Comments

[reason]

Rules are for the guidance of wise men, and the obedience of fools?

[Kids Parties NJ]

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