The End of Morality?

And so it goes on. An emotional Lord Arbuthnot, tireless champion of the sub postmasters, struggling for words on hearing the latest revelations about the Post Office scandal, incredulous that Post Office managers have seemingly lost all sense of morality in pursuit of these people. The Post Office is but one example of how, in recent times, people in positions of power and authority have conducted themselves with a seeming lack of morality.

We have always lived in a dangerous and uncertain world and have been happy to place our trust in our political leaders. But events in recent years have totally eroded our trust in politicians. So we are talking about Tony Blair’s adventures in Iraq, the lie of Brexit, the Conservative party’s fourteen years of power culminating in The Covid crisis and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Across the Atlantic we have of course Donald Trump which would require an article on its own.

Tony Blair had it all going for him until hubris brought him down. Damned by the Chilcot Report he claimed that his decision to go to war was a “hard and agonising decision” yet he had already told Bush that “I will be with you whatever.” According to a 2023 Guardian article “the Iraq war destroyed the UK’s trust in politicians.” Who could argue with that assessment?

It is almost received wisdom now that Brexit was the result of lies and misinformation perpetrated by a bunch of charlatans. People like Rees Mogg, Farage and Cummings, who preyed on the understandable fears and concerns of working people about immigration. This Conservative administration has produced the biggest bunch of incompetents imaginable: Cameron, May, Johnston, Truss, Sunak. “Put these PM’s in order of incompetence.” Sounds like the starting question in Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Look at the individuals involved: Patel, Braverman, the disgraced Peter Bone, Anderson and many others. How did these people get to be in highest offices of the land? Unquestionably the Conservative record on Covid is the most damning of all. Aside from all the unnecessary deaths we had contracts for mates and disappearing billions. The biggest public health crisis since the war was overseen by a Prime Minister totally out of his depth who disgraced his office by his incompetence, his lying and his contempt for the sacrifices of the general public.

Which leads us to the Middle East. And how have our public representatives acquitted themselves here? From Yasmin Alibhai Brown writing in i-News:

“It is in Gaza that the West’s credibility has finally been lost. Governments on our continent and in North America have defied the rule of law, undermined democracy, fundamental freedoms, and betrayed the principles of feminism and anti-racism.”

And the West that Yasmin talks about includes, of course, the UK and to a lesser extent Ireland who continue to allow America access to Shannon airport. Let there be no doubt, some may argue that this is not a genocide, but by God it’s the closest thing to one. Yet the UK government have taken six months to back the UN resolution on Gaza and seem more concerned about restricting civil liberties as a means of restricting protest. Biden, who is running scared of disaffected voters at home, has only now decided to get “tough” with Israel. Not so long ago he was saying “there are no red lines for Israel.” They are all complicit in this vile business.

Returning to the Post Office scandal there are now calls for a police investigation. A draft report uncovered by the BBC shows the Post Office spent £100m fighting sub-postmasters in court despite knowing its defence was untrue. “How could this have happened?” we ask. And the same question could be directed at everything else in this article. Sadly this appears to be the type of world we now live in. A world where a known liar can become Prime Minister, where our government sits idly by watching a genocide unfold and where public servants hound innocent employees to an early grave. If this is the new normal then God help us all.