Fury as Johnson changes tack over resignation

Are we all hypocrites? Today Boris Johnson is accused of rewriting history by first standing with health secretary Matt Hancock – and then suggesting that he intervened to force him out. "It was a crass error of judgment to cling on to Hancock as health supremo for a single moment. And it was a contemptuous insult to the voters who put him in office to insist 'the matter is closed'". So wrote the veteran political commentator Trevor Kavanagh yesterday morning. By the end of the day, it seemed that even Johnson himself agreed. In a television interview, Johnson suggested that he had in fact intervened in pushing Hancock out. Even as his replacement, Sajid Javid, gets stuck into the job, many are still scandalised by Hancock’s behaviour. For more than a year, he imposed lockdown restrictions that prevented people from seeing loved ones – friends, partners, family members – who lived in different households. Yet it now turns out that at the same time he was breaking his own restrictions by having an affair with his adviser, Gina Coladangelo. And Hancock’s critics argue that his hypocrisy was doubled because he had previously called for other public officials who broke lockdown rules, like Professor Neil Ferguson, to resign. Some argue that Hancock’s actions have exposed a shameful hypocrisy across the entire government. But others argue that a bit of hypocrisy can be good for us. It has not always been seen as an inherently bad thing. Plato argued that to maintain the stability of society it was often necessary for elites to tell ordinary people a 'noble lie' that would keep them in check. Later, Niccolo Machiavelli argued that political life is impossible without hypocrisy since political aims will often require us to lie and deceive others. He wrote that a good ruler must be hypocritical if they are to create a powerful state. Another famous philosopher, Voltaire, was accused of hypocrisy for arguing in favour of human liberty while acting as a propagandist for the repressive regime of Empress Catherine the Great in Russia. Nonetheless, it was partly thanks to the influence of the Russian empress that his ideas became so widely known. They ultimately inspired the French Revolution, which ushered in the democratic age. His hypocrisy, as it turned out, led to progress. Some, meanwhile, think Hancock’s critics are themselves being hypocritical. They argue that many of his opponents in the right-wing press and amongst Conservative MPs do not really care about his affair. Instead, they claim, Hancock became a target because he has been a leading voice in favour of maintaining lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of Covid-19. Many on the right want to see these restrictions lifted further and faster. Getting rid of Hancock has tilted the balance in Cabinet towards a quicker reopening. Are we all hypocrites? Hypo-crisis Yes, say some. Real life is a messy business. Most of us commit small acts of hypocrisy almost every day: we tell white lies, we break minor rules that we would prefer others to obey, and we get annoyed at them doing things that we excuse for ourselves. If we really did tell the truth and act according to our principles all the time, we would end up fighting with everyone we care about. Not at all, say others. There is a world of difference between the tiny compromises we all make and a politician banning us from seeing relatives while canoodling with his staff. We can accept that we live in an imperfect world while still demanding that those who claim to be good enough to order us around should personally abide by the very highest moral standards of conduct. KeywordsVoltaire - A French enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher known for his criticism of Christianity and slavery.