Morality matters
Posted 10.30am UK time
Are there any conservatives left who will publicly state that morality matters?
Following recent gossip about ‘Boris’ Johnson’s ‘love’ life, a number of right-wing columnists have written that the PM’s philandering ‘doesn’t really make a difference’ (Rod Liddle, Sunday Times), that virtue doesn’t matter in such a position, and that Johnson ‘looks positively saintly’ compared to some of our past PMs anyway (Dominic Sandbrook, UnHerd).
Even if more commentators took the opposite view, I doubt the papers would publish them. The Mail, Times and Telegraph are about all that conservatives have left in the world of journalism, and they’ve all gone to the dogs. Why, for example, should the Telegraph even have a section with all this… nonsense:
Not to mention the Mail’s schoolboy-like ‘sidebar of shame’!
That’s not to say that every paper should be filled with editorials about how flawed or dishonest the PM is – the same arguments could be made (though, admittedly, to lesser degrees) about all of us. But surely the point should be put to print that Johnson’s actions prove he is anything but conservative.
Hitchens put it well following the Tory election win in 2019:
Mr Johnson’s mind is not conservative. He is a North London bohemian, a social liberal who can barely understand the arguments for lifelong marriage.
He might not understand the arguments for lifelong marriage, but he (and the party he represents) touts the importance of the family at every election.
His lax moral life acts, in this sense, as an indication of ‘Boris’s’ anti-conservative nature more generally. His approach to, say, patriotism mirrors that to morality. He speaks of its importance, stands in front of the flag, and even urges us to ‘buy British’, yet at the same time sees no problem with globalised free trade and uncontrolled borders.
So even if society is to insist that morality itself doesn’t matter, it can at the least be used – in extreme circumstances such as this one – as a window into the mind – a conservative litmus test. On this basis, ‘Boris’ fails.
