No 247 – Conscience, The Ministerial Code and Imperial Weights and Measures.

Dear James,

Do you have a conscience? Conscience is a word deriving from Middle English meaning ‘inner thoughts’ and, more recently, to be a person’s sense of moral right and wrong. Freud defined three levels of awareness, the Id (basic instincts), the Ego (sense of self ) and the Superego, (conscience) which implied that conscience was the most advanced sort of awareness. It’s the place where each of us is expected to balance right and wrong according to the dictates of our innermost beings and, by implication, by ignoring the opposing dictates of personal advantage. 

Boris Johnson and most of your current Tory MPs James, seem to be absolutely impervious to such a concept. There is nothing ‘super’ about Boris’s ‘superego’ because it simply doesn’t exist. Boris Johnson is all instinct and self and has no concept of higher standards in the interests of the all. On Friday it was announced that he has rewritten the Ministerial Code of Conduct. Such a decision can only come from Freud’s first and second and levels of consciousness, the Id and the Ego. Boris’s instinct for the survival of self has gone into overdrive. He is desperate to save his own skin!.

The Ministerial Code sets out the standards and rules of behavior for Ministers of the Crown. Missing from Boris’s ‘improved version’ is the opening paragraph of earlier versions, stating that Ministers should abide by the values of integrity, honesty, transparency and accountability at all times and should any of these be transgressed, the offender would be expected to resign. Instead Ministers would now be asked to apologize or temporarily lose pay. To add insult to injury Johnson blocked Christopher Geidt, his independent ethics adviser, from being allowed to launch his own investigations into alleged wrong doings.

But the reduction of the Ministerial Code to the status of a 'Permission to Misbehave' without fear of serious sanction, was only one of the crazed measures that Boris enacted last week. He also announced that he had decided to reintroduce the imperial system of weights and measures. This exercise in nostalgic flag waving is almost too ludicrous to believe. The added paperwork and confusion it would cause would add to the already mounting costs of Brexit. Yet another appalling misjudgment amongst many!

Peter Hennessy, the political historian, once described our constitution as being based upon the ‘Good Chap’ theory of government whereby inner codes of good conduct dictate the good behaviour of officials and politicians. This, he suggests, has been blown out of the water in recent years by the likes of Johnson. Today we need a new theory to counter the current ‘Bad Chap’ process of government by introducing stronger laws to constrain those bad actors and to prevent the rules of Boris’s notorious Bullingdon Club - where ‘anything that you can get away with’ reigns.  The revelations of Sue Gray’s Report last week told us all we need to know about the Downing Street culture over which Boris presides. ‘Booze parties’, vomit on the carpet, ‘Wine Fridays’, abuse of staff who tried to intervene and the occasional fisticuffs between the party goers  had all become standard  behaviours in Boris’s government. I and much of Britain are ashamed of our government James. And well, we should be. Boris Johnson is a man without conscience, unfit for office and a stain on the political history of our nation. He has done lasting damage to our government institutions and our standing in the world. The sooner he goes, the better.

So back to you, James. Do you have a conscience? From the outside the signs are not good. You persist in propping up Boris and, as far as I know, you’ve not once voted against the government line in any matter. You seem to be the perfect ‘placeman’. Is there no chance that, for once, you can find that inner self and vote for honesty and accountability over and above your desperate need to keep your job? Just a question!

BH – Your Concerned Constituent