Hypocrisy

Everyone with a heart is radical when young; everyone with a brain is conservative when old, goes the adage. Early in his political incarnation, Donald Trump was a democrat but became one of the most right-wing republican presidents. Whether this is proof that he possesses either of the aforementioned bodily organs is moot. 

A more modest ideological shift was performed by a British politician who started out as a Tory and ended as a vocal advocate for Reform UK. But what was most notable about their moral stance was their opposition to abortion coupled with support for capital punishment. No doubt arcane religious arguments could be constructed to reconcile these apparently conflicting views, but to me they illustrate the ability, possibly unique to humans, to blithely occupy two opposing positions simultaneously. 

Examples abound.

A friend is a member of the climate activism group Extinction Rebellion, one of their tenets being opposition to air travel and censuring people who take multiple overseas vacations. Yet visiting children resident outside the UK, they consider adequate reason to flout this edict. An illustration of the principle that one’s own indefensible decisions are characterised as the product of valid reason, but other people’s vilified as evidence of flawed personality. 

I am not immune to similar behaviour. Recently retired to Devon, I claimed the moral high ground by forswearing flights (having spent the previous three decades virtually camped at Heathrow) until I realised there were foreign parts I still wanted to visit. While I acknowledge my inconsistency in that instance, many years earlier, I saw no conflict. Enjoying a picnic with members of the Vegetarian Society (don’t ask, I’ve since repented) I was ostracised as soon as I let slip that I was working at the National Institute for Medical Research, where among other perceived enormities, armadillos were infected with leprosy for medical research purposes.

But that transgression (if such it was) is dwarfed by the one which dominated my professional life. Privately militating against capitalism and all its works, I devoted my career to furthering the profits of the consultancies which employed me, despite eschewing on principle the products and services of many of their clients. But even my bankrupt conscience baulked at working with tobacco clients. It turns out was not alone. Later, as an independent consultant, I was approached (fruitlessly, despite juicy financial inducements) by my former employer to lead a project for Imperial Tobacco because by then no consultants within the organisation would sully themselves with that industry.

Politicians supply the most egregious exemplars of the contrast between principle and practice. In Anthony Trollope’s novel series, The Pallisers, adhering to his principles, the MP Phineas Finn votes against his party on the issue of tenants’ rights and consequently loses his job. But in a later novel, Phineas Redux, he has become more worldly and votes with the party against church disestablishment, despite being personally in favour. He attempts to justify his hypocrisy by pragmatism. Even worse, the whole Liberal party supports disestablishment, but votes against it merely because it has been proposed by the Tories! 

What a pity that comparable behaviour is still in evidence amongst politicians today, legitimised and enforced by whips, and tolerated, while politicians who change their mind for sound reasons when new facts appear are branded as weak rather than thoughtful and considered.