Standards in Public Life - is there any hope left?

Courtesy of NALC, I've received notification that The Committee on Standards in Public Life is carrying out a landscape review of the institutions, processes and structures in place to support high standards of conduct.

The cynics amongst us might suggest that the only way to ensure high standards of conduct in some quarters would require an electric cattle prod, especially given the increasing tendency for some politicians to simply lie on the basis that, if you lie with sufficient conviction and consistency, enough people will fall for it, or want to believe it, you can win. And, you might argue, the Brexit referendum proved that they might have a point.

Let's not get carried away though, there were some ludicrously outlandish things said by some of those campaigning to remain. On the whole, though, it required some pretty heroic assumptions for most of the promises by Leave campaigners to come close to accuracy.

I have to admit that my concerns are not really about the institutions, processes and structures, however. Mine are about consequences and punishments. The rewards for breaking the written and unwritten rules of behaviour in public life now far exceed the potential punishments and thus create an incentive to bend and even break those rules. There seems to be an increasing acceptance that the ends justify the means, whereby if you win, your side will cry justification of the tactics even if they would condemn anyone else behaving similarly.

The public and the media don't help themselves either. If you believe that those in public life should adhere to certain standards, that involves calling out those who fall short and withholding your vote from those who deliberately err.

And the problem with all of this is that it leads to politics like those of the United States, where no lie is too great, no slander too outlandish, and polarisation is almost complete. As a Liberal Democrat, that offers particular dangers, but regardless of your party politics, you should be concerned if large minorities oppose each other with little common ground.

The politics of change requires either a degree of consensus or dictatorial power. At the moment, in an era of Brexit and culture wars, we appear not to have much consensus, and whilst I still don't believe that the Conservatives believe in a one-party state, their behaviour points towards sleep-walking towards one, as they undermine key pillars of liberal democracy.

An independent Civil Service, neutral bodies to oversee elections, transparency in awarding public sector contracts, all of these appear to conflict with the Conservative Party's desire to get on with things or, perhaps more accurately, Dominic Cummings's desire to tear everything down. And yet, all of these things, and many more, protect the citizenry from the power of an overmighty state, something Conservatives have traditionally sought, for fear of what an opposition party might do in government.

Because, once you lose those restraints, they are very hard to re-establish, and even if your intentions truly are pure and just, the other side's motives might not as much so. The written and unwritten rules of behaviour in public life protect politicians too, not just society. So, perhaps W S Gilbert had the right idea about how to maintain standards in public life when he wrote "The Mikado"...

My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime;