Should we look for personal loyalty in our politicians? Perhaps not
‘Excessive loyalty to one person – Boris Johnson – ultimately made her hugely disloyal to her party’
Loyalty. What place does it have in politics, who owes it to whom, and which loyalties should trump others? This was the true theme of a recent piece of dramatic political news: the, who to the dismay of her colleagues chose at the weekend to trigger a by-election, at a very inconvenient time. This resignation was first and foremost over a perceived failure of personal loyalty. Dorries ultimately resigned over a claim that Boris Johnson, but that Rishi Sunak had then betrayed her by failing to honour it. In her resignation letter she accused Sunak of further disloyalty still – he and his allies were responsible, she said, for the “political assassination of Boris Johnson”, as well as for “targeting” Liz Truss.to his colleagues – to her, or to Johnson, or indeed to Truss.
Take any instance of personal betrayal among politicians and you will find tarnished careers in its wake. Michael Gove is regarded as one of the Tory party’s most effective politicians, yet has found it almost impossible to shake off the “backstabber” label. When he abandoned Johnson at the last minute to make a leadership bid, this was seen not as the sort of typical manoeuvring you might expect from ambitious politicians but as evidence of a major character flaw. It did not play well.
Why? Well perhaps there is an assumption that personal loyalty between politicians is a quality that translates to wider loyalties. A politician who is loyal to his or her colleagues, we seem to think, is generally trustworthy. If you’d betray your friends – what wouldn’t you betray? Your party? Your country?
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