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| A baroness on board … and other lessons in practical hypocrisy A baroness on board … and other lessons in practical hypocrisy | |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| During his decades of backbench vigilance, Jeremy Corbyn was apt to pounce on hypocrisy and its varieties: “rank” and “mealy-mouthed” hypocrisy, cant, and “double standards of the first order”. He once rephrased Disraeli: “The Tory party is a disorganised hypocrisy.” | During his decades of backbench vigilance, Jeremy Corbyn was apt to pounce on hypocrisy and its varieties: “rank” and “mealy-mouthed” hypocrisy, cant, and “double standards of the first order”. He once rephrased Disraeli: “The Tory party is a disorganised hypocrisy.” |
| Inevitably, once party leader, his own consistency would come under scrutiny. Along with his exhortations to dissenting Labour MPs to “come together”, in contrast to his own glorious record in contrariness, Corbyn’s double standards on sugar were duly exposed – by shocked Mumsnet members, who questioned how renunciation of biscuits squared with his dedication to jam. He had also been spotted out and about, as cool as you like, with a hot cross bun. | Inevitably, once party leader, his own consistency would come under scrutiny. Along with his exhortations to dissenting Labour MPs to “come together”, in contrast to his own glorious record in contrariness, Corbyn’s double standards on sugar were duly exposed – by shocked Mumsnet members, who questioned how renunciation of biscuits squared with his dedication to jam. He had also been spotted out and about, as cool as you like, with a hot cross bun. |
| It is with the elevation of Shami Chakrabarti to his shadow cabinet, however, that Corbyn seems to have reached some new accommodation with hypocrisy – one that bears out David Runciman in his study Political Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, Runciman says, is “more or less inevitable in most political settings, and in liberal democratic societies it is practically ubiquitous. No one likes it, but everyone is at it ... ” | It is with the elevation of Shami Chakrabarti to his shadow cabinet, however, that Corbyn seems to have reached some new accommodation with hypocrisy – one that bears out David Runciman in his study Political Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, Runciman says, is “more or less inevitable in most political settings, and in liberal democratic societies it is practically ubiquitous. No one likes it, but everyone is at it ... ” |
| You could see it as a sign of political maturity, even bravery, that the new, more pragmatic Corbyn used David Cameron’s resignation honours list to make Chakrabarti a life peer, knowing how this might disappoint fellow democrats. Supporting a (failed) reform bill in the 1980s, for instance, the young Corbyn condemned, as worse than hereditaries, “the patronage that goes with the makeup of the House of Lords through the appointment of life peers”. | You could see it as a sign of political maturity, even bravery, that the new, more pragmatic Corbyn used David Cameron’s resignation honours list to make Chakrabarti a life peer, knowing how this might disappoint fellow democrats. Supporting a (failed) reform bill in the 1980s, for instance, the young Corbyn condemned, as worse than hereditaries, “the patronage that goes with the makeup of the House of Lords through the appointment of life peers”. |
| Visitors asked him, he said, “Why does your country, which prides itself on being so democratic and having a democratic parliamentary system, allow this ridiculous anachronism to continue?” | Visitors asked him, he said, “Why does your country, which prides itself on being so democratic and having a democratic parliamentary system, allow this ridiculous anachronism to continue?” |
| The answer, in Baroness Chakrabarti’s case, is presumably that the alternative of seeing the place stuffed with yet more Tories warranted the shock to Tom Watson’s system. In comparison with Cameron, who splurged on honours for cronies while still droning about “life chances”, Corbyn’s reversal was far from approaching rank, or even mealy mouthed, on the hypocrisy continuum. And relatively speaking, in a world that is still gagging on the words, “Sir Craig”, Baroness Chakrabarti, for her work on human rights, deserved not so much a life peerage, as immediate canonisation. | The answer, in Baroness Chakrabarti’s case, is presumably that the alternative of seeing the place stuffed with yet more Tories warranted the shock to Tom Watson’s system. In comparison with Cameron, who splurged on honours for cronies while still droning about “life chances”, Corbyn’s reversal was far from approaching rank, or even mealy mouthed, on the hypocrisy continuum. And relatively speaking, in a world that is still gagging on the words, “Sir Craig”, Baroness Chakrabarti, for her work on human rights, deserved not so much a life peerage, as immediate canonisation. |
| Moreover, given Corbyn’s recent recruitment difficulties, the loyal Chakrabarti may have resembled such a glorious cabinet asset that it would have been irresponsible to submit her to a byelection. It is not as though she came up by the flatmate route, like Lord Falconer of Thoroton, a once obscure lawyer friend of Tony Blair’s who became, after acquiring a life peerage, one of the country’s most noted democrats. | Moreover, given Corbyn’s recent recruitment difficulties, the loyal Chakrabarti may have resembled such a glorious cabinet asset that it would have been irresponsible to submit her to a byelection. It is not as though she came up by the flatmate route, like Lord Falconer of Thoroton, a once obscure lawyer friend of Tony Blair’s who became, after acquiring a life peerage, one of the country’s most noted democrats. |
| Corbyn is only following Labour tradition in assuming his supporters won't get too het up about selective schools | Corbyn is only following Labour tradition in assuming his supporters won't get too het up about selective schools |
| In fairness to Falconer, he did attempt to join the legislature by respectable means, by applying for the safe Labour seat of Dudley North, vacated just in time for the 1997 election. That all Falconer’s children were educated at selective private schools, and that Falconer saw no reason to do otherwise, had evidently occurred neither to him, nor to his patron, Blair, as a potential impediment in Dudley, or within the party where David Blunkett had recently said, “Read my lips. No selection by examination or interview”. | In fairness to Falconer, he did attempt to join the legislature by respectable means, by applying for the safe Labour seat of Dudley North, vacated just in time for the 1997 election. That all Falconer’s children were educated at selective private schools, and that Falconer saw no reason to do otherwise, had evidently occurred neither to him, nor to his patron, Blair, as a potential impediment in Dudley, or within the party where David Blunkett had recently said, “Read my lips. No selection by examination or interview”. |
| Historically, admittedly, Falconer-style insouciance was nothing out of the ordinary. When Roy Jenkins told Harold Wilson he could not be education secretary, since his children were in private schools, Wilson reassured him: “So are mine”. | Historically, admittedly, Falconer-style insouciance was nothing out of the ordinary. When Roy Jenkins told Harold Wilson he could not be education secretary, since his children were in private schools, Wilson reassured him: “So are mine”. |
| Corbyn is only following Labour tradition, then, in assuming his supporters will not get too het up about selective schools, or not in relation to hypocrisy in the shadow cabinet. Sophisticated Corbynistas will presumably grasp, if others do not, that his ministers’ struggle to conform, privately, with their party’s official objections to selective schools, only underlines the ethical rigour of Jeremy’s position, as declared at PMQs. | Corbyn is only following Labour tradition, then, in assuming his supporters will not get too het up about selective schools, or not in relation to hypocrisy in the shadow cabinet. Sophisticated Corbynistas will presumably grasp, if others do not, that his ministers’ struggle to conform, privately, with their party’s official objections to selective schools, only underlines the ethical rigour of Jeremy’s position, as declared at PMQs. |
| Again, only a political and moral simpleton would argue that Corbyn’s assertion, “equality of opportunity is not segregating children at the age of 11”, cannot be reconciled with his reliance on Emily Thornberry, the lawyer whose children were segregated at the age of 11 so as to attend Dame Alice Owen’s, a school 14 miles from her home in Islington. By a historical quirk, this hugely oversubscribed school selects, via the 11-plus, around 20 children from Islington who might otherwise be doomed to state education in her own borough. | Again, only a political and moral simpleton would argue that Corbyn’s assertion, “equality of opportunity is not segregating children at the age of 11”, cannot be reconciled with his reliance on Emily Thornberry, the lawyer whose children were segregated at the age of 11 so as to attend Dame Alice Owen’s, a school 14 miles from her home in Islington. By a historical quirk, this hugely oversubscribed school selects, via the 11-plus, around 20 children from Islington who might otherwise be doomed to state education in her own borough. |
| Diane Abbott, equally keen to flee Hackney’s schools, discovered that cultural reasons excused her from the sort of attacks she had previously levelled at Blair and Harriet Harman, as Labour politicians, for wangling their children into selective outfits. After sending her son to the private City of London school, she explained, “I’m a West Indian mum, and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.” | Diane Abbott, equally keen to flee Hackney’s schools, discovered that cultural reasons excused her from the sort of attacks she had previously levelled at Blair and Harriet Harman, as Labour politicians, for wangling their children into selective outfits. After sending her son to the private City of London school, she explained, “I’m a West Indian mum, and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.” |
| One hears much the same thing from those educational tigresses, human rights mums. Interviewed by Robert Peston last week, Chakrabarti correctly anticipated, after she spoke as shadow attorney general about people “deeply scarred” by the 11-plus, that she’d be asked why she volunteered her own child for segregation, in her case to a famous public school. | One hears much the same thing from those educational tigresses, human rights mums. Interviewed by Robert Peston last week, Chakrabarti correctly anticipated, after she spoke as shadow attorney general about people “deeply scarred” by the 11-plus, that she’d be asked why she volunteered her own child for segregation, in her case to a famous public school. |
| If I followed it correctly, her response was that, like living in nice houses and eating good food, 11-pluses are just another thing that privileged people do differently. “Does that make me a hypocrite or ... someone who is trying to do my best, not just for my family but for other people’s families, too?” Well, the former, really, now she’s denouncing all selection – though not, some think, hypocritical on the scale of a human rights lobbyist accepting legislation she once described as a “snooper’s charter”. | If I followed it correctly, her response was that, like living in nice houses and eating good food, 11-pluses are just another thing that privileged people do differently. “Does that make me a hypocrite or ... someone who is trying to do my best, not just for my family but for other people’s families, too?” Well, the former, really, now she’s denouncing all selection – though not, some think, hypocritical on the scale of a human rights lobbyist accepting legislation she once described as a “snooper’s charter”. |
| Educationalists have now lectured Chakrabarti on the impact of her kind of school choices, when the middle classes quit the state system, and also on the vast improvements in London schools since the early days of Blair. But Chakrabarti had another, simpler option, of doing whatever she wanted for her child – and of then not joining a Labour administration. | Educationalists have now lectured Chakrabarti on the impact of her kind of school choices, when the middle classes quit the state system, and also on the vast improvements in London schools since the early days of Blair. But Chakrabarti had another, simpler option, of doing whatever she wanted for her child – and of then not joining a Labour administration. |
| In 2012, long before the invention of Corbyn-bashing, Blair’s former education secretary Lord Adonis said it was “politically bankrupt” for ministers to tinker with the state school system if they were not using it themselves. They should “live and breathe” the same public services as their – where applicable – constituents. “I think it is just outrageous. They don’t have to go into politics, they can go into other careers.” Equally, their superiors can, quite easily, not surround themselves with public service avoiders. | In 2012, long before the invention of Corbyn-bashing, Blair’s former education secretary Lord Adonis said it was “politically bankrupt” for ministers to tinker with the state school system if they were not using it themselves. They should “live and breathe” the same public services as their – where applicable – constituents. “I think it is just outrageous. They don’t have to go into politics, they can go into other careers.” Equally, their superiors can, quite easily, not surround themselves with public service avoiders. |
| To judge by Chakrabarti’s promotion, his choice of spokesman, and the promotion of two other patrons of selective education to shadow two of the great offices of state, Corbyn, for all his reputation for sanctimony, takes a more indulgent view of these escapees. Nobody’s perfect. And maybe there is something to be said, after the years of biscuit-shunning puritanism, for a less judgmental approach from a mortal whose name is practically twinned with “good”. Whether the current hypocrisy amnesty justifies the ceding of that moral high ground is another matter. | To judge by Chakrabarti’s promotion, his choice of spokesman, and the promotion of two other patrons of selective education to shadow two of the great offices of state, Corbyn, for all his reputation for sanctimony, takes a more indulgent view of these escapees. Nobody’s perfect. And maybe there is something to be said, after the years of biscuit-shunning puritanism, for a less judgmental approach from a mortal whose name is practically twinned with “good”. Whether the current hypocrisy amnesty justifies the ceding of that moral high ground is another matter. |