The great Hypocritic’s oath

Politicians’ fantasies and lies are a far more sinister affliction than their hypocrisy, says tariq ali

Academic fashions change regularly these days, with the campus trying hard to keep up with the culture at large. During the years of the Blair-Clinton love-in, Downing Street's favoured in-house professor, Anthony Giddens, produced a slim volume on 'Intimacy' and was asked to speak about it at a White House seminar where Bill, fresh from the soiled dress fiasco, was interested in the topic.

Cambridge political scientist David Runciman's production, Political Hypocrisy, is a more serious work with interesting, if partial, asides on Machiavelli and Orwell, amongst others. Of the two my favourite is the Secretary to the Council of Florence. He was a serious political philosopher. Orwell was a contrarian journalist, who ended up providing lists of his Communist acquaintances to British Intelligence and was not too upset at Franco winning the civil war. Not to be

regarded as an expert on the hypocrisy of others.

The message of the Runciman book is that hypocrisy and politics are so closely intertwined that it's foolish to pretend or expect otherwise. Sincerity is non-existent in this sphere. This message will, no doubt, be greeted with loud hurrahs in Westminster. Academic absolution at long last for what should never be considered a political sin!

But where does it all start and where will it end? Runciman's logic would accept a homosexual MP voting to restrict gay rights or an MP who had an abortion voting to deny the same right to others. Numerous other examples could be paraded, but why bother? Politics is debased enough these days. Why provide it with more seals of approval?

The real problem, I would have thought, is not so much hypocrisy but the fact that politicians have very little to be hypocritical about. Their beliefs are openly practised - after all, Thatcher-Major-Blair-Brown represent a continuum, with no basic differences in politics or economics or state