Why you should never trust a journalist.

There has, quite rightly, been criticism of New Statesman Deputy Editor, George Eaton for his hatchet job on conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton.

The 75-year-old Roger Scruton gave his candor and trust to George Eaton because he is deputy editor of the New Statesman. Eaton used those civilized and liberal instincts against Scruton, dishonestly edited his remarks in order to smear Scruton as fearful and bigoted toward Chinese people in order to drum up a mini-Twitter outrage, and got him fired from an honorary position, in which he was advising the government on how to build more beautiful housing.

This is seen as an example of today's politics filled as it is with what Scruton called "this store of malice" but I've a feeling that, for all the criticism of Eaton, he have merely behaved as many journalists have always behaved. What Eaton got was a scalp and it doesn't matter how disingenuous he was or how he cherry picked phrases and twisted words, he brought the man down. And the plaudits he'll get from fellow journalists are like the 'expert pundit' in a football commentary applauding the professional foul, the bad behaviour is excused because it was justified by the game.

So my advice to every budding politician is never, not under any circumstances, trust a journalist. It doesn't matter how many drinks they buy you, how often they write or say nice things about you, if they've a chance to kill your career they will. I learned this the hard way...

When I was hauled, for the second time, before the Standards Board for England, I made the mistake of trusting a Yorkshire Post journalist. I was there because I'd been loud and rude to a Labour councillor. For some reason the officious investigators down in London decided this was a really bad thing so they'd have a tribunal - including paying thousands of pounds to ship a barrister up from London. There's me, in bits and pieces supported only by my wife, facing the Standards Board's investigating officer, a London solicitor and a barrister. This barrister read out, in the manner of these creatures, the bad words I was accused of saying - "didn't you say (lots of swear words)" to which I replied, "I don't remember my words, I was loud and rude".

The journalist promised me after they'd found me guilty but let me walk, that he'd fairly put my side of the story. He didn't, he just wrote down all the rude words and the editor plonked an unpleasant headline on the top.

Another time, I went to the leaving do for Olwyn Vasey who had been the Telegraph & Argus City Hall reporter. Most at the do were journalists and, at one point, the head of news at the paper stood up and said the sort of thing you'd expect - well done folks, you've been great, some super stories. Only then this journalist - not appreciating that I was there - talked about the highlight of the news year for them was getting me sacked (long story and I won't bore you with the details excpet to say I'd done nothing worthy of sacking). Think about this for a moment, celebrating forcing someone out of their job because it gets you a great front page.

I could give you other examples - journalists who made stuff up because they hadn't seen what someone else said they'd seen, stories created by getting a couple of friends to castigate someone on Twitter then reporting the outrage. I'm not saying journalists are any nastier than the rest of us, just that they are not your friend. So treat everything you say to them as on the record, always behave professionally, stick to facts, and remember that they are judged by the story - for some, as George Eaton shows, this doesn't make for decency or trustworthiness.

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Big government is a substitute for trust not the means to achieve it.

People don't trust government. That government is pretty bad at nearly everything it does. Politicians and officials are at best venal and at worst corrupt. Yet government goes on getting bigger. Go figure?

Nick Gillespie reports on how there has been an almost complete collapse in people's trust of the US government:

In 1964, according to Pew Research Center, 77 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that they "can trust the government in Washington always or most of the time." By 2015, that figure stood at just 19 percent.

Gillespie sets out how scandal played its part:

But the most powerful reasons for collapsing trust in government are surely the actions of government. Consider even a smattering of revelations and developments going back to the late '60s. The U.S. failure in Vietnam was bad enough on its own, but the Pentagon Papers, a secret report commissioned by the Defense Department that concluded our involvement was doomed from the start, revealed a government that was incompetent at best and duplicitous at worst. The Watergate scandal and revelations of widespread corruption in the Nixon White House led to the unprecedented resignation of a president who had won re-election by the largest Electoral College margin up to that point in history. (What suckers we were, giving a crook 61 percent of the vote!) High-profile government commissions issued reports showing that intelligence agencies and the military had engaged in illegal surveillance of American citizens and tested would-be mind-control drugs on unsuspecting soldiers and civilians.

Political corruption sits alongside government institutions having an almost complete disdain for the public to the point where they considers it entirely justified to simply lie to the public. Gillespie skims through the most egregious US examples and wonders why, despite government's abject failure it has continued to grow ever larger and to stick its grubby fingers into ever more aspects of folks' lives. And, with almost sublime irony, the loss of trust is the reason why people turn to government for protection even though they know it is "...at best incompetent and at worst corrupt".

Things are a little better here in the UK but, like the USA, we have lost trust in the fundamental institutions of society. We mistrust parliament, consider government essentially incompetent and are cynical about central social institutions like marriage, church and business. Yet no politician is asking how we might restore trust and confidence - in each other and in society as a whole. This is a moral mission rather than something resolvable through a policy platform and, as such, it sits uneasily with the now dominant utilitarian approach - moral leadership isn't about "evidence-based policy" but about helping people to recognise why trust is so important.

All our current approach to government and politics does is to provide new sets of rules - often in the form of bans and taxes - intended to manipulate public behaviour and to prevent the negative affects of mistrust from being realised. So the lack of trust becomes embedded - government doesn't trust people (and is entirely comfortable with not telling the whole truth) and creates an environment where mistrust is seen as normal. Yet lack of trust makes doing business harder, acts as a drag on economic growth, and rewards those who would hobble choice and opportunity while casting out those who would liberate people from such tyranny.

Gillespie concludes that we need "...policies that increase local control and individual autonomy..." - what we in the UK would call devolution and I think this to be the right place to start. Our obsession with sameness, with avoiding the postcode lottery, has pretty much destroyed the autonomy of local communities and the most approachable and accountable politicians - local councillors - have been reduced to powerless caseworkers through centralisation, local government reform and intervention-based inspection systems.

There's a tendency to see libertarian ideas as a sort of crash capitalism but perhaps we should look to voluntarism as a way through the sickening darkness of a trust-free society:

That means more work is needed putting together serious, detailed policy plans that give more autonomy to individuals and communities; highlighting examples of markets and voluntary organizations succeeding in building trust, self-regulation, and common purpose; and appealing to a broad, positive vision of a strictly limited government whose goals revolve around ensuring basic fairness, equality of opportunity, continued economic growth, and rising living standards.

Everywhere we look we find examples of voluntary action - whether for profit or for reasons of charity or community spirit - that provide this common purpose. Those ideas of mutuality, commonweal and co-operation that created so much good in the 19th century need refinding and reimagining. Whether it's free schools or new mutual financial institutions, these sorts of bodies provide approachable, accountable services to a defined community or a specific neighbourhood. And, at the heart of such organisations' mission is always the idea that most of the time you really can trust your neighbour.

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Yes politics is broken but the Independent Group don't want to fix it.

I've a feeling this should be headed "how is politics broken?" but I've chosen the headline from The Independent Group's shiny website as my text:

To change our broken politics, we need a different culture. The Independent Group aims to reach across outdated divides and tackle Britain’s problems together.

So what do they - the TIGs - actually mean by "politcs is broken"? Sadly they don't explain in their statement, preferring instead a list of broad brush statements designed to make nice noises rather than define a programme for a better politics. I guess the nearest statement of the new groups ideological position is this:

Our aim is to pursue policies that are evidence-based, not led by ideology, taking a long-term perspective to the challenges of the 21st century in the national interest, rather than locked in the old politics of the 20th century in the party’s interests.

Working with the slightly clunky English, I assume the last part is a suggestion that 20th century politics was all about "party interests" rather than "national interest" (an interestingly populist position that I'm sure Matteo Salvini, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump would endorse). We are, however, no closer to understanding just how British politics is 'broken'. Or indeed what needs to change to fix it.

And the stuff about 'evidence-based' not ideological - a sort of utilitarian wet dream - fails to explain what you do when evidence tells you to do something unpopular (reduce immigration controls, abolish tariffs, build roads not railways). Indeed this utilitarian statement is deeply ideological - there's no room for democracy, for risk or for taking a punt, if the computer says "yes", we do it.

As it happens I do think our politics is badly damaged and that what we see from the populists - right and left - reflects how people are responding to this damage. The creation of this new independent group - whether it grows into a different party or remains a club of independents - probably doesn't get anywhere close to fixing the problem. The set of bland statements from the group simply doesn't deal with the disconnection between government and the governed that is at the heart of our problems:

The Trust deficit in our core institutions -government, business, media and NGOs -between the Mass and the Informed public has never been bigger. In the UK only 40 per cent of the Mass public say they trust in institutions, compared to 64 per cent of the Informed public –a record breaking 24 percentage point gap –the biggest of any of the 27 country’s we survey. By comparison the gap in Donald Trump’s America is 13 percentage points.

This is from Edelman's Annual Trust Barometer and shows that the British public, wherever they sit in the ideological spectrum, have lost most of their confidence and trust in politics. And out in that real world we will hear how this is described - when one of the broadcasters ventured out of London they heard MPs described as children, politicians as useless, and our political leaderships as incompetent (they didn't ask about the media or they'd have heard a similar set of sentiments). All of this is, in part, about Brexit and the endless circling round a decision (in the hopes it will go away, I fear) but it goes deeper. The Edelman survey shows how people feel unrepresented, unable to voice their fears and concerns, are often angry, and that this sense is strongest among the mass of the population.

This collapse in trust - in government, in politics, in the media - describes how our democracy is damaged. It isn't a democracy if people feel that, whatever action they take, it will either be ignored or worse that they'll be told they are wrong and that the elite - who, of course, mostly trust the institutions they control - know better what is good for people. At the same time the way in which public services are supposed to serve communities becomes compromised - firstly by the 'one-size-fits-all' approach of centralised government and then by the capture of public services by producer interests. "Members of the community", as many public employees patronisingly call regular folk, see their services - police, NHS, councils - as obsessed with matters of identity, political correctness and PR rather than the day job of providing communities with services.

People are told they don't understand when they complain about the lack of police response to burglary or bad driving especially when they point to hundreds of coppers seemingly trawling through the internet looking for rude things on Twitter. Folk get frustrated when they see unaccountable NHS boards dodging responsibility for bad management and poor decision-making. And parents see dealing with the school or college as a battle against often barely comprehensible bureaucracy rather than a partnership dedicated to the interests of the child.

Worse still and too often, the response of the authorities to challenge - angry, irritated challenge on occasion - is to throw the diversity book: racism, misogyny, transphobia, islamophobia. Add to this a desire of some to micromanage every aspect of people's behaviour - drinking, smoking, cream cakes, burgers, salt, sugar and snacks - and we have a bureaucracy, directed by an out-of-touch elite, that has misplaced priorities and a condescending, sneering attitude to the genuine worries of those people Edelman's survey calls "the mass".

So, yes, our politics is broken but the fix isn't down in Westminster. The fix isn't about who likes who in parliament, about a new set of mates for a bunch of grand MPs. The fix is about restoring trust in our institutions - courts, police, parliament, NHS. The fix is about seeing democracy as giving ordinary people - not MPs - power over the things government does that affect their lives. The fix is about accountability, about allowing people the right to be angry with government without fear of the diversity police or the sound of doors to decision-makers being slammed by their gatekeepers.

None of this is on offer from the first eleven defecting MPs. They only offer an elitist - "the experts will tell us what to do and we'll do it" - approach to government. And they don't want to get your endorsement for their plans - "Sarah Wollaston calling for second referendum whilst seemingly refusing to stand in a by-election herself. This is why people despise some politicians", was one comment.  These people fear democracy and want the certainty of a system where the vagaries of voter choice don't affect their careers or power. This is not changing politics, it's more of the same just in a different bottle with a different badge.

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Quote of the day - on the loss of trust in government

We are seeing this play out in places other than the USA - here in Britain, in France, Spain and Germany - levels of trust in government have falled significantly. And the driver may simply be bad government and the manner in which the media reports government:

Starting with the Vietnam War and Watergate, a series of governmental actions served to diminish public trust. Bad behavior by elected officials—including the Clinton impeachment, after the President was accused of lying under oath; the Iraq War, which turned out to have been launched under false assumptions; a failure to defend against foreign interference in elections; and the gridlock that seems to have dominated U.S. political processes in recent years—provided ample grounds for Americans to doubt the effectiveness of their government. And news media that emphasize conflict, scandal and dysfunction could well be contributing to the loss of trust.

You could each write your own list of government's failings and they can apply from the supranational (the capture of the WTO by activists and pharma-funded lobbyists, the corruption of EU decisions around everything from olive oil subsidies to vaping, and the use of UN rapporteurs as political tools) right dow the the local city council (dodgy planning decisions, direction of money to pet schemes, the protection of union interests over services).

Quite how you resolve this is unclear - the Knight Foundation from where that quote comes have, with the Aspen Institute has a valient stab at what might be done through improving journalism, better citizenship education, more open and robust protections online and some work to reduce 'filter bubbles'. But what's missing is what, for me, is the central challenge. Our politicians really aren't good enough, have sub-contracted leadership and administration to the unelected preferring instead the soundbite, the virtue-signally but pointless political initiative and an endless round of carefully staged media events.

The Brexit shambles - lack of planning, endless posturing, personal vendettas, tactical policy positioning purely for party or factional advantage - sums up, for me, this problem. Quite how we get better politicians I'm not sure but boy do we need them.

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No leadership, childishness and deception - how MPs are destroying the trust that's central to democracy

Trust. That's it, the central, essential requirement for democracy to work. People have to trust that their friends and neighbours will behave responsibly and that the people who we send to parliament as our representatives will do, more or less, what they said they'll do. I know, I know, I can hear you: "Simon, what are you drinking, people never trust politicians...": or words to that effect. I suspect, however, that this probably ain't so - there's always been a loud minority who thought politicians were selfish, on the take, charlatans but most people, if they ever gave the matter thought, saw politicians as grand but essentially decent folk.

Yesterday I concluded that we're pretty close to the point where this trust, always a fragile thing, collapses. Three things led me there - watching "Brexit: the uncivil war", seeing interviews with Harlow residents on Sky News and reading Dominic Grieves 2017 election statement. And before we start this isn't about Brexit right or wrong but about whether the people feel able to affect change in a democracy - can trust those they elect to respect how they vote.

I won't go into a whole review of "Brexit: the uncivil war" - suffice it to say that I enjoyed it but felt it was (other than a truly dire scene supposedly set in Jaywick - it's always Jaywick isn't it) too focused on the battle between teams of Westminster insiders rather than on an amazing campaign mostly conducted by regular voters without reference to politicians. It was also spoiled by a silly bit of text at the end suggesting the leave campaign did something evil and malign (it didn't).

Anyway, the important bit isn't the accuracy or otherwise of the drama but the final minutes set in a future inquiry where Dominic Cummings played by Benedict Cumberbatch rants about how nobody had the intelligence, initiative or aspiration to take hold of the 2016 vote and shape it into a real change for Britain. The Cummings character, close to camera, says that a vote to change how we did politics was seen as just something to be managed within the existing political culture. Politicians - leave and remain - were unable to grasp that voters, including scruffy ones in ramshackle shacks by the Essex seaside, were telling us the way we do politics needs to change and that maybe we'd get better government if we paid them some actual attention.

Meanwhile, Sky News had toddled off to Harlow - Essex again as it's not too inconvenient as they can get back to West London to take Jocasta to dance class - where they did vox pops with voters. Sophie Ridge, the presenter, shared clips on social media and these told the same tale as we heard from that end piece in "Brexit: the uncivil war". Politicians are useless buffoons, they need to get on with the job and stop behaving like children. And (trust me on this one) this sentiment is repeated everywhere by leave and remain voters alike. It's accompanied by a growing view that, not only will Brexit not happen but that people will have less power in future because they had the audacity to vote for something their lords and masters didn't want.

Yet despite this, MPs have, time and time again, voted (by slim majorities admittedly) to stop any resolution to Brexit that didn't conform to their view - incidentally, given they are mostly remain supporters, a view that is directly contradictory to the way the majority of the people voted. Every possible variant of legal and procedural sophistry has been employed, all with the intent of stopping the government from implementing the result of the 2016 referendum. And this brings me to the third thing from yesterday because it features Dominic Grieve, one of the leading confounders of that democratic vote in June 2016. There are plenty of others to choose from but I happened to read what Grieve had said to his electorate in the 2017 General Election - here's a chunk:

As someone who has always advocated a close relationship between the UK and the European Union, I accept the result of the 2016 Referendum. I therefore strongly support the Prime Minister’s determination to secure a negotiated arrangement for leaving the EU and for forging a new trading relationship for the future, providing certainty for trade and business whilst giving us control of migration and releasing us from the direct effect of EU Law. I also believe that the people of our country will benefit from a close continuing relationship with a strong EU and I will work to help build these important links for our future. I very much hope, therefore, that the Prime Minister will be able to achieve something close to the goals she set out in her speech at Lancaster House in February.

I challenge anyone to find in this, or indeed in the rest of Grieve's message, anything that justifies how he has behaved in parliament since that election. The address in question - especially given how clear the Conservative manifesto was on the matter - is a colossal act of deception because, as subsequent events have shown, Grieve had every intention of spending the forthcoming parliament manipulating rules and procedures to try and prevent Brexit.

These three examples all speak to the relationship between the electorate and their representatives with the public justifiably exasperated by what's gone on, irritated by the childishness of MPs (and their friends in the mainstream media) and desperate for somebody to grasp the opportunity of reframing the relationship between voter and politician in favour of the voter and away from the tribal elites in the Westminster bubble.

As I said at the start, trust is central to democracy. It seems that, unless something dramatic happens pretty soon, politicians in Westminster, by repeatedly ignoring voters concerns and interests, will finally have lost the last vestiges of respect as well as the public's trust. What will happen at this point isn't clear - I'm not expecting thousands to take to the streets as they have in France but I do expect a new sort of politician - blunt, cynical and populist - to arrive. And the first place they'll arrive is in local Conservative associations.

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Trust the people doesn't mean the people are right, it means that people can be trusted

Lack of trust is a major barrier to making civic life more meaningful and inclusive. Although the majority of Interested Bystanders described civic engagement as being actively involved and present in one’s community, there was a large distrust of and lack of attachment to local community and government, which deters engagement.

This is one of the headline findings from research done by the Knight Foundation in Charlotte, North Carolina and it reinforces the challenges in marginal and deprived communities where levels of trust in community institutions and public sector agencies is much lower. The term 'Interested Bystanders' refers to residents who are interested in what's happening in their community by not engaged - "people who are paying attention to the issues around them, but not acting on those issues".

We're very familiar with this sort of disengagement because we see it in every community. Partly it persists because it's easier to let other people get on with the activism and, anyway, nobody ever asks these folk for help, so why should they bother? Some of it relates to issues with race, policing and the manner in which segregation is problematised. But perhaps the biggest reason - something the Knight Foundation focus on - is a lack of trust especially in local and national government or its agencies as well as also a more widespread distrust in community and neighbours.

There are a lot of things that fuel this mistrust ranging from the media narrative about crime especially fraud, through public heath or police campaigns targeting young people as a social problem, to the widespread convenience for all agencies, public and private, of demanding identification before service is received. In a world where the TV, radio and newspapers report each day on how ordinary people are ripped off, how violence happened to people 'in the wrong place at the wrong time' and how young people are running riot, it's easy to see how people become mistrustful of others (most notably where, as can be the case, the negatives on crime seem to focus strongly on minority groups - black people, refugees, travellers, Roma and so forth).

This media narrative does not reflect the real situation where, for most people most of the time, the streets of an urban community are perfectly safe and entirely welcoming. Nor does that narrative ever show how nearly all - over 99.9% of consumer transactions are done safely and honestly. Or that most of those transactions had no need for any person to formally identify him- or herself before receiving goods or services.

If we want to restore trust - and as a conservative I consider this imperative if we are to restore community and the social capital that makes it work - it must start with public authorities and the government. Yet - as witnessed by Public Space Protection Orders, ASBOs and the ever-extending list of things that require some sort of ID - government really doesn't trust its citizens, all these things assume that in entirely innocent circumstances people (especially poor people, young people or black people) are up to no good.

Trust the people is a popular slogan (I know this because only the other day Matthew Parris was saying what a bad idea it is) but I've a feeling that we're not really thinking through what it might mean - choosing something akin to Rousseau's "general will" rather than appreciating that nearly everybody, nearly all the time can be trusted to get on with things undirected by government, unlimited by bans and restrictions and entirely honestly. Our problem is that government - and the courtiers of media, law and bureaucracy who clatter and bluster round the state's castle - really doesn't believe people can be trusted, especially the poor, the less skilled, the minority and the provincial. The result of this mistrust is what the Knight Foundation uncovered in Charlotte - lots of interested but disengaged people and a bunch of dysfunctional communities.

Trust the people doesn't mean the people are right, it means that people can be trusted. We should maybe try a bit of it.

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How demanding ID undermines trust and community

The debate about ID cards is back and this time the advocates of us having such things have added new weapons to their armoury - alongside stopping illegal immigration and being really convenient (until you lose the damned thing) we can add preventing the rare and unusual act of voter fraud and providing a simple way to administer state systems. There won't even be a physical card, say some ID fans, you'll just be issued a number. At the back of my mind the opening credits of The Prisoner spring to mind - "I'm not a number, I am a free man".

At the heart of the need to produce identification is the idea that we cannot trust the person in front of us to behave honestly. Every transaction requires some sort of identification process because of the remote possibility that somebody is going to cheat us. Take, for example, a simple thing like collecting a parcel. For most of my adult life, all this has required is that you take the card popped through your door by the postman or delivery company to the place where the parcel has been taken and they hand you the parcel. Now - and this is used as the most common argument for demanding ID at the polling station - we have to produce some sort of photo ID and proof of address as well as the card the postie delivered. This is daft - the card was delivered to you and should be sufficient. Unless, that is, there are cunning thieves following delivery vans, breaking into houses, stealing those cards and going to collect them.

The government rather likes it that you don't - or aren't allowed to - trust your neighbour. The idea that, in a community, people know each other and trust each other doesn't fit with a state directed system. Take voting - the presiding officer for the past few years in Cullingworth lives in the village and has done for a long while. She knows a lot of people here and, along with local polling clerks, can be trusted to only question those folk who raise some sort of doubt. Most of the people lining up to vote arrive with a poll card (delivered to their house by the council) and ID fans seems to believe that there's another cunning set of miscreants going round nicking poll cards so they can impersonate voters. This might occasionally happen but I prepared to bet that it won't be happening in Cullingworth. We should be trusting our Presiding Officer, trusting the poll clerks and trusting the vast majority who are not about to cheat anyone.

In an environment of trust, especially trust established over a long period, there is less need for government protection. My exchanges and interactions with friends and neighbours don't require government oversight to make sure nobody is cheating. The sad thing is that this sphere of genuine community has shrunk and shrunk - we stopped trusting the local shopkeeper to know whether or not young James is over 18. Or, more to the point, trading standards officers shifted their focus away from product safety and towards the enforcement of arbitrary age limits on an ever growing range of products. And because of this enforcement, the shopkeeper stopped selling these products without a proof of identity (and age) - the days of sending the kid to the pub to get jug of ale for grandpa are well and truly over.

Government - and by this is mean the Kafka-esque structures of bureaucracy and control not the politicians we elect who pretend to direct these structures - likes the fact that mistrust makes its controls and enforcement necessary. It suits bureaucracy for us to be issued with numbers and for those numbers to be demanded in order to access simple services like collecting a prescription from the chemist or signing up to a GP. And the bureaucrats will point to examples of abuse (carefully gathered for this purpose) to show how absolutely essential it is that the sub-postmaster, pharmacist and GP don't trust us. There'll be mistakes, example of abuse and the old canard of illegal immigration all paraded before us to explain why you will need to produce a photo ID to enter a pub in Bingley.

As a conservative, I believe that trust sits at the heart of our idea of community. We cannot have a true community - it's merely a space shared by unconnected individuals - unless the people in it have trust in their neighbour. There's a lot of evidence - mostly from the USA - that people are beginning to look again for that idea of community. Partly it's a sort of wistful remembrance of times when "ID please" wasn't such a common sound but it's also a recognition that successful places are founded in large part on a shared idea of what the place should be and much of the sharing here relies on trust. Without trust of neighbour - on a scale wide enough to make a difference - loving where you live becomes a solitary pastime rather than a shared mission.

It may be that we can't get those days back, a time when filling in a form and handing over some money was sufficient to open a bank account, when a boy could buy fags for his mum because the shopkeeper knew who he was and knew his mum, and where the publican could keep an eye on three 15-year-olds knowing they're better and safer in his pub than they'd be at the back of the park with some cans. It may be that automation leads to a need for a single universal number but we should, at least think seriously about how we restore the idea of trust and community in a world where systems assume that everybody, all of the time, is up to no good. And maybe we should ask the government - and those subject to government enforcement - to start trusting us again?

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Trust me, I'm a politician...

There's a section in the Vietnam War documentary currently showing on BBC4 (watch if you can) where they're reporting on the fall out from the Pentagon Papers leak and the realisation that Kennedy and LBJ had lied through their teeth to the American people. We now know, and lots of Americans suspected at the time, that Richard Nixon lied through his teeth about Vietnam too.

There's a marine veteran speaking to camera who says something along the lines that, prior to the Pentagon Papers, people instinctively trusted the President and his advisors on matters of great importance - war, peace, life, death. Afterwards no-one trusted politicians - the assumption was that all of us lied.

It seems to me that this simple observation from a former soldier summed up the long-term political effect of Vietnam for the USA. For all the winning and losing, elections and campaigns, there is a grumbling view that underneath it all they're probably lying about something. And are prepared to lie about everything up to and including sending young men to the other side of the earth to get killed. So much of what we see played out today in US politics reflects this moment - from low turnouts in elections through endless rounds of campaigning funding reforms to the current suggestions of sinister conspiracy involving Russians, Facebook and shadowy data companies.

For us in Britain, we had to wait a while longer for this epiphany of lies. When Tony Blair stood in Parliament to argue for us to back a US invasion of Iraq, most of us believed that no Prime Minister would bend and warp the evidence - in effect lie - in order to get parliament to back a war. Yet that is what happened, we backed a war because we believed it when Blair said the threat was real, urgent and significant. There are a lot of people who, like that Vietnam veteran from 1971, had the scales fall from our eyes as we realised that, yes, our politicians were prepared to see men die on the basis of deliberate misinformation.

Our politics is better and worse for this epiphany. Better because the public are less prepared to take their leaders simply on trust when it comes to big and important decisions. Although some of the 'wanting to know' around Brexit is little more than spoiling, the public's support for wanting to know is because, frankly, they don't trust politicians not to sell us down the river.

Politics is worse, however, because decent and honest politicians aren't believed - and most politicians, despite the epiphany of lies, are decent and honest. Worse still, politics becomes even more shallow and unpleasant because the media, reflecting public distrust, treats politicians as dodgy, something to be exposed rather than as a set of folk wrestling with getting the right policies and with making the right decisions.

Every time I see Alistair Campbell on telly, in the papers or Tweeting, I want to scream that he was the warped spider sat in the centre of a web of lies - 'spin' they called it - that resulted in hundreds of dead British troops and untold thousands of dead Iraqis. All done to indulge Tony Blair's desire to be America's best buddy. There is no going back, in most folks' minds politicians will forever be liars and deceivers. Most of us aren't, lying's too much like hard work but, because of men like Kennedy, Nixon and Blair, people start with the opinion that we are. Trust me on this, I'm a politician.

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Keep the Faith - a thought on atheism and belief

Atheists, or many of them, have an issue with the idea of faith. Much of this stems from a misunderstanding, from the belief that faith and religion are, if not the same thing, close enough so as to be used interchangeably. The approach of public agencies doesn't help here either as they universally use faith as a convenient cipher for religion - 'Faith Organisation', 'Faith Group' and 'Faith Leaders' are, in public policy speak, simply ciphers for religions, churches and priests of one sort of another. The problem is that this misrepresents the idea of faith.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1)

That's how St Paul defines faith in his Letter to the Hebrews. It doesn't talk directly of god or religion or worship merely that faith is our evidence for things we cannot sense. It is the riposte to that sceptical urge for evidence - Thomas thrusting his hand into Christ's spear wound. A rejection of the empiricist idea that things without evidence, without Christ's blood on your hand, are not true or unreal - myths, fairy tales, trite stories. We are serious people for heaven's sake!

"Keep the Faith" is the joyous cry of Northern Soul fans:

Singing and playing sax is still my main occupation these days, but whilst I still possess the same enthusiasm for 60s soul tunes and making people smile - I will continue to try and "Keep The Faith" !

Now some youngsters of today's generation may read this and laugh their heads off - and that's OK - because now is your time. But when you reach 50 I hope you are still as passionate about your music and that you too have lots of genuine friends who like you have also remained resolute throughout in their beliefs.

That faith's an intangible thing, hard to explain to those who don't have it, who aren't Northern Soul people. But it's real and important - as that quote above makes clear it really matters, it's part of identity and belief. A feeling familiar to football supporters loyally slogging through the rain week after week to see their club - dreaming that one day greatness will arrive but knowing differently: sharing this with others among the faithful.

In her "Bourgeois Virtues", Deidre McCloskey quotes philosopher J. Budziszewski:

No argument can be so completely drawn as to eliminate its dependence, conscious or unconscious, on undemonstrable first principles.

On faith.

McCloskey continues later:

The Faith, in other words, need not be a faith in God. Many secular folk believe in a transcendent without God, though approaching him.

The way in which we live, the communities we build, the exploring of our world, the speculation about the universe and the hope for the future we hold - all these things in part depend on us taking things in faith. Without trust our society works poorly and to trust someone, in business or in our personal lives, is an act of faith. For sure we can apply rules to enforce that contract implicit in trust but wouldn't relying on enforcement make for a dreadful world? Isn't it better to have faith in our fellows and act accordingly?

Without first principles we are speculating in a fog. So we take some things as axiomatic and construct argument accordingly. And we are able to appreciate that one person's axiom is another's nonsense - my Dad used to end political arguments proclaiming that 'the dialectic is axiomatic'. Without faith, without acceptance of the unprovable, it is difficult to sustain argument and to promote speculation - to get closer to that thing of faith be it god or non-god.

So when atheists construct an argument from the assumption that there is no god they start with that undemonstrable first principle (no god) of Budziszewski's. It is an act of faith to make this argument. And none the worse an argument for being so.

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On our relationship with public health...

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In an excellent piece on vaping and e-cigs, Clive Bates describes our relationship with public health - or rather public health's relationship with us the public:

They are the ‘public’ in public health. They should be a matter of professional interest to you.  In your profession,  you need to understand them and why they do what they do, in order to make professional public health judgements. You need to do this with high standards of professional conduct and to approach them with humility and empathy. You probably have something to learn and you might even get to understand what inspires them. But they have no similar obligation to you. They have other jobs, other lives and no professional need to understand you or engage with you. If you think “there is a lot of mistrust & misunderstanding on both sides” that is your problem, not their problem.   Their interest in you, if any, is that you might spoil what they are doing, that you are making provocative or unfounded remarks about them or what they do, or you are dismissing their experience as mere anecdote.

I do feel that this fact about relationships is a lesson for public servants everywhere and especially those in public health who seem to believe they have some sort of duty to remove our rights to choose.

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Trust me, I'm a (local) politician!

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I haven't seen the details of the polling but there will be a load of grinning councillors reading this:

The poll, carried out on behalf of the Local Government Association (LGA), showed that when it comes to making decisions about local services and the local area only 9% of people trusted MPs and a meagre 6% of people trusted government ministers. However, 77% of people trusted their local Councillor to fight for the local area. This figure has risen from 71% in October, while the number of people who would not trust MPs or government ministers dropped from 16% to 8%.

And all this rather gives the lie to those who see the solution being fewer community politicians - local councillors, parish councillors and the like - and more professional, manager-like regional, national and supra-national politicians.

The reverse is what we need.

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So how much do you trust the police now?

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Especially when they did this:

The officers' statements, presented as official police accounts to the subsequent inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor, were changed to delete criticism of the police themselves on the day, and, largely, emphasise misbehaviour by supporters. The panel found that the operation went as deep and extensive as 116 of 164 statements being amended "to remove or alter comments unfavourable to South Yorkshire police".

The next time you hear the police saying they are accountable remind them of this appalling action. And that it took 23 years for the truth to be revealed. For those police officers responsible to face any form of accountability.

If having elected police commissioners takes us closer to an accountable police force that is welcome. I hope it will be so and we won't simply get the same old friendly placemen. For me, having been brought up to like and respect the police, I'll struggle to take future police statements on trust. And I know I'm not the only one.

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Trust me, I'm a politician!

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Trust is a tricky old thing – that headline probably brings out the sense of irony in you (although you don’t know for sure whether or not I actually mean “trust me”). Indeed our default position is, as Martin Vander Weyer points out, more often distrust:

...trust is no longer offered, in any sphere, as it used to be; distrust is now the default response. It’s easy to argue that business leaders, especially in the City, have brought this on themselves by behaving greedily and uncaringly. But that’s not the whole story, which is also about social change.

At the core of this is a presiding sense that they’re out to rip us off. Politicians, lawyers, doctors, journalists – the entire panoply of professions – are cynical, driven by personal success rather than by any concept of service. And our mistrust extends further – we see train drivers striking on boxing day and see self-interest rather than a collective response to injustice, we tell tales or teachers or council officers seeing the “strike day” as an excuse for a jolly and we’ve got used to anger at huge bonuses in large firms and big public organisation that seem merely to reward failure or incompetence.

The other day, Jack of Kent pondered on why everyone hates lawyers and concludes that it is the majesty of the law that we fear rather than its agent, the lawyer:

It is perhaps not so much that lawyers are hated, but that law itself is feared and mysterious.

That this is the case is unfortunate, and it is an entirely fair criticism that many lawyers do not do more to promote the public understanding of law.

Of course, barriers to lay understanding can suit the interests of lawyers. Lawyers have no general interest in enabling potential clients to work out their own legal problems.

And, so to that extent, lawyers really only have themselves to blame.

But it isn’t quite so simple – what has happened is that we have stopped trusting lawyers because they are lawyers, doctors simply for the fact of their doctoring and politicians by dint of their elected authority. The brands of these professions are corrupted by our awareness of their failings, our recognition that lawyers, doctors, MPs and other ‘professionals’ will close ranks, will protect their privileges, rather than have those failings exposed.

This is a good thing although we still give too great a credence to the self-interest of the Law Society, the BMA or the ‘senior backbencher’. However the growing doubt as to motive means that trust must be earned. It’s perfectly possible to trust a lawyer, a doctor, even a politician but only in so far as we trust the individual behind the badge.

When I urge you to trust me because I’m a politician, I’m asking you to trust the idea of such a person rather than to trust me. Such heuristics damage society by granting to a given organisation, professional body or political party the power to bestow trust.

You should trust Simon Cooke because he has proven himself trustworthy not because he has the stamp of politician.

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