POLITICS
It is those moments of moral agony which best expose a man's (or a minister's) character
BORIS JOHNSON
You're in the car with your secretary after a party and trying to effect a ticklish exit from your parking place when, damn it, you bump the car ahead. Some bawling French brat has been squashed in his pram and his father's cutting up rough. You're a former Tory minister and you foresee all the embarrassment of being breathalysed, and suddenly, though you perhaps don't realise it, you're in one of those positions where you've got to do the right thing.
You must work out in a flash whether it is more sensible to stay and face the conse- quences, or whether it might not be quite as prudent, since you can see that the kid is perfectly all right, to drift off down the pavement. In that instant, the depths of your character stand to be exposed. Depending on how you behave, a lifetime's cultivation of respectability can be made to seem hollow.
Looking back afterwards in shame at these moments of moral apocalypse, we can all work out what we should have done. If we had our time again, we would not hesi- tate. The lucky ones are those who can spot the ball early, who can see at once that they are in a genuine left-or-right, yes-or-no moment of moral choice, without having the position pointed out to them afterwards by the press: 'You liar! You coward!' The lucky ones also divine instantly that a cover-up will be impossible.
It takes skill to recognise these moments, because the decisions, when they are required, are required with such urgency. It is difficult to keep a clear head when you've driven off the bridge at Chappaquiddick in the middle of the night, and the water is closing around your head and you have to order your priorities: save self; save pretty blonde co-passenger? And you then have to work out whether to deny all knowledge of Mary-Jo Kopechne in the hope of pro- tecting your political career, or whether to do the right thing and come clean.
These decisions take skill, also, because most of us have so little practice. Contrary to the impression given by various theories of moral philosophy, modern urban life is not an endless series of bifurcations between right and wrong. We might waver for a second or two before chucking a pound coin to a man selling the Big Issue. But perhaps because of the giant apparatus of state control and welfare that cushion our society, most of us, thankfully, find it hard to remember the last serious moral dilemma we faced.
Indeed, the drama of Sir Nicholas Scott, the former Minister for the Disabled, is really the stuff of fiction. In essential respects the episode resembles the famous opening scene of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (which itself owes something to The Great Gatsby). For the embarrass- ment of the former Tory minister and his secretary, read the agonies of Sherman McCoy, the Master of the Universe (Tom Wolfe's hero), and his female companion, and the little accident in the Bronx that transforms their lives. In fact, these moments of revelatory moral choice are so rare that they sometimes have to be con- fected by those who wish to dig out the underlying character. One thinks of the cash-for-questions affair, in which MPs faced an artificial dilemma offered by the Sunday Times.
It is because these moments are so rare — or at least so rarely come to light — that they are so illuminating and important. What the inquiry by Lord Justice Scott tells us above all is that even the most experi- enced Cabinet minister can be prone to the same mad self-delusion as Teddy Kennedy or Sherman McCoy: that they can do the wrong thing and get away with it.
For any of the Cabinet ministers con- cerned, the moment of crisis, of decision, may have come like this: he is sitting up late doing his red boxes at home, his eyes pricking with fatigue and the whisky not helping, deciding whether or not to sign these curious papers, these Public Interest Immunity Certificates. He knows that both options are bad. If he allows certain docu- ments to be produced in court, that will expose embarrassing modulations in the Government's embargo against Iraq.
On the other hand, if he signs the 'gag- ging order', he must know that he will be frustrating justice and that innocent men may go to jail. That is the choice at the heart of the Scott Inquiry. Never mind the sophistries of Mr William Waldegrave who, admittedly, seems to have produced an odd syllogism: 1) All change in policy on Iraq must be approved by Downing Street. 2) Downing Street did not approve the change of policy. 3) Therefore there was no change of policy.
At the end of all this, I would guess we are likely to forgive Waldegrave, who took a First in Greats and knows about Wittgen- stein, for saying there can be a change which is not a change. Most reasonable people would accept that on sensitive mat- ters of Middle East policy the entire diplo- matic minuet need not be played out on the floor of the Commons. No, the moral dyna- mite is in the question whether Mr Hender- son and his fellow directors of Matrix Churchill should have been faced with jail to spare the blushes of the British Government.
Unlike Sir Nicholas Scott on the pave- ment, these ministers had plenty of time to think. The amazing thing is that — and I should be surprised if this is contradicted by Lord Justice Scott's final report — they all, in varying degree, flunked the test, Clarke, Garel-Jones, Rifkind, Lilley, Baker. Heseltine may have shown the sharpest appreciation that this was a moral dilemma (or rather, that it would look terrible if it got out), an occasion for thinking ahead, and thinking straight. But even he signed the gagging orders.
What is even more amazing is what these ministers now say in mitigation: `Lyell told me to sign it.' It was for the judge to make the decision to waive the certificates, not the minister.' There may be other excuses for the actions of these f65,000-per-year decision makers, with their vast powers of regulation, their armies of civil servants to do their bidding; these people whose entire profession and expertise is to select options not just for themselves but for millions of others. But they cannot say that they had no choice.
'Thank heavens we're in Club Class – there
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