Shameless

 

From 2004 to 2013 a comedy drama series called "Shameless" ran on British TV (not to be confused with an American series with the same title.) It was set in a fictional working  ( and non-working) class housing estate near Manchester and illustrated  how the characters, those at the bottom  of the pile, shamelessly gamed the system in order to survive.  

 I didn't watch much of it but what I saw of seemed to be written with sympathy for the characters' plights and their ingenuity  in surviving an inadequate social security system.  In spite of living hand to mouth in terms of material possessions there seemed to be a rich vein of mutual support and kindness and pleasure in human relationships.

 A different level of shamelessness, operating at the other end of the social scale, has been identified in recent months. 

In his intriguing if sometimes illogical book " Humankind, A hopeful History" (published Bloomsbury 2020) Rutger Bergman asks how it is that  ambitious and Machiavellian leaders manage to rise to and retain power in our democracies and concludes (page 238):

"They're shameless"

He goes on to write (page 239)

"In our modern democracy, shamelessness can be positively advantageous.  Politicians who aren't hindered by shame are free to do  things others wouldn't dare.  Would you call yourself your country's most brilliant thinker, or boast about your sexual prowess?  Could you get caught in a lie and then tell another without missing a beat?  [Could you drive to Barnard Castle and expect  people to believe that you did it to test your eyesight]?*  Most people would be consumed by shame . . . But the shameless couldn't care less.  And their audacious behaviour  pays dividends in our modern mediacracies, because the news spotlights the abnormal and the absurd."

The Guardian's Review section yesterday (10th April) features part of a memoir  by Musa Okwonga about his experiences as a scholar at Eton.

He writes:

"They don't learn shamelessness  at Eton, but this is where they perfect it."

Prime Minster Johnson was clearly an apt pupil.

Sacked twice for lies, a man who, up to the last minute, alleged he was not sure whether to support or oppose Brexit, then jumped on the Leave side to further his career, illegally prorogued parliament, manoeuvred the Queen into giving a virtual partly political broadcast on behalf of Tory party,  by indifference, bad example,  indecision and failure to act has bungled the attempt to control the coronavirus pandemic whilst lining the pockets of his friends,  trashed the country's reputation by calmly proposing that we should break international law in a treaty he had himself signed, and gravely endangered the fragile peace in Ireland.

 Shamelessness is by no means confined to the Old Etonians in our cabinet.  Following their leader one after another Matt Hancock et al lie,  boast,  distort, look after their own interests and those of their friends and backers.

And get away with it.

They will continue to do so unless and until the progressive opposition parties co-operate to stop them.  Whilst we fight each other we are handing the Tories their fiefdom on a plate.  

A friend with her ear closer to the political ground tells me that the best we can hope for is an informal  "non-aggression pact" - that we all continue to stand candidates in every constituency but agree not to campaign very hard, or not at all, where we recognise that another party has a better chance of ousting the Tory.

Maybe she's right, but it seems to me worst best option. Someone (Churchill?) has said that we should never  let a crisis go to waste.  

 We must surely have the least competent, most corrupt, lying, self-serving government in our history.  It's hard to imagine we shall ever have a better  chance of  harnessing the progressive majority in the country to achieve a progressive government.

The ball is in the court of our current leaders, and particularly Labour.

* I added that bit.