William on Rotters

“Of course he was a rotter. He was bound to end in the gutter sooner or later,” said Lawson. Philip was hurt because Lawson would not see the pity of it. Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which one follows the other lay all tragedy of life.

William Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage (1915)


As we know, rotters rarely end up in the gutter these days. Maybe that's a pity, but now we have other pressures which loom just as large as the spectre of the gutter. They govern our lives just as tightly as the proximity of the gutter ever did. Intrusive health advice, political correctness and our inability to tell it as it is in public life are just three aspects of the problem. We aren’t even rotters – well most of us aren’t.

One outcome of fanatical anti-rotter overreach is the recent attempt to select a Conservative party leader. One requirement is a name already well enough known as a non-rotter. Another is a clear break with the previous incumbent who did perhaps have a faint, rotter-like aura. Another is… but there a quite a few little restrictive caveats likely to give us a Prime Minister nobody would have elected given a better choice.

We don’t want a full-on rotter perhaps, but going too far the other way… at least the ability to be a rotter in the right circumstances… that could be useful.