Some decades ago I read a Matthew Parris article where he wrote that his mother did not judge politics by policies or a left or right spectrum, but how decent and honest individual politicians seemed to be.
It’s something I’ve always remembered because decent and honest is how the political game should be played but isn't. Some politicians probably are decent and honest in private, especially those who avoid the caring, sharing, lying rhetoric and just tell it as it is. As for the others, we'd probably be appalled at how stupid and ghastly they are.
We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided…
It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses.
Aristotle - Rhetoric c. 336 - 330 B.C.
Of course Aristotle was right in his refined Athenian sense where politically active people were known to all who mattered. Today, many are still unpersuaded by the political rhetoric of dubious people, but unfortunately it no longer seem to matter.
Today we are persuaded to take sides with the charlatan and the fool, persuaded to cheer the rhetoric as if it were our own rhetoric, to cheer the political colour of it and discount or evade completely the dishonesty of the speaker.
So come on Ed, we know you can make Net Zero work when the Tories couldn't.
