What would you give up to be Prime Minister?

There’s a cost to public service.

James Sampson-Foster

James is training to be a priest in the Church of England.

A smartly dressed politician talks while being interviewed

Prime Minister Keir Starmer responds to the gifts story.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Government recently celebrated 100 days in office.

I say celebrated – I expect there hasn’t been much celebrating.

For one, it’s not much of a milestone - though admittedly it is one that hasn’t been cleared by all of the Prime Minister’s recent predecessors.

But in truth, in those 100 days, there hasn’t been much cause to celebrate.

Sure, there was the biggest Labour majority since 1997, with the keys to Downing Street falling into Starmer’s lap wrapped up in a bow.

But the shine wore off fast, and the honeymoon period is well and truly over.

If the keys to Number 10 arrived for Labour like a gift, it’s perhaps some poetry that it is the recent scandal about gifts which has contributed to the rapid tarnishing of Labour’s 2024 election winner’s crown.

Clothes worth thousands of pounds. Concert tickets. VIP boxes for football games.

The gifts of wealthy donors to a party whose election narrative was to make a reset in the standards of integrity in public life.

What has been remarkable in the middle of this scandal has been the absence of any apology.

Some gifts may have been handed back – but not all. At the time of writing, out of the £100,000 worth of gifts and free tickets he has received, the Prime Minister has generously agreed to hand back £6,000.

Instead of a fulsome apology, some gifts, like those VIP tickets to football games, have been defended.

Why?

Well, the line has been that it makes good sense for the Prime Minister to accept them.

The Prime Minister has said that ‘As a result of security, I can’t go in the stand anymore’ going on to say that the tickets mean that ‘I can continue to do something which is really special to me’.

With the risk of upsetting all the Arsenal season ticket holders in the room – I’m going to say something unpopular.

Maybe going to see the football is just something you have to give up when you become Prime Minister.

At the heart of leadership is sacrifice.

Perhaps we, and the Labour party, have lost sight of that.

To serve others, leaders are called to give up their comforts, their self-interests and their control over their own lives.

As public servants, our leaders should remember the example of the Public Servant who laid down all he had to give his life as a ransom for all.

It is in the example of the Public Servant that our ‘reset’ in the standards of public life must begin.

It is a high standard, but it’s the only standard worth following.

Snippet

Culture

Film & TV

Politics

Royalty

11 November 2024

2 min read

Would you rather live in Wolf Hall?

Monarchy and deciding who's really in charge.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

A TV production set shows Henry VIII at a masked ball.

Daniel Day-Lewis digs his claws into the role of Henry VIII.

BBC.

Viewers of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light may well have breathed a sigh of relief: thank goodness we don’t live in such times. Henry VIII, depicted by Damian Lewis with lionesque intensity, flexes and pouts at his Privy Council, prepared to send even his own daughter to the axeman’s block. He is unimaginably powerful, capricious, and easily offended.

Meanwhile, almost four-thousand miles away, we have just witnessed a democratic election in a nation which wanted nothing to do with kings. Donald Trump has won a second term in the White House - whatever one thinks of him, a sitting President is contained by counterpoised checks and balances. Congress. The Supreme Court. Here, at least, are some features that would have usefully reigned in Henry VIII’s absolute power.

Kings are perhaps cutting a rather pathetic figure right now, even without a sulky, fur-clad Damian Lewis to damage their PR. A few weeks ago, King Charles was heckled by an Australian Senator during a trip to Parliament: “not my King!” yelled Lidia Thorpe. Lately, King Felipe VI of Spain had dirt hurled at him as he walked through Paiporta, to examine the damages of recent floods. So much for a royal welcome.

So, is this just the way things are going? Farewell to tyrants. Humiliated, shouted at, mud-splattered and powerless - will we finally decommission them like old submarines?

But the question of “who’s really in charge here?” is one that all human societies have to face squarely. For our ancestors, there had to be something real behind a legitimate government. It could not just be a useful or appropriate way of organising ourselves - there had to be something copper-bottomed to give authority its clout. Only the gods could prop up a leader. In the pagan world, a philosopher like Aristotle would add that it is just the case that some people rule, some are ruled.

The UK constitution - though few would speak of it in this way - is premised on the idea that the King represents the people of this country to God, who alone can vouchsafe his legitimacy. A monarch in this sense is not absolute. They are contained - contained by the most comprehensive and eternal power that can be conceived. No tyrant gets away with it, on the Christian view.

All societies seek this real basis to power, whether that is “self-evident truths”, or the “will of the people”. The question is: which of them provide for a flourishing community for the longest? King Felipe may have been abused, but he did not flee to the refuge of a car like the Prime Minister. Here was a man of immense privilege reaching out to his subjects. Despite their pain and anger, he wanted to show he really cared - indeed, that he was born to care. For as long as monarchies seem like a reasonable and compassionate answer to the issue of legitimate government, they may endure yet.