Why Moral Authority Matters

The UK is currently embroiled in a terribly petty scandal that has totally undermined the public’s confidence and trust in both Covid restrictions and the entire political class. 

Over Christmas last year, the Conservative government imposed a lockdown on the country which, among other things, stipulated that the public was forbidden from mixing indoors with anyone not from their household. 

Recently, news broke that something like seven or eight different Christmas parties were held by the Conservatives at 10 Downing Street and other government buildings during this period. A video emerged of Allegra Stratton, the Prime Minister’s then-spokeswoman, laughing about the fact that they were going to lie to the press and public about any such gathering.

The parties were alleged to have occurred on the 18th of December and onwards, and this video was recorded on the 22nd, so it seems to be a direct reference to parties they had actually had, in the face of the public being told not to socialise with friends and family. Stratton was paraded out to face the hostile public and had to tearfully resign in disgrace. 

This all looked really bad, of course, and so naturally Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, came out to viciously condemn Boris Johnson and his government for breaking the rules that he had imposed. 

Which would hold a great deal of weight if Keir Starmer himself had not also broken the rules. In May 2021, The Sun published pictures of Starmer socialising while on the campaign trail, a violation of the constantly-shifting rules at the time, which stated that you could gather indoors for work, but this didn’t include social gatherings with colleagues.

This, in itself, would not have been such an issue if Keir Starmer had at any point shown any resistance at all to Boris Johnson’s scheme of locking the country down, but he has been not only completely for everything Johnson has done, but complain that Johnson has not gone far enough. 

Not surprisingly, senior members of the Scottish National Party were also revealed to have broken the lockdown rules which they themselves supported and, in May 2020, Professor Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose wildly faulty models shaped Britain’s coronavirus lockdown strategy, had to resign from the SAGE advisory group after he broke the rules he helped to concoct by continuing his affair with his married lover. 

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also broke covid restrictions in September 2020, when he violated the “rule of six” by having a party with nine people, for which he apologised. But at least Jeremy Corbyn isn’t in favour of covid passports and compulsory vaccination, if you can believe it. 

Naturally, after the repeated leaks of the Christmas Parties came out, “We Will Not Comply” began trending across social media. And why should people comply? Why should anyone do what the government and the quote-unquote ‘opposition’ say on this issue? 

As a quick aside, the only opposition to the plans for further restrictions comes from 99 Conservative backbenchers, the Liberal Democrats, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Reclaim party; nobody in the parliamentary Labour Party or Scottish National Party has any objections to raise at all against this Tory hypocrisy and tyranny. However, these found themselves in a decided minority, and so a Conservative-Labour coalition has disgracefully imposed a soft form of papers-please on England. 

So what are we to make of the fact that the two major parties are total and abject hypocrites when it comes to the subject of coronavirus restrictions, and are imposing a deeply unpopular form of bureaucratic totalitarianism on the country? Why should people comply with mandates that the government hands down if the government themselves are not going to abide by these rules? 

If the answer is: “Because coronavirus is dangerous and this helps prevent the spread,” then why would Neil Ferguson, the partying Tories, and the Labour leadership be allowed to make their own judgements instead of doing their bit? If they are allowed to take risks with their own health, why should the rest of us not be allowed that same liberty? What makes them so special?

It seems to strike at the governing principle of the rule of law: that there is one rule to which all must abide. This is an ancient principle in England and the United Kingdom, under which even the King was made accountable to the laws made and enforced in his own name.  Even the Queen was forced to sit on her own during the funeral of her husband because of the government’s Coronavirus restrictions. Why should the public accept that there will be one rule for our political class and another rule for everyone else? 

If instead the answer is: “Because the government says so and they are the government, so you must do as you’re told,” then this is an argument purely from authority, which ultimately is an argument from power alone. It is a violation of the most sacred democratic principle: the consent of the governed. It is on this principle that the very legitimacy of a democratic government rests; they have the right to exercise power because it was invested in them by the people, and not simply because they are the ones holding the power. In conjunction with the rule of law, this is what makes democratic governments legitimate by Enlightenment standards and provides a method by which to hold those with power to account. 

If the government does not adhere to the standards of the consent of the governed and does not abide by the rule of law, this destroys the legitimacy of the government’s power. It shows that the government is not abiding by the law, but instead ruling in a despotic and arbitrary manner, which is precisely what our political class are being shown to do at this very moment. 

Moral authority is a key component in the consent of the governed; that the person has a legitimate claim through the rule-based organisation of the power structure. Adherence to the rules is the primary component of accountability; if a ruler’s decisions are not made within a given ruleset, even one they set themselves, their rule is then arbitrary. 

English philosopher John Locke argued that the people have the right to lawful revolt, which can be invoked when the king becomes a tyrant. In Locke’s view, tyranny is when the ruler ‘makes not the Law, but his Will, the Rule’. and when the tyrant uses ‘force without authority’, which goes beyond the limits of the law, and uses his power for personal ends, rather than the common good. 

How is this not an accurate description of what the political parties in this country are doing now? When the ruler is a tyrant, making rules that they will impose on you but do not follow themselves, why should anyone consider following them at all? 

If the answer to that is “the threat of force,” then by Locke’s analysis this puts the government into a state of war against its own people; if the state’s only answer is to brutalise its citizens into compliance, then all semblance of justice and moral authority has been thrown to the wind and the people have a lawful right to revolt. 

As Locke himself put it: 

“Whosoever uses force without right, as everyone does in society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with those against whom he so uses it; and in that state all former ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and everyone has a right to defend himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident, that Barclay himself, that great assertor of the power and sacredness of kings, is forced to confess, that it is lawful for the people, in some cases, to resist their king.”

I am, of course, not advocating for any kind of revolution or uprising. I am pointing out that the Conservatives, Labour, and the SNP are busy invalidating their own right to rule by the liberal philosophy that underpins modern liberal democracies. Is that wise? 

I don’t think the government should be terribly surprised if wide-scale noncompliance to their diktats occurs because people are aware that their compliance is based on the good behaviour of the governors; sovereignty ultimately lies in the people and cooperation from the public is predicated on the goodwill of the authorities. If the authorities are going to lie, scoff, break their own rules and then demand further tyrannical restrictions, why shouldn’t the public resist?