Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
On the first question, yes. On the second, the penalty is a fine. Anything over and above that is spite.
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Well that’s interesting, because neither of my questions addresses the strict letter of the law. Both my questions address the moral issues around what we expect of our leaders and the moral consequences of their failure. Yet while you’re prepared to accept the higher moral standard implicit in my first question, you dodge it in the second question by flipping over to the issue of strict legal liability and penalty.
The issue in strictly legal terms is that he broke the same law as many other people have done and received the same penalty. In terms of his obligations under law, case closed. However, what I’d love you to do is to set that aside and address the issue purely in terms of what we as a society expect of our leaders and how we expect them to act when they fall short of those expectations.
There are innumerable examples of senior government ministers - even prime ministers - resigning due to serious errors of judgment even where those incidents fell short of criminality. I’m curious to hear your reasons why you think Boris Johnson is not under a moral obligation to resign, given the extremely serious context in which his criminal behaviour occurred.