Beyond Redemption?

In 1260, John de Balliol, Northern warlord and father of a future King of Scotland, had a problem. His tiff with the Bishop of Durham had turned toxic and the King had taken the cleric’s side. Something had to be done. Doubtless against his will, he submitted to the bishop’s authority and performed a penance, founding a house for scholars in Oxford. Almost eight centuries later, it is still there, educating those who, in their quieter moments, would proclaim their membership of humanity’s Best and Brightest.

It is a cause of slight distress to the current generation that the best known globally of their number today are Boris Johnson and Ghislaine Maxwell, the former perhaps drawing the greater ire for using his “effortless superiority” to disrupt decades of peaceful rule by “People Like Us”. While Ms Maxwell is enjoying her yoga classes at Club Fed, however, her late, let’s go with “friend”, Jeffrey Epstein has returned from the grave he may, or may not, have chosen to enter, to take out two of his other “friends”, Lord Mandelson and the Duchess of York.

Time moves quickly but it will not have slipped your mind that the Noble Lord was recently prised from the Ambassadorial Residence to which he was becoming accustomed. It was not that nobody knew about his relationship with the American, but it emerged that, after the latter’s conviction, the former had stated that he believed a miscarriage of justice had taken place and urged his friend to challenge the verdict. The standard appears to be that one can reasonably stay in the home of a convicted paedophile if one thinks him guilty, but not if one thinks him innocent.

One might see this line of thought making sense to the Prime Minister, a Statue Book made pallid flesh, were it not for the minor wrinkle that our entire justice system is set up to cater to those who disagree with the judgement of a court. That is why we have a Court of Appeal and why we have a Supreme Court. Were this line of reasoning applied consistently, the Prime Minister would have accepted the judgement of the High Court in 2019 when it ruled that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was lawful. Spoiler alert: he didn’t.

Not content with devouring one soul, however, Epstein returned to take out the Duchess of York when it emerged that she referred to him, after his conviction, as her “Supreme Friend”. She says that this was to ward off threats he was making towards her. This may be true, this may be an excuse. We do not know. Not having a charming slice of Washington real estate and fat diplomatic salary to lose, society has done the next best thing: seven (at the time of writing) charities with which she was associated having severed ties with her.

Mandelson and Fergie have more in common than either might care to admit. Both have lived their lives surrounded by wealth without ever having it themselves. The former, in Gore Vidal’s immortal put-down, has “the insolent manner of one born to the top rung but three.” History shows they are drawn to people who allow them to lead the lifestyles proximity has led them to believe they deserve. This is not a unique failing. The Prime Minister, poorer than he might have been after his time a DPP, saw and sees nothing wrong in using Lord Alli as a force multiplier for his clothing budget, acquiring the suits his KC friends can easily afford but a civil servant turned opposition MP cannot.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, “wrote Upton Sinclair, “when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The same, I suspect, goes for stays in New York mansions, private jet trips and interest-free loans. For humans are a rationalising species. Some psychologists believe we developed reason to justify to our tribe-mates decisions we had already taken. We find a way to sweep inconvenient information under our mental carpets. If Epstein’s crimes were inhuman, Mandelson and Ferguson were human; all too human.

We know this, of course. We expect our friends to take our side. To believe us. To put the best gloss on whatever we have done. To stick with us through thick and thin. And we praise those who do. They are loyal. They are good friends. Those who drop their acquaintances at the first (or even second) sign of trouble, we condemn. If we consider loyalty to be a moral virtue, we reach the strange conclusion that a man renowned for being an amoral political actor has lost his job for being too moral and not political enough.

This is not to argue that we should let the pair off scot-free. Both showed catastrophically poor judgement. Both allowed themselves to be seduced by an arch-seducer. There has to be a price for their mistakes. But what price?

Since time immemorial, we have allowed sinners to re-enter society after some sort of cleansing process. For criminals this has come to mean time in prison. For those whose failings are not of a legal nature, good works have been the way to bring the scales back into balance.

This happened with John de Balliol. He handed over some cash (there is no evidence he ever visited the college which bears his name), it was put to good use and the slate was wiped clean. It happened with John Profumo. After lying to Parliament, he resigned from the Privy Council and spent the next several decades working at Toynbee Hall, an East End charity dedicated to alleviating poverty. He rehabilitated himself so successfully that he was awarded a CBE and placed next to the Queen at Margaret Thatcher’s 70^th birthday party.

But it doesn’t appear to be happening with Fergie. By cutting ties with her, by declaring her beyond the pale, the charities are denying her the chance to earn her way back. Good works can only be a route to redemption if you are allowed to do good works. If you cannot, you must forever be beyond the bounds of society.

Neither she nor Mandelson are, perhaps, sympathetic figures. But neither are they criminals. They have displayed poor judgement, they have been venal, they have looked the other way. They have behaved in ways we tell ourselves without evidence we never would (few of us being in reality the moral titans of our imaginations and social media posts). But criminals, we generally allow a way back. They do their time and the slate is wiped clean. They rejoin society with exactly the same rights and status as everyone else. Why do we not extend the same charity to those guilty by association that we do to those guilty by fact?

The same day the news about Fergie broke, the world’s eyes were turned to Arizona and the memorial for Charlie Kirk. Part mourning event, part revivalist meeting with sprinkles of political rally and wrestling match, the most dramatic moment (it is, I admit, perhaps unfitting to talk of dramatic moments in memorial services, but it was that sort of event) came when Kirk’s widow declared that she forgave his killer. Affected more than anyone except his children by the event, she forgave its perpetrator. (Not that this will probably do him much good. The next speaker, the President, is adamant he deserves the death penalty).

By being unpersoned, Mandelson and Ferguson are being denied the opportunity to earn that which Erika Kirk gave freely. They are being given no way to redeem themselves, to earn their way back into society. This is unusual. Even the Vikings established a regulated blood price to allow murderers to wipe the slate clean. Are we really less forgiving than that barbarian horde?  Has our fear of pollution become so extreme that, like Lady Macbeth rubbing her hands raw to get rid of the spot, we are polluting ourselves, a society convinced of its kindness, decency and sophistication, behaving in a way others would consider harsh, cruel and uncivilised?

We forgive others not, it is said, for them, but for us. What then does it say that we no longer want to or perhaps no longer can?

“Use every man after his desert and who should ‘scape whipping”…

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.

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(Photograph: Gordon Correll, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

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