tim's experiment

Since I last visited the CY Leung affair there has been some progress. Everyone except the incurably partisan or dumb now recognises that the problem is not whether we can tolerate a Chief Executive with a legal trellis, but whether we can tolerate a Chief Executive who cannot give a straight answer to a straight question. Most of us, after all, would have been quite happy if when the matter first came up, candidate Leung had said “Yes I have illegal structures. Doesn’t everybody?” After months of wriggling, evasions and lies Mr Leung has migrated from the George Washington end of the spectrum to the Richard Nixon one, and some people who are neither instinctive rebels not committed enemies of the government now think that he should follow Mr Nixon’s example in choosing an early retirement.

Other people, including some writers for whom I have the greatest respect, now say that this will not and cannot happen. Mr Leung has Beijing’s blessing and our colonial masters will never allow their man to be unseated by popular opposition. Obvious bad precedent, from their point of view. Therefor people should stop calling for a replacement and should instead try to work with Mr Leung for constructive purposes. After all he is at least not a property developer. One writer went so far as to suggest that it would be statesmanlike for a democrat to reach out by going to Beijing. I presume this was a fancy metaphor because most of the democracts are barred from entering the mainland. They cannot even visit Shenzhen. Still I hesitate to dismiss this view as wrong. We cannot know what will work and we can only try one of the choices available so we will never know what would have been best. On the other hand it seems the statesmen inspiring this approach include Metternich, if not Macchiavelli.

It is odd to find yourself revisiting your youth after 60 years but the first political event to attract the attention of people in my age group was the Profumo affair. Profumo was a Minister of Defence who had an affair with a lady of sociable instincts who was also apparently sharing the bed of the Defence Attache at the Soviet Embassy. He denied having met the lady in a statement to the House of Commons and had to resign when the truth emerged shortly afterwards. Quite a lot of people sympathised with Mr P. There was no suggestion that secrets had been leaked. He had been a good MP and a respectable Minister. Mrs Profumo was no doubt used to the occasional infidelity. Few politicians seem to be able to resist the odd fling. The contrary view was that this was, in the end, a moral issue. We cannot stop people doing wrong but when we catch them at it we can and should drum them out of any office of prestige and power which they hold. Any gentleman could have an affair but if he lied about it afterwards he was no gentleman.

Now it is argued on behalf of Mr Leung that many successful politicians were not plaster saints, or indeed saints of any kind.  Mr Clinton, widely regarded as a successful politician, shared his cigars and much else with Monica Lewinski. John Kennedy was a surreptitious philanderer on a large scale, and so on. Indeed there is something in this. Every King of France after Louis IX (who was canonised – for refraining presumably) kept mistresses. Frederick the Great treated his wife appallingly, Catherine the Great had at least 14 lovers, Mary Queen of Scots probably murdered her first husband and Edward VIII was a notorious rake before he inherited the throne. The elected types are no better: anyone for “bunga bunga parties”? Modern writers now look with a certain suspicion on Gladstone’s attempts to rescue prostitutes from a life of sin, and Asquith’s infatuation with a lady young enough to be his granddaughter. Loyd George was known as “the goat” to his underlings, Julius Caesar as “the bald whore-monger” to his soldiers.

These things perhaps do no harm as long as they are not known. I doubt, for example, whether John Kennedy would have remained the idol of many admirers if his serial infidelities had emerged in his own lifetime. When they do emerge, though, we have to ask whether this sort of thing is acceptable in our leaders. After all the Chief Executive may be pretty small beer as a holder of political power — despite his grotesquely inflated salary — but he is still someone up to whom people look. It seems in many European countries sexual peccadilloes are not regarded as a problem. A mistress, so what?  I am not sure that I prefer the traditional Anglo-Saxon approach, which is more puritanical about such things.

But our local problem is rather different. Mr Leung, is, as far as we know, a paragon in many ways. As an example to aspirant young people, though, he has a spectacular disadvantage. He only got the job because he cheated. No doubt Henry’s extensive illegal basement was larger both in size and more flagrant in the principles involved than Mr Leung’s illicit adornments. But Mr Leung allowed and encouraged us to believe that he had no such things at all. So the question is not whether Mr Leung is disqualified from his job because he is a liar. Many political leaders have worse faults, I accept. The question is having been conned into giving him the job do we now let him keep it?  Hong Kong is not short of examples of unscrupulous behaviour. But to have such a spectacular display of successful duplicity at the top is going to undo an awful lot of well-meaning moral education.

I conclude with some surprise (I did not take this view about Mr Profumo) that this is a moral issue and the ethical thing for Mr Leung to do would be to resign.  There is no point in agitating about it. If he doesn’t see this himself he is either dim or dirty. In either case, I think asking people to cherish Mr Leung in the name of realism and diplomacy is asking a lot. Too much? It is not for me to say. But a lot, certainly.