Priti Patel, ancient Rome and moral leadership
Daniel Hough, University of Sussex Priti Patel’s ignominious departure from the UK cabinet after it emerged that she had held undeclared meetings with Israeli officials during a personal holiday exposes many flaws in her conduct. The commentariat tells us she showed a lack of judgement, a lack of awareness of due process and a willingness to conduct what, in effect, was her own foreign policy. One word that hasn’t come up so frequently is “corruption”. That’s in many ways understandable. Corruption is generally understood in transactional terms with four key parts. An act is understood as corrupt if there is a (i) deliberate attempt (ii) to abuse (iii) entrusted power (iv) for some sort of private gain. Corruption is normally regarded as a process rather than an outcome and acts that tick all of those boxes are subsequently judged as such. That all of those terms can and do require some sort of external judgement to be made ensures that we can’t talk about objective r...