September 28, 2025

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

James Baldwin (1924–1987), American novelist, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), in The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.14

What are the worst examples you can cite, known personally to you, of the underside of political life? In which of those instances were you the perpetrator, the victim, or the silent observer?

Deference to professionals is a lost mindset, with barristers being the initial losers (witness, from 1591, Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers!”). Catholic priests have had a really bad run in recent years. Politicians never made the cut.