Prince Andrew and Boris come to be served, not to serve
Prince Andrew and Boris come to be served, not to serve
The Christian gospel inverts power, writes George Pitcher, but the Prince and the PM are devoid of any idea of public service
The first and probably proper response to mentioning Boris Johnson and Prince Andrew in the same breath is that it’s a cheap shot. Any comparison between historical allegations of sexual assault against Andrew by Virginia Giuffre and Johnson’s inability to obey his own lockdown laws hinges only on the coincidence that Andrew’s attempt to have the case against him thrown out in New York failed on the same day that Johnson was forced to apologise to parliament for attending a booze-up in his own back garden last summer.
A good day to bury bad parties, perhaps. Nothing more.
That communicational metaphor is germane. Paul Kavanagh, writing in Scottish newspaper The National of Johnson’s newly discovered consideration of his staff’s feelings, writes:
It's the Prince Andrew defence. The disgraced royal claimed that when he flew across the Atlantic in order to stay with convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, all he was guilty of was an excess of personal honour as he wanted to break off his friendship with Epstein in person.
Moreover, comparisons between the characters of two overweight, middle-aged, British men in trouble can degenerate all too easily into finger-wagging from the moral high ground. What frightful, egregious people. We would never behave like that. Oh no. This is a hypocritical response at best. There for the grace of God and all that, not to mention casting first stones.
False witness
One might also stray into the territory of suggesting that they both think they’re above the law, despite neither having been convicted of any charges that may yet be brought against them. The sin of bearing false witness hangs in the air.
And yet... Both are brought low by stupid mistakes, which in separate ways are about who they’ve chosen to mix with. Both are important and powerful men being held to account by ordinary people over whom they have exercised their power. Both have encountered their nemesis through their own highly apparent hubris.
So there is something consistent about them sharing ruinous headlines on the same day. The question arises over what character traits are also shared by these men in privileged positions who manage to self-destruct through inappropriate and grubby behaviour. And whether such characteristics tend to go with privileged positions, or even are necessary components of those positions.
Flawed people
Hubris is a widespread character trait among the ancients and not just in Greek tragedy. So is despicable behaviour. In the Bible’s Old Testament, the patriarchs of the Israelites are deeply flawed people. Jacob, the great leader of the Jewish people given the name Israel, screws over his brother Esau for his father Isaac’s inheritance and, before confronting him again, wrestles with an angel of conscience, who dislocates his hip.
Later, King David – from whom the Christian gospel goes out of its way to claim that Jesus of Nazareth was directly descended – lusts after and impregnates Bathsheba (possibly through rape) and arranges for her husband to be killed in battle.
It’s not the righteous who prevail to positions of power over God’s people. Rather the reverse. It’s the deeply sinful – those who have separated themselves from the rule of God.
The Christian academic and writer CS Lewis wrote of it as the deadly sin of pride and called it the state of being “anti-God”, when the ego and sense of self are directly opposed to the creativity of God:
Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.
Those fleabites may make their appearance on the ample flesh of the likes of Andrew and Johnson. But it is Lewis’s Pride with a capital P that they have in common and which provides the breeding ground for the fleas.
Human foibles
To one extent or another, the Jewish patriarchs and rulers of the Old Testament exhibited the human foibles associated with pride. David wanted Bathsheba and Jacob wanted Esau’s inheritance out of their inflated senses of entitlement. Johnson and Andrew could play them in the movie.
It’s the Christian narrative of the New Testament that inverts such entitlement. The Nazarene is explicit that he has come to serve not to be served. And tells those who follow him that anyone aspiring to be great must be a servant.
The process reverses pride so that those who adopt the habit become, to follow Lewis, pro-God. The model is a divine one precisely because the Godhead empties itself of its divinity - kenosis - to share the human experience.
Sense of duty
That’s why the greatest leaders dedicate themselves to public service. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby became quite emotional in his ITV interview before Christmas when he recalled the Queen’s sense of duty at her husband’s funeral, greeting visiting guests afterwards rather than, at the age of 95, going to rest.
She of course, as supreme governor of the Church of England and defender of the faith, is intimate with the injunctions of the gospel. Meanwhile, that servant ministry seems to have gone missing from her second son.
And it’s entirely absent from the motives and actions of our current prime minister too. So this is what Prince Andrew and Boris Johnson share in common: They are devoid of any sense of public service. Indeed, they expect to be served and to be gratified by those around them and, in doing so, serve only their corpulent selves.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest.