It is a “golden-age myth” to assume that politicians are more corrupt now than they used to be, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
In an interview with the BBC journalist Nick Robinson for the Political Thinking podcast, posted on Friday, Archbishop Welby said: “They [politicians] get things wrong; they mess up. Politicians are human beings. If we want perfect politicians, there won’t be anyone sitting in the House of Commons. We’ll never have another Prime Minister. We can’t have a Royal Family. There’s nobody who can rule if we insist that they’re faultless and flawless.”
The “vast majority” of politicians whom he had met privately showed “a passion about trying, despite all the grit in the system, to make some good progress”.
Asked whether he was reluctant to attribute motives to politicians, but to focus instead on their mistakes, Archbishop Welby replied: “I’m perfectly keen on attributing motive occasionally. . . I spent 20 years on reconciliation work in the middle of conflicts and I’ve met some very evil people indeed. And I had no doubt at all who they were in it for, and it was themselves and what they got out of it, and it was terrible. . . Of course, there’s people like that, and sometimes they get to the top, and that is really worrying.”
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— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) April 23, 2021