What we are seeing is not contrition but the sulky behaviour of rogues who have been caught swindling, cheating and lying – yet are outraged because they didn’t think this was wrong.
So they blame us for telling them that it was. The public disclosure of their shopping choices thus strikes them as persecution.
They just don’t grasp that claiming for dog food and barbecue sets, let alone £1,645 duck-houses in the style of 18th-century Sweden, was simply wrong; and to the extent that these were sanctioned by the rules, the rules were also wrong.
But if the vast bulk of MPs don’t get it, their leaders are no better. From all sides, we hear the all-too-familiar sound of political leaders doing the only thing they appear to know – reacting not from principle but out of opportunism.
Dr Williams, by contrast, unfortunately exemplifies the moral confusion of the age, which increasingly lets wrongdoers off the hook” – as shown by his dealings with the American Episcopal Organization and particularly in Jamaica’s ACC debacle which removed his commentary from anything remotely resembling pertinence.