Thread by @jonworth

I log into Twitter and I see people people trying to attach moral judgments to Boris Johnson, in light of Sabisky stuff.

Johnson is / is not a racist!
Johnson is / is not an authoritarian!
Johnson is / is not in favour of bringing scientists into government!
Johnson is / is not a proponent of free speech!

(delete according to your viewpoint)

I haven't got a clue if Johnson is any of these, or if he isn't. And that is the point.

Johnson is the very definition of amoral - he *does not know* the difference between right and wrong, and he does not have consistent moral views.

I suppose it is a natural way to behave to attach judgments to PMs - to assume that the Prime Minister of a country must have *some* ethics or values of some sort, even ones that one might disagree with, because... well, that's what politicians are sort of for.

But if you look at Johnson's behaviour over the now almost two decades he has been active in UK politics it is impossible to know what he stands for.

Putting it differently he seems to have no moral compass whatsoever.

That's also why he can so easily lie at will, because he doesn't know what a lie is, because he doesn't know what his own reality is.

This is different to someone who is calculatingly absent of morals, a Gove or a Hannan or a Carswell, someone who deploys lies strategically together with the *wrong* ethics to further themselves.

The people Johnson employs, and the presence of / lack of ethics of those people, and the rest of his cabinet and Tory MPs more widely, might mean that Johnson's government is or is not racist or is or is not authoritarian. But that is a different problem.

Please stop behaving as if all that needs to be done with Johnson is to peel back a bit more of the bluster on the outside and you will find a sort of normal human underneath, one with some morals and one with a notion of right and wrong. You will not find it.

/ends