Angela Rayner has returned to the back benches because, as housing secretary, she failed to follow the rules relating to stamp duty on a flat she had bought. Athenians were extremely proud of their citizen-led Assembly and did not take kindly to sub-standard officials.
Plato constructed a dialogue (c. 430 bc) between Socrates and the controversial sophist Protagoras, who claimed that anyone taught by him would be a success in public and private life. Socrates challenged this claim. He pointed out that, when the democratic assembly of male citizens met to discuss technical matters (e.g. ship-building), they listened to those who actually had experience of building ships and shouted down anyone who did not. But, when it came to matters of policy, anyone was allowed to voice their opinions: ‘Carpenter, smith or cobbler, merchant or ship owner, rich or poor, high born or low born, and no one objects.’
As Socrates pointed out, technical matters were teachable, but making good judgments about policy was not. Furthermore, even a famous father like Pericles could not teach ‘good judgment’ on such matters to his two sons, who as a result wandered freely about like sacred cattle, hoping to bump into it somewhere.
Protagoras replied not by responding to Socrates’s point about how people learned to exercise good political judgement, but by defining ‘goodness’ as respect for others and a sense of justice because that was the only way a society could survive.
Societies proposed laws encouraging ‘goodness’, families set examples of it and wrongdoers were punished. In that context, citizens could pick up ‘goodness’ naturally, just as they did language. However, not all people would be as ‘good’ as the best – any more than anyone learning to play the pipes would be.
But, he might have added, from those privileged to serve the Assembly like our former deputy prime minister, only the best was good enough.
Had Rayner been an Athenian citizen, the Assembly would have punished her negligence certainly with a fine, perhaps with loss of property or even civic rights. The Assembly was not mocked. But we are – to the tune of her £17,000 pay-off.
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