You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4.

Good evening. It might strike future generations as strange that at a time when we're being

engulfed by another wave of a global pandemic, the economy is struggling out of meltdown,

and existential threats like climate change hang over us. We should be so preoccupied with

whether a boisterous few drinks a year ago in a terraced house off Whitehall

constituted a party or a gathering. But the controversy and an accumulation of questions about

the conduct of our leaders goes to the heart of the moral authority of government. Trust in

politicians is apparently at an all-time low. Morality, some say, has been sucked out of politics, the concept of

public service replaced by selfish personal ambition. But hasn't it always been so? Are today's

politicians that different from their predecessors? And even if there are, does that not merely reflect

changes in society as a whole? We voted for them after all. Or maybe it's

the system that's to blame, a polarised political culture, a shallow short-term approach to running the

country that rates image over content, passion over probity. Do we get the politicians we deserve?

That's our moral maze tonight. The panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator at the Times, Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious

Studies at Edinburgh University, and McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist, and the

chief executive of the NHS Confederation, Matthew Taylor. Matthew, you were at the centre

of power once, Chief Political Advisor to Tony Blair, who fairly or

unfairly is now regarded by some as a morally ambiguous figure.

Yes, I do think there's been a deterioration in leadership from then until now, but in the end,

I do think we get the politicians we deserve, but that's less in the end to do with the morality of individuals

and more, I think, to do with the democratic system, which encourages us to blame our

leaders rather than taking responsibility ourselves.

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