BY STEWART SLATER

Sometimes, one can only stand back in awe. Perhaps at some sublime piece of sporting skill. Maybe at a dish in the final of Masterchef. Possibly at some shocking feat of magicians’ legerdemain. Or at the sight of Liz Truss addressing the Tory faithful about how to save Britain, an act of chutzpah so brazen, it might almost count as performance art.

For Ms Truss, as we all know, will never trouble the list of Britain’s best Prime Ministers. It will probably take a coup or an unfortunate death in office for her ever to lose her title as Britain’s shortest-serving Prime Minister, a name useful only for pub quizzes. While her role in the ructions of late 2022 may be overstated, it is, nonetheless, real. And yet, none of this seemed to bother her as she treated her audience to some of that old time religion on the need for growth. Perhaps Churchill was right when he said that success was going from failure to failure but never losing your enthusiasm.

It would be easy, and that will not prevent people from doing so, to call her shameless. But, it would also be inexact. For Truss’s audience were not shaming her. Quite the opposite. They were lapping up every word of her, as usual, less than inspiringly delivered oration. You cannot feel shame if people are applauding you.

For shame is different to guilt. Shame is externally-driven, an emotion which arises when one’s peers tell one that one has done wrong. Guilt is internal, when one’s conscience tells one that one has done wrong. The move from a shame-culture to a guilt-culture is often seen as a key development in human morality, taking place sometime in the Bronze Age (The Iliad is held to depict a society transitioning between the two). Not all civilisations made the change – Japan is still held to be an example of a shame-culture – but the West did.

Ideally, in the West at least, feelings of guilt make an individual atone for their misdeeds (in serious cases, the state will force them to do so). It was guilt, not shame which led John Profumo to dedicate his life to charity. It is guilt, not shame, which Ms Truss’s unrepentant appearance suggests she lacks.

In this she is not alone amongst the political class. Those whose manifest failures would properly prompt them to leave public life, work their way back round society’s U-bend, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Over the weekend, Dominic Grieve opined that Suella Braverman should “know her place” over a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, having seemingly forgotten that, in his days as a public servant, his place was to do his masters’ bidding, not try to frustrate it. Alastair Campbell deployed his shining wit to christen her “Sewerella”, leading to the interesting parlour game of wondering which other lady of Asian descent one could describe in such terms and not end up on the front page of the Guardian.

Grieve and Campbell may have failed over Brexit, the dodgy dossier, and countless other episodes, but they’re not going to let that hold them back. And, unfortunately, they’re not being stopped.

For, when guilt fails, shame must take over. For low level offences, where the state does not want to get involved, it is up to society to point out to the unrepentant wrong-doer that they have erred. They can be told explicitly, they can be shunned, their friends can drop them, but something must be done to point out to them that they have erred. The Japanese, living in a shame culture, learn this early on. Kindergartens use a method called Minamoru where teachers refuse to intervene and allow the group of children to adjudicate disputes and punish wrong-doers by temporarily ostracising them.

In the environment of a Japanese school, this works. There is one group and, left out of it, the individual is on his own. But historically, Japan was not alone in this. There was one public square to which everyone needed access, and from which being expelled brought serious costs. Imagine life for a mediaeval villager if the baker and greengrocer refused to deal with him.

The modern world, however, is not like this. There are parallel public squares (can squares be parallel? You know what I mean). Being expelled from one group is a far lesser sanction if there is another willing to receive you. Liz Truss might have been expected, in days of yore, to hide herself in a nunnery, but her reception at the party conference suggests that she still has a tribe willing to deal with her. As do the speaker fees she commands. Messrs Grieve and Campbell may be anathema in Brexit circles, but their Remainer credentials keep the podcast and appearance fees coming in.

Having parallel public squares has its advantages. Vaclav Havel was forced to take a job in a brewery after his dissident political views led to him being banned from the state-owned theatres. He was able to produce some plays by samizdat, but had there been a parallel ecosystem of non-state theatre, he would probably have been able to write more, as he would have been able to support himself by doing so. Having multiple public squares provides some defence against an over-mighty state or social orthodoxy.

But it also has disadvantages by allowing those who have behaved poorly to avoid the consequences of doing so. Take Russell Brand. At the time of writing, he has not been charged with any crime, but has been removed from the mainstream media. However, he retains his channel on Rumble. If, and it is an if at this time, he is able to maintain a broadly comparable level of income from that platform, what penalty has he suffered for what he has admitted was bad behaviour? If he has suffered no penalty, has he really been shamed?

Brand retains his popularity with a certain segment of society because he shares their views. The same is true of Truss and Campbell. Their tribes are willing to overlook their indiscretions because they prize their shared beliefs over the individuals’ behaviour. But this is tribalism, pure and simple. What they are is more important than what they do.

Tribalism has always been with us, but the shared public square has tempered its worst excesses. People have been forced to behave in ways which were acceptable to all, not just their tribe. This has constrained individuals’ ability to misbehave, and their tribe-mates’ willingness to consort with them once they have done so lest they suffer a similar sanction. The rise of parallel public squares means that tribes are no longer forced to take action against their worst members, they can just hunker down in their shared ecosystem. Indeed, given changes in the media, they can pretend other ecosystems no longer exist.

Technology is a wonderful thing. You are, after all, reading this online. But it is not an unalloyed boon. By allowing us to develop parallel public squares, it is allowing those who should feel guilt but don’t also to avoid being shamed. It allows the worst elements to fester, ready to re-infect the body politic. And that is in no-one’s interest.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.