Far too many people in modern politics prefer the low road and the low blow. Rather than take on their opponents in fair debate, they resort to smears and innuendoes.
Sadly, such methods too often work, especially with ill-named ‘social media' weaponising rumour.Now we have an attempt to spread a particularly unpleasant smear against Boris Johnson. Those involved have suggested that Mr Johnson somehow exaggerated the severity of his illness during the Covid lockdown.
They even tried to involve the BBC's Gary Lineker in their nasty project, but to his credit, Mr Lineker - after being alerted by The Mail on Sunday - realised that his name was being exploited and withdrew.
Let us be clear. There is something especially heinous in suggesting such a thing. Now we have an attempt to spread a particularly unpleasant smear against Boris Johnson They even tried to involve the BBC's Gary Lineker in their nasty project, but to his credit, Mr Lineker - after being alerted by The Mail on Sunday - realised that his name was being exploited and withdrew
Mr Johnson is not universally beloved, and nor is he any sort of saint. But the idea that he would have overstated a dangerous illness, for political effect, is grotesque.
It does not just reflect on Mr Johnson and his wife Carrie, who was deeply distressed by her husband's frightening symptoms.
It insults the doctors and other medical staff who exerted all their skills to pull the former Prime Minister through when he was in danger, and who never had any interest in the matter beyond healing a sick man, their absolute duty.
Maybe the descent of our political discourse into sneers and abuse has, in this case, finally reached its limit.
Maybe, having touched bottom and seen how
slimy liquid hirschhausen Preis and dark it is, such people will grasp that we must return to the basic decencies. We very much hope so.
Politics would be dull without its personalities and knockabout. Some hurly-burly is inevitable.But in a free democracy, your opponents are not your enemies, and it should stay that way. Or who knows where we might end up.
Would any memorial do proper justice to Elizabeth II?Some achievements are simply too big to be commemorated by a memorial. Some lives are so notable that it is especially inadequate to name buildings after them.
Buildings decay, often faster than reputations, and their architectural styles fall out of fashion.Who would want to be remembered by the bunker-like conference centre bearing the late monarch's name, which crouches in the middle of Westminster?
So the search to find a way of memorialising the late Queen is going to be a difficult one. In an amazingly long reign, Elizabeth II made such a difference to so many people, so many institutions, so many events that it is hard to think of an artefact, a bridge, a sculpture, obelisk or column which would not be too small, too trivial and too ordinary.
The search to find a way of memorialising the late Queen is going to be a difficult one Her main achievement, of holding this country together during a time when it was under huge pressure to break apart and descend into strife, is not easy to mark.
The sheer respect and love in which she was held during the last years of her life were far more potent than the mere formal loyalty a people owes its monarch.
The Mail on Sunday respects the search, now under way, for some sort of monument, and hopes a brilliant and popular idea emerges from it.
But we will not be surprised if the project ends in a compromise which does not do full justice to the great reign which so many of us look back on with pride and nostalgia.
When Sir Christopher Wren, the finest architect in English history died, he was buried inside his greatest work, St Paul's Cathedral, in a simple tomb beneath a plaque bearing the words: ‘If you seek a monument, look about you.'
Those who seek a monument to Elizabeth II should likewise look about them, at the free and peaceful nation she kept in being by dutiful, unassuming hard work.
Boris JohnsonCoronavirus Lockdowns