If Nigel Farage is so confident that the £5 million donation he received from a friend is entirely kosher, why is he so frightened of being subjected to the official parliamentary code of conduct on the matter, or does he think he is above such scrutiny? That is a dangerous tightrope to tread.
In 406 bc, after a naval battle in the long war between Sparta and Athens, a ferocious storm prevented the Athenian generals from picking up their survivors and the dead. In the law-making democratic Assembly, consisting of all Athenian male citizens over 18 (the dêmos), fury was high, and there was a demand from one Callixenos that the six out of the eight generals who had returned to Athens should be tried en bloc. When it was pointed out that this was illegal, the majority shouted that ‘it was outrageous that the dêmos should not be allowed to do whatever it wanted’. After all, the dêmos made the law. Why could not thedêmos change it?
Socrates was then a member of the Council of 500 and, for that one day, the presiding chairman at the trial. He refused to yield to the demand, because it was against the law. The next day’s chairman, however, agreed to it, and the trial en bloc went ahead. The six generals were executed.
But the Athenians always took the view that, if the dêmos decided someone had given them bad advice, even if the dêmos had agreed to it, that was no defence: the dêmos could do no wrong. But some months later, the dêmos itself realised that the precedent which it had created was unwise. So they lodged proceedings against Callixenos and his supporters. Summoned to be put on trial for deceiving the dêmos (penalty: death), they were saved by the chaos during the end of the war.
It is almost unbelievable that someone who aspires to be prime minister should be so utterly contemptuous of official codes of conduct which, as prime minister, he would be responsible for framing and upholding. What’s new? The usual farrago.
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