There is nothing more demeaning than politicians switching sides and turning on people they used to support – just for the sake of a few votes.
But that is exactly what has happened over Fred Goodwin. Yes, Sir Fred made a series of appalling mistakes, but what has been more pathetic has been watching the very politicians who feted him when he was running RBS then turn around and stab him in the back, as if trying to make out they never supported him in the first place.
Let’s get this right. Goodwin was courted by politicians of all parties. They cheered when he was brought in to RBS to make it a global player and he did exactly that.
Political leaders were queuing up to meet him and secure his approval and, let’s not forget, these politicians then gave him a knighthood which, at the time, they insisted was richly deserved.
I don’t remember any complaints then. I don’t remember these politicians warning that Goodwin didn’t deserve his gong – yet now they troop out in the Commons, at Holyrood and on radio and on TV to make it seem as though they always knew he was a bad ‘un.
It is not Goodwin’s acts that stink the most in this sorry saga – although the reek from them is pretty high indeed. It is the hypocrisy of bandwagon-seeking politicians who have chased what they perceive as public moral outrage like a stray dog on heat.
It is contemptuous and does none of them any favours.
Fred Goodwin did lead RBS into disaster. He played a central part in the emasculation of a great British and Scottish institution, but he did not cause the banking crisis on his own. Yet that is what all those politicians streaming into BBC studios tonight would have us believe.
It is convenient for them all to have a single scapegoat, to demonise one individual for the collapse of the banks and the problems now plaguing our economy – and they now have one.
Goodwin has become that scapegoat and they can all throw rocks at him safe in the knowledge that, if all the attention is focused on him, less will be on them.
What they perhaps don’t understand in this undignified rush to stoke moral outrage against one man is that they have set a dangerous precedent.
There are plenty more banking knights out there, some even closely involved with RBS when it was at its worst. There are also lords who, in government, made some shocking decisions and plunged our economy into debt.
Why don’t we strip the titles and gongs from the lot of them? After all, why stop at Fred Goodwin? Get the lynch-mob moving. Out with the pitchforks and flaming torches, let’s get the lot of them.
But there is more to it than that. First we had Stephen Hester and his bonus – Hester wasn’t even responsible for the collapse of RBS – and now we have Fred Goodwin and his knighthood.
It really does seem as if it is convenient not just to demonise Goodwin, but to hold up RBS to a public pillorying as an ongoing example of all that went wrong.
What about Lloyds? What about Northern Rock? What about Bank of Scotland? All made mistakes, yet RBS is the one that is held up for public ridicule on a daily basis.
The reason? It is convenient, it is easy and it deflects attention from others equally or more culpable.
We really should be more mature, more discerning, more intelligent and less blindly revengeful than that.
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