David Kirkby: Contradiction that has tied the Lib Dems up in knots

Rennard is now considering legal action over his suspension from the party. Meanwhile, Rennard’s friends in the Lords are described by Simon Jenkins as a “herd around a wounded elephant”.

As if to confirm the impression of the Lib Dems tearing themselves to within an inch of their sanity over the affair, Chris Davies, a prominent MEP, defended Rennard’s behaviour by comparing it to “an Italian man pinching a woman’s bottom” and pointed out that the accused touching had been “through clothing”, implying that the only way to prevent molestation is to keep oneself in a state of perpetual undress.

The seeds of this unedifying episode can be traced back to the internal inquiry, conducted by Alistair Webster QC, which had been tasked with investigating the allegations of sexual harassment against Lord Rennard.

In the report, Webster said two especially important things. Firstly: “My view, judging the evidence as a whole, is that there is a less than 50 per cent chance that a charge against Lord Rennard could be proved to the requisite standard.”

Given that defendants are innocent until proven guilty, this entails that he was found not guilty. However, the report then continued: “It is my view that Lord Rennard ought to reflect upon the effect that his behaviour has had and the distress which it caused and that an apology would be appropriate, as would a commitment to change his behaviour in future.”

This statement contradicts the first. It calls for Rennard to apologise, but at the very least, an apology is an admission of guilt, an admission of having done something blameworthy or wrong. Furthermore, to judge that a change in Rennard’s behaviour “would be appropriate”, is to judge that his previous behaviour had been inappropriate. In other words, Webster exonerated Rennard with one breath and damned him with the next. The Lib Dems blithely swallowed this contradiction and then, quite inevitably, went into complete meltdown.

For instance, in echoing Webster’s call for an apology, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have found themselves inheriting and stymied by this contradiction. The impasse continues.

Normally, a call for an apology is straightforward affair: someone is accused of wrongdoing and an apology for that wrongdoing is demanded. However, since Webster had found Rennard not guilty, Clegg and Alexander have had to take a different approach. Rather than directly accuse Rennard of wrongdoing, both have pointed to the distress 
which his behaviour caused the women (a fact which no one is denying) and then suggested that this fact of distress warrants as apology. As Clegg put it, an apology for this distress caused is a “basic manner of decency”.

However, Clegg is quite clearly wrong about this. For example, homophobes may well be distressed and yes, offended, by public displays of affection between gay men. Would Clegg think that gay men should apologise for such offence-causing behaviour as a “basic manner of decency”? Of course not. There are countless 
examples where we would judge that offence-causing behaviour should not be the subject of an apology.

What matters for apologies is not whether offence has been caused, but the judgment that someone behaved wrongly or was guilty of bad behaviour. In the case of public displays of affection between gay men, notwithstanding the offence caused we judge that they are not guilty in this way. It follows that if Clegg is to demand an apology of Rennard, pointing to the distress caused is not sufficient: what is required is the judgment that Rennard is guilty of wrongdoing. Yet this is precisely the judgment which Alistair Webster’s report rules out.

There is no easy way out of this tangle for the Lib Dems, as evidence by events of the past 10 days and the impasse that remains. Alistair Webster’s conclusions require them to call for an apology for Rennard, while simultaneously depriving them the means of doing so. If they are to untangle themselves, a good place to start would be recognising the contradiction at the heart of the whole debacle.

• David Kirkby is a researcher at the Conservative think-tank Bright Blue. He recently complete a PhD in Philosophy at Durham University, where he also taught logic and ethics. He tweets at @KirkbyDJ