The Politics of Dancing

 HUMBLED Being humbled is not a common or garden experience. In the face of withering criticism of our behaviour it is even rarer, criticism is more likely to produce shame, humiliation, remorse, even anger, whilst being humbled is suggestive of a certain nobility of spirit, a sense of having a true grasp of one’s moral dimensions. I have recently felt humbled by the Ukrainians courage and resolve to fight against the unprovoked attack on their Republic. This sense of humility is born out of an awareness of one’s own lack of courage, one’s own shortcomings. Which brings us to the spectacle of Boris Johnson appearing in the House of commons after the publication of the Sue Gray report. Johnson said that he was humbled. Now he knows of the word, but it is a term like infinity, or a million light years, a word without concrete meaning for him. Of course, he was not humbled, he was not even ashamed, though ashamed would have been the more appropriate word. He was instead drunk, as h...