Of the many sayings in the Analects of Kongzi (aka Confucius), “The superior person is true, but not rigidly trustworthy” is among the most mystifying. “Rigidly trustworthy” sounds like a contradiction in terms. Isn’t to be trustworthy to be completely reliable, not flexible in your fidelity? But Kongzi was right. When it comes to trust and integrity—in politics, business and in life—it is possible to be too rigid. To see why, look no further than to the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister), Rachel Reeves.
Reeves is in a tight spot. A probable downgrade of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s growth forecast means she will need to raise more cash to stay within her fiscal rules on borrowing and spending, which her party’s manifesto insisted were “non-negotiable”. But the manifesto also promised “We will not make working people pay more tax, like National Insurance,” a pledge that has been widely understood to rule out increases in basic rates of income tax and VAT (sales tax) too.
Reeves and Prime Minister Kier Starmer have repeatedly doubled-down on their commitment to stick to these promises. At the recent Labour Party conference, for example, Reeves said “We were unequivocal in our commitment to economic responsibility, and I will never, ever squander that hard-earned trust.” She remains “steadfast in that commitment to economic responsibility.”
The problem is that everyone can see that these promises are no longer sensible and should never have been made. So the government faces a choice: break its promises and do what is necessary for the nation now, or stick to its word. Faced with these options, it seems obvious that the least worst way to resolve the dilemma is to go back on the original promise. But Reeves and Starmer are choosing to be “rigidly trustworthy” instead, strictly honouring the letter of their promises, not their intent or spirit.
I can see why Reeves is so keen to stand by her commitments. Her government needs the trust of voters if it is to be re-elected and the trust of the financial markets for the economy to remain stable. But it seems she does not properly understand what trust truly requires.
The basis of trust is that others believe in your integrity. Integrity is about being true to your principles, not selling them out for expediency’s sake. It does not mean sticking to what you have said in the past, come what may. For example, a person of integrity may promise to go to someone’s wedding but that does not mean they lose their integrity if a bereavement leads them not to. Integrity requires being sensitive to what is happening around us and adapting accordingly.
True integrity requires being able to distinguish between fundamental principles and what we might call operational rules. Take the ethical principles a food business might have concerning palm oil. Palm oil production is often problematic because of deforestation, destruction of the habitats of endangered species, exploitation of land inhabited by indigenous people and the use of child labour. All of these problems are rife in Indonesia. So a company fundamentally committed to environmental sustainability and the rights of children and indigenous people may adopt an operational rule not to source palm oil from Indonesia. If, however, a source of palm oil came along in Indonesia that did not contravene these fundamental principles, it would be perverse to stick to the operational rule.
The Labour government is acting as thought integrity required sticking with its operational rules, even when doing so is wrong. It would be more trusted if it showed it was honouring the principles driving these rules—fiscal responsibility and a commitment to fair taxation—rather than outdated rules it falsely believed followed from them.
Integrity also means being willing to revise fundamental principles in the light of new information. Opposition to child labour is arguably a good example. Anyone who has even scratched the surface of the issue knows that in many parts of the world children contribute to the household or community labour from a young age. In some places, families are reliant on the income of minors to eat. You need to constantly think about what is and isn’t morally acceptable, not just object to all and any work done by under sixteens.
The way to show integrity, and so to build trust, is not to stick rigidly to what you said at a certain moment in time. It is, rather, to hold fast to your core values, adapting exactly what you say and do as facts change and new information comes to light. Indeed, being too rigid undermines trust, as it shows that you lack a deep moral compass and the subtlety of mind to change when necessary. The people we most trust are those who never change their hearts, even as they their minds. The most trustworthy have the flexibility to make the right judgements in response to new, often unforeseen situations.
Belatedly, Reeves has gone some way to acknowledging this. “I think everyone can see in the last year that the world has changed, and we’re not immune to that change,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme last Monday. Yet she also said “We made a commitment in our manifesto, and those commitments do stand.”
As The Institute for Government put it, “Labour’s original sin was its unrealistic approach to tax in the election.” It has irrevocably lost trust because we now know it should never have made its promises in the first place. Still, sticking by a pledge you should never have made is no way to start to restore that trust. To salvage some credibility, the government needs to acknowledge its mistake and do the best thing for the country and its finances now. To show that kind of deep integrity, however, requires other virtues of courage and honesty that politicians of all stripes so rarely display.
Konzi was right. The challenge for all of us is to avoid being rigidly trustworthy while holding to firm with what really matters most.