Public figures and the humbug of private comments

To what extent do your private attitudes and comments reflect upon your public persona?

Should you be watching your sexist, racist and homophobic comments in whatever private context they are made, or do they really have nothing to do with your job or your public role?

You have only to read the news in the last couple of days to know that this has become a hot topic.

In one case the leader of UKIP has been forced to defend the reported comment that people would be right to be concerned if a group of Romanians moved in next door. Although during an interview with the BBC’s political correspondent he was four times given the opportunity to apologise for the comment, he declined.

It was only when Nick Robinson asked him if it would be right to say that he should be worried if Nigerians or Jamaicans or Irish people were his neighbours that he changed his position and added: “If I gave the impression in that interview that I was discriminating against Romans, then I apologise certainly for that.”

Those comments were made in a very public forum and we can each make up our own minds about them. If we think that politicians who proclaim such views should not be given house room, then we have the opportunity to condemn them roundly by voting for someone else.

But we have also had the case of the Chief Executive of the Premier League sending private sexist emails which were subsequently published in the Sunday Mirror. The Prime Minister has commented that no member of his cabinet would survive in such circumstances.

After the revelation, Chief Executive Richard Scudamore apologised but wrote to clubs asking them to judge if they believed the content was sexist and inappropriate. That, said the FA’s anti-discrimination adviser, completely undermined the apology.

Scudamore now adds: “These exchanges do not reflect my views towards women in football, the workplace or in general.”

The Premier League has issued a statement that no further disciplinary action is required or justified. It asserts that there is no evidence of wider discriminatory attitudes or inappropriate language or a general attitude of disrespect to women.

Perhaps these people should emerge from behind their closed doors and explain to the wider public precisely what they mean. It all smacks of humbug!

Unfortunately, we don’t get a vote in this at the ballot box.

But what we can do is shun them. We can decline to patronise what they offer and look elsewhere for our entertainment. We can refuse to use the services of any organisation that sponsors them.

Indeed, it is the major sponsors who have the power to hold them to account on our behalf.

They wouldn’t, I venture to suggest, tolerate such conduct from their own employees, and if they withhold sponsorship from such bodies as the Premier League, the League might just look at little harder at itself and demand standards of decency and respect to all from its own employees.